Mary and family: (from left) Christopher, Mary, Robert, Jacqueline, Siân

How is my name pronounced? It is the question I am asked most often, apart from "Where do you get your ideas?" Balogh is a Hungarian name. The a is short, the h best ignored. My husband tells people to rhyme our name with Kellogg's Corn Flakes. I tell them that as long as people are saying my name, I don't much care how they pronounce it!

Growing Up in Wales

I grew up in post-war Wales as Mary Jenkins. It was in many ways an idyllic childhood even though Swansea, my home town, had been heavily bombed during the war, rationing was still on, and material possessions were few. If anyone knew how to stretch a penny to do the work of two, it was my mother.

My sister, Moira, two years older than I, was my constant playmate and soul-mate. We both have a hard time convincing people who did not know us then that we were almost inseparable yet never quarrelled. Our few dolls became our family. They had names, personalities, histories. We used to lie awake in bed at night--until our mother would call up, promising dire consequences if we did not stop talking--inventing stories about our dolls' antics. On summer days Mam would construct a tent out of blankets, string and clothes pegs attached to the clothesline and the garden fence, and we would play "house" all day. The neighbours must have cringed when we took our dolls for walks in the strollers Dad made for us, complete with solid--and excruciatingly noisy--wooden wheels.

Moira and I both used to fill notebooks with stories. We read voraciously--especially every book of Enid Blyton's we could get our hands on when we were younger, the classics when we were a little older. We both used to say that we wanted to be authors when we grew up, though the word we used then was authoress. We both fulfilled our dream, though we both financed it with careers as high school English teachers.

Mary with Moira above Rhossili Bay, Wales, 2006

Our mother, Mildred Jenkins, was and is a homemaker and gave us a life of marvellous security. She has always excelled at numerous crafts, most recently exquisite lace-making. In the days of our childhood she used to sew all our dresses and knit all our sweaters while we did the same for our dolls. Our father, Arthur Jenkins, was a painter and sign writer at the time when the latter was still a skilled manual art. He was a gentle, patient, widely loved man. Our favourite game many evenings was combing his hair, buttoning and unbuttoning his waistcoat, and covering him with shawls when he must have been exhausted after a day's work.

Mildred Jenkins, Mary's mother, 2006

Settling in Canada

I had a very good education thanks to parents who emphasized the importance of school and career at a time when many people were still saying that education was wasted on girls. I was fortunate to be young at a time when there was employment in almost any field I might have chosen. I wanted to teach and travel, and came to Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada, on a two-year teaching contract. But at the end of the first year I had a blind date with a man named Robert Balogh and found a tall, sharply dressed, blue-eyed Adonis standing in my landlady's kitchen when I came down from my room on the fateful evening. We were married a little over a year later.

Mary and Robert, 2007

Robert used to farm but now rents his land to his brother and nephew. He recently retired as an ambulance driver, though he is still a coroner. He fills in his time by doing yard work throughout the town in summer and by clearing snow in winter. And he always seems to have energy left to work out in our basement gym.

We have three adult children. Jacqueline lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with partner Shawn and her three children--Matthew, aged 16, Shianne, aged 11, and Jayden, aged 10. She is a nurse and currently works at a home for seniors.

Jacqueline, Christmas, 2007

Jacqueline and Shawn, 2007

Matthew, aged 16, Christmas, 2007 (with Jayden)

Shianne, aged 11, Christmas, 2007

Jayden, aged 10, Christmas 2007

Chris lives in Brooklyn and works out of New York. He is in the music industry and is currently employed by Live Nation as a production manager and site coordinator.

Chris with Grandma Jenkins, 2007

Chris with fianceé Carey, Christmas 2007

Sian lives in St. Louis, though she is usually out on the road, working as production assistant with various musical tours. Most recently she has been with Sheryl Crow and Heaven & Hell. She studies interior design, Thai body massage, and kundalini yoga whenever she can find the time.

Siân, Christmas 2007

Siân with Doc Holliday, her "baby", 2007

Making Dreams Come True

Wanting to be an author is a dream; wanting to be a teacher is an practical goal. The goal I could and did work toward. Then, of course, marriage and motherhood intervened to take more and more time off my hands. Sian was six years old before I felt I had enough time to take up an evening hobby--writing!

I was addicted to the novels of Georgette Heyer, whom I had discovered only a few years before while working my way through a Grade XI reading list during a maternity leave. I cannot adequately explain how enchanted I was, how transported into a world I had experienced before only through Jane Austen. I knew that if ever I wrote, it was that romantic world of Regency England that I wanted to recreate.

And so A Masked Deception got written in longhand at the kitchen table while home and family functioned around me after the supper dishes were done. Finally, at the end of 1983, three months after I had started it, the manuscript was ready to be submitted. But where? And how? I knew nothing about the publishing world and nothing about any writers' organizations. To say I was a greenhorn would be to flatter me. I picked out the publisher I thought did the best job of Regencies, found a Canadian address inside the cover of one of the Signet books, and sent my manuscript there with a brief covering letter. The Mississauga address was a mere distribution centre! But incredibly someone there read the manuscript, liked, it, wrote to tell me so, and sent it on to New York. Two weeks later I had a call from Hilary Ross, offering me a two-book contract. Sometimes it pays not to have a clue what one is doing!

And so the dream became reality. A Masked Deception was published in 1985 and I won the Romantic Times Award for best new Regency writer that year. Since then there have been numerous Regencies, historicals, and novellas, and more awards too.

My first five books were written longhand and typed into an ancient typewriter. The First Snowdrop was the first book to be written into a computer--an all-in-one dinosaur of a machine that had me in transports of delight. I could actually go back and correct typing errors! I could make wholesale changes without having to rewrite the whole thing. Best of all--and I still have not quite recovered from the novelty of this--when I was finished, I could press a key (no mouse in those days!) and the printer would do the typing for me while I put my feet up and relaxed--or washed another load of dishes, or marked another set of essays...

Finally, in 1988, I was able to retire from teaching after twenty years in order to devote myself to my dream career. And as the children grew up and left home and empty bedrooms behind them, I was able to set up my own study and surround myself with all my books and finest treasures.

Let no one ever say that dreams cannot come true. They can with vision and effort and a little luck--well, perhaps a great deal of luck.

When I am not Writing

I am a voracious reader. I read anything and everything--fiction, non-fiction, classics, blockbusters, you name it--provided it can hold and sustain my attention through the first fifty pages. I used to plod dutifully through every book I started, but that changed after I suffered through Moby Dick a number of years ago. Life is too short and there are too many unread books out there for time to be wasted on what does not entertain me in any way at all.

I love music. This is hardly surprising, of course, when I grew up in Wales, most famous for its music. If you have not listened to a Welsh male voice choir, you have missed one of the most emotionally satisfying experiences of this life. I wrote a great deal about Welsh music in my historical Longing, most quoted by readers, I believe, as their favourite of my books.

I have always been a total klutz at sports. But I am absolutely unbeatable as an armchair player of tennis and curling. During grand slam tennis tournaments and Canadian and world curling championships, I often acquire square eyes in front of the television screen. Sometimes I justify my existence there by knitting, another of my passions.

We now spend our summers in Kipling, Saskatchewan, a rural farming town of 1200 people, and our winters in the capital city of Regina 100 miles away, where we bought a new condominium last year. In addition to the pleasurable pastimes of shopping and drinking coffee at Starbucks (lattes made with non-fat milk are absolutely harmless, I swear!), I have indulged in some worthwhile activities. I have joined Curves and enjoy a daily early morning workout (I have even shed 16 unwanted pounds and dropped two dress sizes!). I have joined a women's branch of the Canadian Progress Club, an organization dedicated to volunteering for all sorts of charitable activities and raising money for certain targeted causes. My own chapter targets causes that benefit women and children in particular. My next commitment is to a run in support of breast cancer survivors (well, maybe a brisk walk, but I will cross the finish line). And I can knit to my heart's content in Regina as our church there has a "knitting tree" at Christmas time to gather newly knitted clothes for children who need them in our very chilly winters.