And here's my wife now of 59 years, uh, 11 months and one week Susan Merrill Kalmen Simon

[laughs] Hi.

Hi, everyone.

Um, I met Sam when I was probably 18...

No, originally 16 years old.

We attended a convention together in, uh, Texas, and we didn't really, we, we, we eyed each other, so to speak.

And, um, then when I went to college and saw him again, and then a relationship [laughs] happened, and we got married, and then I began my teaching elementary school.

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

Anyway, um, so I went to university in England, um, and I worked for British Airways on a management training scheme.

Um, started that way, and then I moved into advertising and marketing.

And then on my, um, on a trip to Singapore, I met my, what, what turned out to be my first husband.

We both got stuck there at Changi Airport and, um, so I've came out to visit him in Australia.

He was a potter.

We ran a, an arts and crafts business, hence my love of arts and crafts and everything.

And so your book, is that really about the period of life when you were a s- a school principal?

It sounds very intriguing.

Okay.

So how I started writing it was actually when I was still in academia and I got together with some other colleagues, one of whom is a well-published author, and she was our muse.

And she, we all wanted to sort of, you know, get back into creative writing, so we'd meet every so often and I started to write real little reflections of things, snippets of school experiences and, and the group liked it and they said, "Oh, you should turn it into a novel." So it has been going on for quite a long time.

This was kind of, I don't know, seven years ago, something like that.

But I didn't really put it together into a novel till after I had finished my role at uni.

So I have been retired, although I was an adjunct at uni for a couple of years as well.

Okay.