I am a word-nerd with a special fondness for Shakespeare’s Sonnets and reading dictionaries for fun. I fix every typo I encounter – mostly in my head because I want to keep my friends! As a French child living in Montreal, I was lucky to attend schools with a European curriculum that focused on essay composition, dictation, grammatical analysis and parsing – which I loved – as well as some Latin and a dash of Ancient Greek.

At 13, I was sent to an English High School and it was sink or swim; I swam! I became fluent enough to function in about three months. I then returned to France later that year and kept up my English by translating the lyrics of all my favourite bands! This was the beginning of my love for words, language and translation.

In my early 20s, after being back in Canada for a couple of years, I fell in love with the West Coast and relocated, with my infant son, to Vancouver gorgeous British Columbia where I became fully fluent in English. I even spent a few years without speaking one word of French!

At 30, after spending two years in Hanover, Germany – where I became fluent enough in the language to read Herman Hesse and Franz Kafka in their mother tongue, I moved to Nelson to offer a safe environment to my son. Word got around that I spoke “French from France” and I was asked by various people to translate diverse material for them – a legal letter for my homeopathic doctor who was going through a custody battle; some material dealing with the BNA Act for someone who was contesting some of the current taxation laws, and a treatise on the philosophical foundations of Taoist Medicine for my Chinese doctor in exchange for treatment. All of these were French to English translations. I even did a two-year stint as the non-accredited court interpreter before relocating to Vancouver. This experience led me to pursue accreditation with STIBC (Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia) and I passed my Associate Certification with them in 2001.

Even though I was successful, I was not happy with my 79% grade so I decided to go back to school as a mature student. I first worked on an English major with a minor in modern languages (German, Spanish and French) with the then Open Learning Agency (now part of the Thompson River University). In the context of my degree, I spent a year at Concordia University in Montreal to take French/English, English/French and German/English translation classes. I also took a German literature and movie class, and a “perfectionnement du français” (refinement of French) class. I graduated the program with honours and, my confidence bolstered, I started freelancing on many types of projects, from technical material such as user manuals and web copy, to educational and literary/journalistic material.

I came to copy editing by volunteering for ION Magazine – a pun for “eye on” – a magazine reporting on the Vancouver culture scene spear-headed by one of my son’s friends. Soon after, I met the Momentum Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief  and became their lead copy editor for the following four years.

My venture into ghost writing happened when, through word of mouth, I was approached by a prominent “women in business” entrepreneur and author based in the US. I wrote three books for her and collaborated on a few other projects in that capacity.

I currently reside in Edmonton where I keep warm in the winter by drinking a lot of tea and cuddling with my cat Alfons. When I am not indulging my word-nerdiness, I spend time on my other passions: digital art and herbalism.