As a child I wondered our 200 plus forest with a selection of Golden Nature Guides tucked under my arm. Flowers; trees; amphibians and reptiles; rocks and minerals; these books were my teacher. The wild my classroom. I might craft my lunch from a lush growth of miners lettuce and the tart berries of the Oregon grape (not a grape, by the way) and make tea from the fragrant, trailing herb named by the name the Spanish colonizers herba bueana. In short, was enthralled with the wild.

I started a “newspaper” when I was in grade school: The Springbrook Spectator, named after our farm. Of course, I wrote all of the articles, the puzzle, the riddle of the week, and did the illustrations. I hand copied a few editions, then passed them out to the people that worked on our farm. I’m still a dork today.

My first name is a Greek surname. My paternal grandfather emigrated in 1913. It was my parents last name until the 1950’s when they changed it to Stevenson (for nefarious reasons that I’ll be diving into for a future novel). I changed it to my first name in the late 1980’s. How to say it? I suggest gee-on-a-klees. Call me she/her/ or Mx Caldwell if you must, but Gianaclis is preferred; it’s enough, don’t you think?

I started my first novel in my 20s (a stack of papers that will hopefully remain in my files forever) and several short stories over the years I was focused on fine art 1980’s to 2004. In 2008 I decided to write an instructive book on starting small creameries, as we were so overwhelmed by the process and then inundated with “help” requests afterwards. That book was published in 2010 and my last non-fiction in 2020.

Now, pursuing fiction is at last a reality- with the closing of our dairy and a shift to caring for our elderly parents.

Wise Words

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