I've been writing stories since I was 12. My first book was called The Jelly People. A gruesome tale about a cloud that falls across a land and turns the entire world into jelly except for a plane full of 12-year-olds, who then have to survive the new world order. It's basically a post-apocalyptic story with some jelly throwing and jelly eating tossed in for good fun. Actually it’s really dark and sort of disturbing, and reading it now does make me wonder what was going on in my 12-year-old brain!

I used to write on an old black typewriter. The sort you’d see in a detective film. Now I don’t. Now I have a laptop, lots of chocolate wrappers and a cat sitting close by just checking what I’m up to. But I sometimes miss my old typewriter. If I was having a bad day when I was a kid, I could press down on every key and jam it up. It always made me feel better. But that’s much harder to do with a laptop. 

I have two kids. A girl and a boy. I still wrote a lot before I had kids but mainly for TV shows like Neighbours and the mermaid series, H20, or short films and short stories. After I had kids, we spent a lot of time reading and it made me remember all the books I’d loved reading when I was younger. So I pulled out all my old faves from writers like Paul Zindel, Judy Blume and SE Hinton and started re-reading them. THEY ARE SO GOOD! Real. Honest. And funny. And remembering how important the characters were to me when I was a teenager made me realise that’s what I wanted to do. Write stories that snuck into a reader’s heart so they’d fall in love with them, just like I did. 

So I hope you like my books. Or at least one of them. Or a sentence or two. Or even just the title. Because I’m having a great time writing them.

Where I write

I write at home on the couch, on the kitchen bench and sometimes in my bed. My cat often sleeps next to me while I write and it’s lovely. Unless she’s hungry and then she scratches me until I feed her!  

When I’m not writing, I’m trawling op shops for old books and clothes. I love swimming in the sea even in winter. I love road trips to country towns, and walking under giant ancient trees. I love writing in the State Library of Victoria with my friend and co-writer, Emily Gale. And I totally love riding my bike. Especially at night. When the bats are out in force.