100 books like The Light Within Us

I discovered my passion for the First World War when researching my great-grandfather’s service history in the cavalry. I also write historical fiction with several of my books being set during the First World War and have spent thousands of hours over the past twenty years researching different aspects of this period, both from the point of view of the V.A.D.s, wounded soldiers, medical staff treating them, as well as grieving families. The stories I’ve come across never fail to haunt me and I can’t imagine I’ll ever tire of wanting to discover more about the people who survived these experiences, or stop needing to write books about them.

I’ve lived a long, richly varied, well-traveled, international life, and I can truly say my education has been worldly. Despite advancements in science and technology, two millennia of patriarchal religious brainwashing have prevented humanity from achieving gender balance in power and peace on earth. Today, more than ever, women who confront societal norms are essential to humanity’s progression and the preservation of our planet. People often open up to me about their most daring and dangerous experiences because they know I won’t judge. Their most intimate and romantic revelations have particularly inspired me, and I have namelessly infused many of them into my books, alongside my own. Empowerment begins with education.

I’m the author of 10 books published in the historical genre, and 7 more in other genres (which also feature women who have been tested and hardened in various fires). I have spent years reading first-hand accounts of wartime ambulance drivers, nurses, farm labourers, pilots, and others, and I have uncovered the startling true lives of some remarkable women – it’s furnished me with a desire to showcase women like this in fictional settings, and give them the satisfactory stories they deserve but too often never had. My characters are all fictional, but they couldn’t exist without those powerful examples of strength and courage.

In the 50s I was a shy minister’s daughter in small-town Canada. Friends, life skills, coping skills, and career skills were in short supply. My refuge came in books where I found sisterhood, ordinary courage, and life skills. I learned my skills from the heroines who faced trials, solved mysteries, and never gave up. I gravitate to women who persevere, risk, and make their way in life against all odds. Several careers, a family, and decades later these story elements still inform and inspire me. They are what I read and what I write.

Part-Cornish, as a child I spent family holidays in Cornwall and was told family stories of Cornish relatives, especially of great grandfather Philip Henry Hammer and his numerous children who left Cornwall for destinations near – London and Wales – and far–South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania – to make a living. Old family photographs, some from the 1870s helped to bring these men and women alive and inspired me to write The Hammers of Towan. The more I research Cornish history, the more I learn, and the more I want to write about Cornish people and their place in the world. 

I love to write about the places, folklore, nature, and above all the magic of Cornwall. I have lived in Cornwall most of my life, I learned to crawl along the rockpools of Cornish beaches and I went to school in a moorland village. Now, I live on the edge of Bodmin Moor and write in the Cornish wilds, I live close to both the moors and the sea. I began writing for Cornish folklore project Mazed in 2013 and I have been retelling Cornish Folk Tales and writing poetry and stories inspired by Cornish folklore ever since. 

I love horses and I love the magic that exists in the world. I have always been drawn to both. My maternal grandmother had the ‘second sight’ as they called it, and I have inherited that from her. My books and poetry reflect my sincere belief that magic and wonder are alive and well and that we need to nourish them by acknowledging their existence in our everyday lives. The miracle of life, the sun rising and setting every day, the dance of the stars and moon across the sky, the glory of the northern lights—who can claim that isn’t magic? 

The collection Little Musings, available on Amazon, covers several decades of Joy's work as poet and painter. It touches on many aspects of her life, including the loss of her mother, in Do Not Mourn Her and Loss - Double Rainbow. Her childhood was spent in Plymouth, and in A Plymouth Girl Reflects, she recalls the aftermath of the air raids. Being in close proximity to Cornwall, that area also a major theme here, especially in Newquay, Cornwall, and On Air, By Melancholy. Four of the poems, "Absent Friends," "Isle of Thanet," "At Jim's Cafe," and "Captain Ahab of Thanet" are focused on the Thanet area of East Kent, where Joy now lives.

I love to write about the places, folklore, nature, and above all the magic of Cornwall. I have lived in Cornwall most of my life, I learned to crawl along the rockpools of Cornish beaches and I went to school in a moorland village. Now, I live on the edge of Bodmin Moor and write in the Cornish wilds, I live close to both the moors and the sea. I began writing for Cornish folklore project Mazed in 2013 and I have been retelling Cornish Folk Tales and writing poetry and stories inspired by Cornish folklore ever since. 

My love of history began at the age of 9 with a book given to my older brother: Our Island Story. My history teacher at school introduced me to serious historical biography and studying for a Law degree taught me the value of accuracy. The chance discovery of a notebook detailing one strand of my mother's family tree led to my current project of writing about the imagined lives of my female ancestors beginning in 1299  with my 19 times-great-grandmother Marguerite of France and ending in 1942 with my mother. Twenty-one books mean a lot of history and a mountain of research. A very pleasant way to spend my retirement.