About Tess
Thank you for visiting my website, which is dedicated to The Neston Novels Series. The first novel, Neston, was released in 2023. The second novel, The Dragon of Neston, is slated for release in the autumn of 2024.
Neston has been long in the making. When I was about ten years old, some friends of my parents joined my family for a summer picnic, and in the course of the day, their son swam across the lake and back. It impressed me. Years later, I wanted to write a story about it, but the swim alone wasn’t sufficient. It needed a wider context, a deeper motivation.
Flash forward over fifty years, when I found the story I wanted to tell: the coming-of-age spiritual biography of a girl during the 1960s–and the swimmer who crosses paths with her.
Neston is the first novel in their journey. I drew on many other memories and personal experiences from those turbulent times to construct the story line. The era ushered in unprecedented changes, including alterations to the landscape of Vermont, where I have lived for most of my life. Place, and the impacts upon it, play as much a role as the characters do in the novels.
I hold a M.A. in English, and I taught as an adjunct at Vermont colleges for nearly a decade. Eventually, I spent another decade as an assistant to executives. I used my writing, editing, and research skills a lot, which I enjoyed, but I did not start writing fiction until late in life. Now retired, I have the time to write novels. I am a member of Faith, Hope, & Love Christian Writers, which upholds fiction written from a Christian worldview. My desire is that everyone from young adult and up in age will enjoy clean reading as inspiring as it is entertaining.
