The Family Squeeze: Surviving the Sandwich Generation is a collaboration with Dr. Benjamin Schlesinger who wanted a book on the generation caught between caring for their parents and caring for their kids. He wanted it to be highly readable and entertaining while providing all the results of current research into the subject. This one was tackled by starting the beginning of each chapter with a fictionalized scenario of a generic Sandwich Generation family. Throughout the book we get to see all the problems they encounter and how they try to solve them. The rest of each chapter is non-fiction and is devoted to the problems and ideas brought up in the fictional scenario. Have fun with Rebecca, her husband Bryan, their 3 children, one of whom has boomeranged, and Rebecca’s parents and see how they all cope with the Family Squeeze

The Family Squeeze: Surviving the Sandwich Generation

1998 University of Toronto Press

ISBN0-8020-7134-1

Trade Paperback & Hardcover

199 pages Price: $15

Breaking up solvent’s working title was “You’re on your own now, Baby”. It’s a fictionalized account of one woman’s journey through the financial maze of separation and divorce. Stephen Stuart, my co-author, asked if I could come up with a way to make dry financial advice for women in the throes of separation and divorce  interesting and lively. Not many women going through divorce are likely to pick up and read a dry financial text. But something entertaining and informative? That was a different story. Stephen would supply all the research and be my consultant and I would turn it all  into something readable. This was a huge challenge for me as I had never written fiction, although technically it was really fictionalized non-fiction as I had to cover all the main areas of financial advice, but it was a revelation even with its restrictions. It was so much fun creating brand new people and giving them lives and dreams and hopes and hates and fears. My story line revolves around Kate and her cleaning woman cum financial wizard and readers learn all the financial advice in easy to read scenarios with likable and amusing characters. The pain free way to learn finances!

Breaking Up Solvent: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Security

1998 Detselig Enterprises

ISBN 1-55059-164-9

Trade Paperback

231 pages

Price: $15

Francis Scrimger: Beyond the call of Duty was part of the Hannah Institute’s Medical Lives Series.

It is a biography of Dr. Francis Scrimger. At the second battle of Ypres he won the Victoria Cross for single handedly saving the life of a man as shells fell and a nearby barn loaded with ammunitions blew up all around them. He was a surgeon and a researcher at the Montreal Children’s and the Royal Victoria Hospital, both hospitals of which he was also Surgeon-in-Chief at the pinnacle of his career. One year into his coveted term as Surgeon-in-Chief of the RVH he died of a massive heart attack. He was 57.

Francis Scrimger: Beyond the Call of Duty

Hannah Institute & Dundurn Press 1991

ISBN0-1-55002-081-1

Hardcover

112 pages

Has been spotted on eBay and some online bookstores

VANISHING WILDLIFE: 

This book was a contract job that was essentially written in 3 weeks, not possible without my zoology degree because of all the research required. Unfortunately my deadline was right over Christmas and I was spending it at a small snowbound ski cabin with 5 other adults and 5 young kids. Since there was no heat on the second floor I had to work on the first floor but there was no study or separate room - it was all open concept. There were however 2 tiny bathrooms, one with just a bathtub and sink. I set up my writing table in the bathtub and the entire book was written there, dripping tap and all. Of course every night I had to dismantle my office so everyone could have a bath.

Vanishing Wildlife: Endangered Species of the World

1990 Discovery Books

ISBN 1-55013-244-X

9.75 X 13 inch Coffee Table Book with 100 colour photographs.

120 pages