About me
I was born and bred in Melbourne, Australia, although lived in the USA and France for short stints as a kid. I live with my husband, stepdaughter, a cat and a dog and have two younger sisters, a slew of stepsiblings and a gaggle of nieces and nephews who I adore.
I’ve always loved creative writing but never contemplated it as a career. Instead, I spent my twenties and thirties exploring other passions – politics, public policy and people. Emerging from the haze of COVID, I knew I needed a break – as a public servant in State government, it was a busy time – so I started planning a sabbatical.
Reading Graeme Simsion’s The Novel Project in 2022 got my synapses flying. Could I actually, maybe, perhaps write a book?
I started with a couple of creative writing courses and tried my hand at short stories. While I’ve since discovered short stories are much harder to nail than writing a novel (for me at least), I was well and truly bit by the writing bug. And, well, the rest is history.
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I wrote my first ‘novel’ at the ripe old age of eight. I was in grade four. I can’t remember the storyline but I’m pretty sure it followed the plot of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie.
I devoured books as a kid – Victor Kelleher, Isobelle Carmody and John Marsden were my staples.
I feel all the feelings. Quick to cry, quick to anger, quick to laugh. While I spent much of my high school years and early twenties repressing these tendencies, these traits hold me in good stead as a writer.
My first published story appeared in the Woman’s Day in the section of the magazine titled something like ‘Bare Your Soul’ or ‘Readers’ Secrets’. It was the ‘real life’ story of how I’d slept with my sister’s husband (**spoiler alert** pure fiction). I was thirteen years old and in year eight. I got paid $100.