Beyond Words

Today, it is my honour to welcome Sheila Dalton, author of The Girl in the Box to my blog. Talking with My Characters Sheila Dalton A big part of writing a novel is imagining your characters and bringing them to life. Part of the process, for me, is talking to them in my head, and I thought I would share with you a “conversation” I had with Caitlin Shaughnessy, the journalist in my latest novel, The Girl in the Box . Caitlin’s lover, Dr. Jeremy Simpson, was killed by a traumatized young Mayan woman, Inez, whom he rescued from a hut in the Guatemalan jungle where she had been kept chained by her parents. Caitlin, how did you feel when Jerry told you about Inez? He phoned me from Guatemala, out of the blue, and told me he had discovered this young girl whose parents had chained her up and locked her in a dark shed. He told me he wanted to bring her back to Canada with him. My first reaction was shock, utter shock, and horror. I asked him why the girl was kept this way, and he told...

Sheila Dalton was born in England and came to Canada with her family at the age of six. She studied English Language and Literature at the University of Toronto. After dropping out for a year she sold arts and crafts on the streets of Toronto. Sheila was a Contributing Editor for OWL magazine, and a Project Editor for a kids' science magazine called Discovery. Somewhere along the way, she earned a Masters of Library Science degree, and currently works as an Adult Services Librarian for the Toronto Public Library. She lives in Newmarket, Ontario with her husband and two cats.  Tell us a little about Girl in the Box. It’s a story of redemption. A traumatized, mute Mayan girl is rescued by a psychoanalyst, and kills him. His long-term lover, a journalist and meditation student, sets out to discover why. She’s pretty traumatized herself by it all. What was your road to publication like? It took a long time to place the book, but even longer to ...