Jacqueline Hyde is a sixty-three-year-old widowed housewife with one grown-up daughter living in Westward Ho!, Devon ? made famous by the author Charles Kingsley. Gloucester was her first home for a number of years before she moved to Kent and now Devon. It was in Gloucester that she first met her husband over forty-six years ago. Following a riding accident when she was eighteen, Jacqueline developed grand mal epilepsy, which she still suffers from and which subsequently forced her to stop working as a nurse/carer ? a career she loved and enjoyed. About sixteen years ago, she developed breast cancer and endured much necessary surgery and reconstruction work essential to overcome this illness. As a result of her enduring epilepsy, she is unable to do and enjoy many everyday things other people take for granted. Because of this, she found herself with time on her hands and took to writing as a form of release and self-expression. In writing, she feels her thoughts, dreams, and inner feelings being expressed by way of the written word. ?When I write,? she says, ?I can escape from the mundane and lose myself within my books, which I find comforting, enjoyable, and therapeutic.?