Valerie Poore

I love and support Indie and traditional Authors.

I’ve always fantasized living in a boat and always jealous to those who live in one. Val Poore is a best-selling author who has lived on a boat and has written volumes about her boating life. She’s a prolific writer having written a total of twelve books, ten of them are memoirs. ‘African Ways’ (is a lovely book about her first few years on a farm in Kwazulu Natal). It’s followed-up by ‘African Ways Again’ and ‘Highveld Ways’ is her third book about her life in South Africa. Additionally, she’s written a memoir about a special pet dog named Sindy called, ‘Living with my Sin’.
Val’s written six ‘watery’ adventures starting with ‘Watery Ways’ (a finalist in the 2015 Wishing Shelf Awards), ‘Harbour Ways’, ‘Walloon Ways’, ‘Faring to France on a Shoe’, and her latest book ‘Faring Forth Again on the Shoe’. She has short companion volume called ‘Rotterdam Reflections’.

In addition to her memoirs, Val has also dabbled into fiction with, ‘The Skipper’s Child’ (awarded Silver in the Wishing Shelf Independent book awards), ‘How to Breed Sheep’, ‘Geese’, and ‘English Eccentrics’.

Val writes under her full name Valerie Poore. I met her virtually in our favorite FaceBook group, We Love Memoirs; she has graciously accepted to be interviewed for this blog. More from her below. Thanks, Val.

Valerie Poore, best-selling author, writer and teacher.

1. Tell me about yourself.

Hi Mitos, many, many thanks for having me on your blog. I’ve been one of your followers for a while, so I’m thrilled to be invited here. To answer your question as briefly as possible, I’m Val Poore and I’m an English teacher by day, but a writer in my free time. I live half the week on my historic barge in the Netherlands; the rest of the time I’m in a small house on the Belgian border. The internet is better there, so it’s where I do my teaching, which is mostly on Zoom these days.

2. Tell me about the books you’ve written.
I’ve written eleven complete books altogether, and then there’s a collection of short pieces that I published separately. Two of my books are novels and the rest are memoirs of the travel/living abroad genre.

3. Why did you write them?
Well, Mitos, I was initially inspired by Peter Mayle, whose book, A Year in Provence, was the spark that made me decide to write my first memoir, African Ways. I loved his depiction of the rural French people he lived among, and I knew I wanted to write something in the same style about the Africans I’d shared my life with—not that I could ever be in his league. But it was his book started me off on my writing adventure, and I’ve just kept on; it can be addictive, as I’m sure you know.

4.What message or lessons did you want your readers to take from your books?
The most important lesson I’ve learned in my wanderings is that there are wonderful, funny, fascinating people wherever you are in the world. Of course, there are differences in culture too, but this is the joy of travel I wanted to share. I’ve also had a blog since 2006, and blogging taught me that readers want to know as much about daily life in other countries as they do about the tourist sights, so that’s the focus of my books too.

5. Amongst all the books you have written, what is your favourite and why?
That’s a very hard one to answer, Mitos. I change my mind frequently, but today I think it has to be my first novel, The Skipper’s Child. I had so much fun writing it, and I learned so much from the research I had to do. Ask me next week, though, and I might have a different answer.

6. What do you recommend readers to read first?
That’s also a difficult question. It depends on what they’re interested in, really. I’ve written three books about South Africa and five about my boating life, two of which are travelogues. I’d say they should go for the first one in the area that appeals to them most.

6. How many hours do you write in a day?
Oh dear. It’s confession time now. I don’t spend hours a day at all. Sometimes, I can write for a couple of hours, but mostly it’s just for a short time each evening, and often, not at all. To be honest, I’m a bit of a splurge writer; I write when the mood takes me, which is the luxury of only doing it as a hobby.

7. Are you currently working on a book at the moment?
Yes, I’m editing and polishing a novel set in South Africa, which I hope to release this summer, and I’m writing a sequel to The Skipper’s Child as well.

8. Do you ever encounter writer’s block? If yes, how do you deal with it?
No, not really. I’ve always had to write for my work, so production just happens when I put my fingers on the keyboard. I’ve been trained in the school of ‘don’t get it right, get it written’. The hard part is the time it takes to edit my scribbles.

9. If you are not writing, what are you doing when you are not writing?
That’s easy, Mitos. I’m maintaining my boat. It takes a lot of work to keep a 124-year-old barge afloat, but luckily, I love it and find all the scraping, sanding and painting quite therapeutic.

10. Why did you pick the country Netherlands to live in?
I didn’t choose to live here myself. My ex-husband moved here for work and didn’t want to return to South Africa, so I followed him here a year later. This country has been very good to me, though.

11. Greatest challenge living on a boat?
Condensation in the winter. It’s a constant battle because it makes the hull rust from the inside out. Not good for an old iron boat.

12. Most memorable experience living on a boat?
Falling overboard just after I’d had a bath. It was such a shock, but very funny in hindsight.

13. Can you imagine living on land again full time?
No, I hope I never have to. I’d also really prefer to live on the boat full time, but at the moment it isn’t practical with my work.
14. Do you prefer writing fiction or nonfiction?
I enjoy both. Fiction is liberating, but non-fiction is a little easier.

15. Do you prefer self-publishing to traditional publishers, and why?
Personally, I prefer self-publishing, because there’s no pressure on me to meet deadlines or targets. I was traditionally published for a few years and while it had some advantages, self-publishing works better for me and my lifestyle.

16. What would you advise emerging Indie authors?
Ask for help from fellow authors. It’s hard to do it all alone and feedback is vital, so is good proofreading. The writing community is incredibly generous, and there’s a huge amount of expertise out there. Oh, and if you’re a memoir writer, Join the Facebook group We Love Memoirs. It’s the absolute best place to meet both memoir readers and writers.

17. What are you reading right now?
I nearly always read memoirs and right now, I’m reading three simultaneously. Two are travel memoirs, and another is about a family who move to Portugal. I’m enjoying them all: one is a hardback book, one is on my tablet, and one is on my Kindle, a perfect mix for different situations.

18. If you were a fruit or a vegetable, what would you want to be and why?
Oh, Mitos, I know it’s prosaic, but I’d definitely choose to be a potato. I’d love to be as versatile as our lovely spuds. Looks don’t count; it’s what’s inside, isn’t it?

Check out Valerie Poore’s blog here.

Check out more of my author interviews here.

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