Hazel Dawkins, an editor-writer who started out in London’s newspaper world, has worked in Geneva, Paris and New York.

Hazel’s personal experience (and that of her family and many friends) with optometric vision therapy has resulted in three factual books & four mysteries featuring Dr. Yoko, a research scientist at SUNY, New York (Dr. Yoko is fictional, The College of Optometry and the many practitioners in the mysteries are real). Dr. Yoko's focus is behavioral optometry until murder intrudes…. Welcome to a world where Dr. Yoko Kamimura knows that murder is a spectacle no one should see. You, dear readers, learn about optometric vision therapy in subtle ways - the murder and mayhem are free.

Hazel is currently available for editing, collaboration & continues to have a passion for writing…

Young contemplative Hazel Dawkins

Here's Hazel Dawkins back in the day, when the concept of writing mysteries was seeding itself in her brain (even further back, at the age of 10 she told her family about her plan to write an encyclopedia. In the interest of full disclosure, that book never saw daylight). Fast forward through the years of life and work in London, Geneva, Paris, New York City, marriage and family (cook & chief bottle-washer, chauffeur to school, shops, and extra-curricular activities) until at last the time arrived to focus on writing. Enter Dr. Yoko Kamimura.

Images:
Fundraising during the college rag with best friend Cherry.
Hazel has no idea who the young man is!

Publications

  • Eye Sleuth

  • Eye Witness

  • Eye Sleuth's Ghostly Vacations

  • Eyes on the Past

  • Hazy Memory

  • The Suddenly Successful Student

  • Suddenly Successful

  • Focus Your Mind's Eye

  • Shields Against Terrorism

After happy years in bucolic western Massachusetts, wicked winter weather prompted Hazel's return to the palm trees and micro-climate by the Bay of Bournemouth in southwest England. Following the dictum, write about what you know, Dawkins, her family and many neighbours and friends have benefitted from optometry's specialty of vision therapy and in the spirit of sharing, she wrote several factual books about neuro-optometry, the preferred name for this valuable therapy, which is often described as behavioural or developmental.

Years of research and visits to practitioners around the world, colleges of optometry in the U.S. and leaders like Robert Williams, the former Director of the OEP Foundation, provided invaluable grist for a variety of books. The fiction Dawkins has written is peopled both by the people in optometry she has met and are set where she has lived, from Bournemouth to Manhattan, with a tight focus on favourite places like 34 Gramercy Park and the nearby National Arts Club.   

The authorly picture of Hazel Dawkins is from Gilles de Vericourt of Paris, a friend since they were teens (a decade or two ago). Gilles is uniquely responsible for the spectacular hat and it is possible that their visit to the Rodin Museum may have been the inspiration! In a previous collaboration, from his lair in Paris Gilles created the astral art for the Dr. Yoko mystery, Eye Sleuth's Ghostly Vacations. Patiently, Gilles tweaked and tweaked the cover art for the book as well as art for the text. Most notable is the floating pirate's head even though - as you can read in the mystery - only tourists saw that apparition. Hazel's visits to Gilles include browsing in the Louvre and wandering around the Tuileries Gardens, not to mention daily trips to boulangeries.