Do you know?
Elaine Ingalls Hogg
Favourite first book: Little White Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings.
· Made up stories to tell her brother as they walked back and forth to school then hurried home and asked her mother to type them up for her
· Sang in a trio on the radio when she was seven.
· Played a scratchy rendition of God Save The Queen at a school concert when she was eight then put the violin away and never played it again. A schoolmate found me on Facebook and remembered this incident more than fifty years later!
· Was encouraged to write by her teachers but chose a career as a homemaker and private music teacher instead.
· Sang in a music festival in Grade seven in Yarmouth, NS and had the same adjudicator for her first piano exam in Sherbrooke, Quebec, twelve years later. He awarded her the same mark both times.
· After a severe case of writers’ block which lasted more than thirty years, she wrote her first royalty published book, Remembering Honey.(Nimbus Publishing) in 2000 then spent the next five years learning how to get the next one published.
· Her first self-published book, Grandma Loves You sold out of the 500 printed copies within a few months. The story was read on CBC and the interviewer was Steve Sutherland in Cape Breton.
· Remembering Honey won the Marianna Dempster Award from the Canadian Authors’ Association in 2000. Her favourite dog story, Ben Nevis Finds a Home won Canadian Living’s Pet Story and Photo contest shortly after this.
· Elaine was a palliative care / hospice volunteer for sixteen years.
· Read nearly 600 stories and helped choose the winners to be included in the book Chicken Soup for the Volunteer.
· Was the editor of the best-selling books When Canada Joined Cape Breton and Christmas In the Maritimes
· Laura Ingalls Wilder is her seventh cousin.