My writing life began in 1984 with the L.A. Olympics–a strange place for a four-decade obsession with writing to start, doubly so someone who’d rather be slowly eaten alive by ants than watch any type of sport.
From those earliest awkward vignettes about the Australian mascot, Willy the Koala and a story about a “yellow dog” who lived on a farm (written on a stolen notepad my Mum used for shopping lists) to the certainty I could write a better story than my cousin’s Sweet Valley High Books, I’ve never stopped courting stories (or being pursued by them?)
In 2007, I did The Artists’ Way with two women I met in an astrology forum. At the end of the 12 weeks I gave notice to the Home Midwifery Association that I was stepping aside as the editor and designer of their quarterly magazine Down to Birth–it was time to stop being a shadow artist, plagued by the soul-destroying criticism I’d received at uni, and return to my first love: writing fiction.
Along the way I’ve run a small press, been an editor, mentor and project supervisor, run workshops, written resources for writers (with a special focus on beta reading), amassed a body of personal and esoteric essays, worked collaboratively and co-managed a writers’ collective, freelanced as a typesetter/book designer and professionally read tarot cards.
I’ve had a hand in the production of more than 30 books, including six conceptual anthologies and one charity anthology through eMergent Publishing’s Literary Mix Tapes and Chinese Whisperings imprint.
My short fiction and poetry have been published in Australia and aboard. In 2012 my first extended work, Elyora (a horror novella, published by The Review of Australian Fiction, and later by Endeavour press as River of Bones) was short-listed for the Aurealis Awards. That was followed in 2018 with the self-published The Starling Requiem.
Then in 2021 something amazing (ie. something I swore would never happen) happened: I wrote a novel. Eventually I got brave enough to take if off my hard drive and was blessed with the right people at the right time to give my characters, AJ and Jakob, the bigger life I promised them at the end of the 4th draft.
While What I Left to Forget is in out in the wild, the story that’s been circling me since 2015 is slowly finding its form in a post-trauma romance, complete with a paleontology heist, a fledgling micro brewery and yet another kick-arse playlist. As the year closes out, it’s duelling with a gothic story set in a Far North Queensland guest house, featuring an agoraphobic widow, a young American biologist and a bloom of impossible flowers.