I trained as a High School
Art/English Teacher but retrained and worked for twenty-eight years in Special
Education/children’s counselling. My first two books were commissioned by
Cambridge Uni Press for the Livewire Real Lives series and published in 2000.
Since then I have had fourteen books published, with a new one coming out soon
with Forty South.
In my twenty odd years as a
published author I have worked with many publishers, big and small, Australian
and International. I’ve written for the award winning Pearson Blueprints
series, Blake Education’s Red Hot Writing Ideas and others. I’ve had a crack at
most things – fiction and non-fiction, even poetry! Wherever an opportunity
presented itself I’ve taken it, stretching my skills and experience. I am now
part of a local writing group who are producing anthologies every two years.
Why do I write?
An important book I spent five
years writing was a biography of WWII veteran Jim Haynes, who lived in my
neighbourhood. I self-published it, just so I could put a copy into his hands
before he died. We had a lovely big book launch and members of his family, some
estranged from him for years, came up to me and thanked me for this
extraordinary gift to them, because he never talked about his life.
I write because stories clang
around in my head, demanding to be let out. They all have a message, something
important I want to convey and I am unashamedly moralistic. Being a teacher, I
feel it’s imperative we guide young minds with wisdom, experience and
sensitivity. I’ve covered topics as diverse as friendship, bullying,
trans-humanism, a family of spies, high fantasy, disability, mental health,
urban science fiction, the value of family affection, caring for pets, nerds vs
divas and sibling hauntings. It’s all brilliant fun.
Self-publishing and
traditional publishing
I have self-published about
half of my books and gained valuable experience working with book designers,
one in particular, (in Greece!) through the Fiverr website. It’s inexpensive
and he is brilliant at interpreting my vision for the cover. My latest book was
The Whispering Stone, published in
March 2023 through Amazon. It’s stunning! Normally it takes a few revisions,
but with this one he got it perfect first go. It’s so thrilling to see your
characters come to life on the cover!
My aim is to have it look professional,
eye catching and of excellent quality. With other books published with
traditional publishers I’ve been sometimes fortunate to have some input into
the illustrations and cover design. With the Don Bradman book, it was out of
print but still very popular with libraries (the ELR and PLR scheme) so I
decided to republish when the rights were returned to me.
My most popular book is 12 Annoying Monsters, which I published
through Moshpit but also myself through Amazon, as I retain the rights. It
sells all over the world, ten years after it first came out. With my background
in Special Ed and children’s counseling I wrote it for my clients, but it
quickly became in demand more widely.
So far my titles are:
Sir
Donald Bradman
Tony
Lockett
The
Wobbly Wombat
Fat Abby
– Feline Investigator
The
Anything Shop
Friend
in a Shell
12
Annoying Monsters – Self Talk for Kids with Anxiety
Sir
Donald Bradman (republished with Moshpit)
PHANTOM
Spies
Letters
From the Dead
The
Boy Who Went to War
Rebel
– book 1 of the Flight trilogy
Elkwood
The
Whispering Stone
Secrets
of the Water Meadow (released in 2023 hopefully!)
Letters
From the Dead won the SCBWI Writers Conference Award in 2016 and I was given mentorship
with Scholastic USA’s Andrea Davis Pinkney. The very first thing she told me to
do was rewrite the manuscript in first person POV! It took me six weeks. By
then we both realised it was more of an adult book.
I began The Whispering Stone in 2006 and had a lot of input from people
such as Mark MacLeod and Peter Bishop. A couple of years ago I sent it to Sally
Odgers and after following her detailed analysis it was finally ready.
Writing is fabulous, but I am
interested in so many things, especially Art. I have come full circle, back to
drawing. Some of my work is in a local exhibition. Since moving to Tassie in
2018 to live on a farm I have written three novels, so I’m never bored! There’s
always plenty to inspire me.
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