About the Author

I loved my corporate career, a fast-paced, grab onto the rocket and scream yee–haa, kind of career. After my two children started college, I lived in “exotic faraway places” like India, Taiwan and Hong Kong, however there was nothing glamorous about 24-hour flights. From my flat in India to my home in Seattle was a 48-hour trip via train, taxi and airplane. Once, I crossed the international date line and enjoyed a 48-hour birthday with champagne and a plane full of strangers singing “Happy Birthday.” I loved it—until I didn’t. A line from Mary Oliver’s poem said it all, “…are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?” (“Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?”) I started writing a memoir and enrolled in the Port Townsend Writers Conference. Jumping off the fast-track to spend more time writing, I naively jumped into another high energy opportunity. I bought a hobby farm and opened a B&B on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. As a morning person who loves to cook, it sounded like a clever idea at the time. After my zany career and single motherhood, caring for five llamas, several ducks, a pair of Toulouse geese and oh-so-many goslings, two (boy) rabbits, two (girl) sheep, and twenty-some chickens, seemed doable. I served very fresh eggs for breakfast. Farm chores and guests left little time for writing, even in the slow winter months. I sold the farm and moved to a beach cottage in Port Gamble, WA that couldn’t have been more rural—or quiet.

There was an eagle’s nest in a tree above my bedroom and a bear devoured my birdseed. My dogs and I walked the Hood Canal beach teeming with sea life during low tide and listened to the owls and coyotes at night. You might say I turned 180° from tending to the needs of guests and the chaos of my farm and B&B. Before that, an over-populated big-city career and before that, caring for my family. I discovered that all I really want to do is write.

Now I live in a small place on Discovery Bay, closer to Port Townsend, WA., still rural with eagles overhead and owls calling in the night. (No bears lately.) The surrounding quiet makes creativity possible, both in my writing and in the design work I do for other authors. I may have hated this kind of life when I was younger—who knows—but I do know, it’s what I need now.

See a YouTube video of my B&B, Morgan Hill Retreat. The B&B and farm inspired my novel, Secrets Lost, my farm is on the cover.

Shearing Day just before closing the sale of the farm

Nearby lot clearing Watching these horses and their handler at work, reminded me of photos of my Granddad’s horse team, and inspired another novel I’m toying with, Cecil and Edith (working title)

Author, Marcia Breece with her constant companions, Ellie (bottom step) and Dora