PORTLAND JONES

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Life was going just fine – then a stroke got in the way. Twenty-five years of working with the homeless thrown out the window - past history. What would Portland do next?

First she had to come to terms with her new-found disabilities. Have you ever heard of prosopagnosia? Portland hadn’t. It’s face blindness. Who would have thought that you wouldn’t be able to recognise your nearest and dearest? That you wouldn’t even be able to recognise yourself in the mirror?

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She found ways to cope – she trained family coming to the house to announce their name as they came in. When sight impairment took her driving licence away, she braved public transport even though she got lost, often. She made lists of things to do, and kept things that she needed in full view so that she could find them – short-term memory difficulties are frustrating. (It makes writing a novel an exercise in patience. Each day Portland has forgotten what she wrote yesterday.)

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None of this enabled her to return to work. So what did she do next? She took herself back to university – just two hours a week – and became a Master of Arts in creative writing. Life reborn, Portland’s time now revolves around writing.

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Portland blends personal experience with a hint of the paranormal to create tales that draw you in and leave you wondering.

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