T J Dockree has lived in Cornwall since she was 18 months old. Her parents came to Cornwall on holiday in the 50s and 60s and moved here from Lancashire in the late 1960s.
She started writing her first novel, The Chart Makers Daughter: Timeline 67, in the 80s. Looking for inspiration, she was inspired by the shipwreck of the schooner Voorspoed and the rescue of its crew on Perranporth beach in 1901. The novel creates a fictional journey for a fictional crew, including a woman and girl escaping from Amsterdam, and their adventures with the Cornish residents they meet: Padraig the Irish railway worker who also cares for the pit ponies, Lad (still to be named!) the asthmatic son of a miner and a local archaeologist helping at the dig at St Pirans Oratory.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) became the catalyst for making the story a reality. Tracey wrote the first ‘zero’ story draft in November 2017 during NaNoWriMo and she has since drafted other novels in November for NaNoWriMo: The Dream Walker, Bait, Mine The Light and Leviathan. She’s now editing all those zero drafts and hopes to publish The Chart Makers Daughter: Timeline 67 sometime during 2024/25.
Early writerly dabblings involved poetry, with her poem The Maiden winning first prize at Poetry Today – Beyond the Horizon in 1997. Since then, she has had several other poems published in collections with other poets.
Tracey loves encouraging others on their writing journey. She is regional co-ordinator for Cornwall for NaNoWriMo and regularly meets up with other writers in Cornwall throughout the rest of the year. She set up Cornwall Writers and their short story project has already produced two anthologies with other Cornish writers and with a third to be published in the spring of 2024.
Two of her short stories appear in the Cornish anthology Cornwall: Misfits, Curiosities and Legends – Little Bear and Knights on a Train. She also has two stories in the anthology Cornwall Secret and Hidden – Slagoon’s Breath and Pure of Heart.
Her day jobs are editor for Ethical Rebel magazine and ethical fashion and costume designer as Tracey Dockree. She is based in Truro in Cornwall.
