Talking about crime on the ABC
Had a little chat on ABC radio the other day, about books. No, you didn't hear it because I was on - live to air - from 4:30 to 5:00am. The loveliest people are listening [...]
What I read in 2020 – Part 2: Fiction
The discomforts of 2020 were, for me and my family, relatively minor in the scheme of things. Living in regional Victoria as we do, yes we were partially locked down and working and schooling from [...]
What I read in 2020 – Part 1, the non-fiction episode
2020 has been, for me, a year of comfort reading. Lots of books were tossed aside by page 6 or 7, if they couldn't hold my interest. And for a while there, during the deepest [...]
Writing Q&A: What were they thinking?
Every now and then, people ask me questions about how to write. I like the questions, but whether my answers are useful or not remains a moot point. Recently, I keep getting asked about thinking. [...]
Brave New (online) World
Hands up if you’re quite the expert at videoconferencing now. Got your lighting all sorted? Your headphone hair? De rigueur Indigenous artwork behind you? With the onset of the COVID-19 shutdowns, the Australian literary community [...]
Mary Macarthur’s Hunter Valley Home
The home of one of Elizabeth Macarthur's daughters looks set to be relocated - to make way for coal mining. According to this online article, The 1820s Ravensworth Homestead in the Hunter Valley, among the [...]
Come to my seminar!
Sometimes the most compelling non-fiction stories are about other people. Whether you’re writing biography, interested in ghost writing, drawing together your family or local history, or even thinking about feature interviews – if you want [...]
Book Clubs
Book clubs really are the best, aren’t they? People with a common interest—reading—coming together to talk about books, ideas, and issues. Also, possibly to drink some wine, eat some cheese and catch up with some [...]
All About Author Talks
I won’t lie – I LOVE doing author talks. Since my book was published in April 2018 I’ve delivered many talks and interviews. Clearly I’m not a proper writer though, because apparently real writers are [...]
Summer Fiction – my top three so far
In the approach to Christmas I was in something of a reading slump but these three novels picked me up and had me reading late into the night. Yes, of course I read more than [...]