Tag Archives: writing
Johnno Award
It was a great night, made even more so by having my friends share it with me. Winning the Johnno Award for “outstanding contributions to writing in Queensland” from the Queensland Writers Centre is something that really means a lot to me. During my years on the QWC Management Committee, it was always my dream to see QWC not as the hub of writing in Queensland, with spokes, like a wheel, going out to connect to writers and writing organisations, but rather as the centre of a web linking all these with QWC and each other so they can benefit from each other’s knowledge and talents.
It’s also something I have tried to achieve with WriteFest – offering the opportunity for writers and industry professionals to network, learn and grow. To see how QWC has reached out into the regions and become such a hugely positive force for writing, not only in Queensland, but throughout Australia, is truly wonderful.
Gold Coast Writers Festival
The Gold Coast Writers Festival is on 26-28 October, and I’m heading off on the 25th on the long drive down. There’s a fabulous line-up of authors, publishers, and industry professionals all sharing their expertise with aspiring writers as well as giving readers insights into the industry.
On Saturday I’ll be joining Rowena Cory Daniells and Tony Cavanagh on the The Thrill of the Chase panel, with the CEO of the Queensland Writers Centre, Meg Vann, as chair. Meg also runs the Brisbane arm of Sisters-in-Crime and I’m sure she will have some interesting questions for the panel. The audience might go away with more than they bargained for
The panels at the festival are free, with seminars and workshops costing a minimal fee. It’s going to be a great event and I hope both writers and readers take advantage of the hard work the Gold Coast Writers Association has put in to bring this fantastic opportunity to the Gold Coast.
Congratulations to a friend
It was one day after Valentine’s Day, but my friend Louise Cusack‘s life was full of rose-tinged thoughts when her fantasy romance trilogy was epublished by Momentum Books on 15 February. Although the books had been previously print published in Australia, epublishing meant they were now available internationally.
Epublishing is a wonderful avenue for Australian authors to get their books out into the world. My books have Australian settings, which can make them difficult to sell overseas, and particularly into the USA, but with the growing trend towards readers purchasing ebooks it means my stories can now reach a greater audience and show readers from other countries aspects of Australia, and particularly Queensland, they won’t find in most travel brochures. For example, the amazing Amphitheatre at Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland is a wonderful example of nature’s force and I knew I had to use it when writing Dangerous Deception. The opening to the Amphitheatre is high up on a cliff face and can only be reached by climbing a series of ladders.
When you get to the entrance of the tunnel (which is formed by an enormous slab of rock splitting apart and creating an opening), you then have to traverse about 40 metres of uneven rock as well as concrete steps made by the Park Rangers. This photo was taken from almost inside the Amphitheatre looking back to the entrance in the cliff face.
When you step inside the Amphitheatre, it’s like walking into a massive cathedral. You gaze up the vaulting slabs of rock to the tiny opening at the top where sunlight enters. The floor is grey dirt, and amazingly ferns grow in abundance, perhaps watered by rain seeping through fissures in the rock. They certainly wouldn’t get much rain through the small top opening.
When we were there a young couple joined us, and the woman took out a flute and began playing. Magic. It was the only word to describe it. Pure notes lingering then rising to the tiny patch of sky above. The acoustics are so good they have had choirs perform there for the fabulous resonance.
There’s something spiritual about Carnarvon Gorge, and even more so about the Amphitheatre. It was something I felt just driving from the highway to the Gorge and became stronger the moment I walked into the Amphitheatre.
Aboriginal rock paintings adorn the cliff walls further into the gorge, and it’s easy to visualise them living here and enjoying the abundant wildlife. With a creek traversing the length of the gorge, there is ample water and lush grasses to attract wallabies, goannas and birds.
Unfortunately, feral pigs have also made the gorge their home, and their habit of rooting up plants for food has led to some destruction of the creek banks. The Park Rangers try to keep their numbers under control, but eliminating them entirely would be almost impossible.
That crazy Chaos Fairy
I couldn’t believe how long it’s been since I last blogged! I thought that once I returned from the McGregor Summer School I would have a few winding-down days, then jump back into writing and organising WriteFest, the Bundaberg writers festival. But no, that crazy Chaos Fairy (my friends call her the Curtis Chaos Fairy) swatted my darling daughter-in-law, Cheryse Durrant, and she ended up with a broken leg (Cheryse, not the Fairy, darn it). Luckily we have a car that Cheryse can manoeuvre herself into the passenger seat with her leg in the knee-to-ankle brace, because trips to the physio and doctor would have been impossible in her smaller car.
Now I’m getting back to editing Grievous Harm, the story that features one of the minor characters in Fatal Flaw. GH is darker than FF, and covers a topic that sends chills down the backs of parents. It’s a story that I found myself writing in spite of my natural aversion to the topic, but the characters demanded the story be told in a certain way and I went along because I agreed with them. Sometimes I wonder where some of these characters come from. I hope they’re not from a deeper side of my personality, because that would be too scary to live with. Ruth in Fatal Flaw is a character I was fascinated by. She had so many different facets to her, so much so that I wondered how each of us would have acted in her situation. I had a sneaking sympathy for her, and I wonder if any of my readers felt the same. I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on Ruth.
Delicate mouse
The smallest of all the Australian native mouse species is the Delicate Mouse. They eat grain from native grasses and, unlike house mice, are not a problem you’ll find in your pantry. And when I say these mice are small, I mean it. The largest would be 7.5cm in total length. And they are seriously cute. Their back legs have a rabbit shape, and they hop instead of run.
We live across from large paddocks of native grasses, and currently they provide a home for six small kangaroos, quite a few varieties of snakes, and a lot of other creatures. After rain we see egrets, ibises, cranes and wild ducks feasting on the grubs, worms and whatever else they can find. The paddocks are also home to Delicate Mice. I know this because our older cat, Zara, occasionally decides to bring one home as a gift for me. Which she did tonight. The poor little thing was terrified. I would be too if I’d been carted around in a cat’s mouth. It was smaller than my thumb, and I was trying to hold it gently so as not to harm it when it jumped from my hand and ran between the glass sliding door and the security screen door and didn’t know how to get out. After much manoeuvring, Rob and I finally freed it, but I was so worried for this tiny little creature.
So when I sat at the computer later tonight it struck me that in my job as a writer I get to kill some characters and put others through terrible trauma (and don’t tell me falling in love isn’t traumatic for some people <vbg>) and yet I get overly concerned for the welfare of one tiny little mouse. I also cry when I see kids in pain on television and when I watch sad movies, and am a sucker for donating to worthy causes when I read those brochures saying how it’s possible to save a life or rescue a dog etc. So sometimes I’ve wonder why I write what I do. But I reckon it’s because, as a writer, I get to give my characters justice.
Justice can sometimes be an elusive thing, and sometimes there is a fine line between seeking justice and seeking revenge. It was a line that Ruth Bellamy crossed in Fatal Flaw. It was difficult though, not to feel sympathy for Ruth. She was one of the most complex characters I’ve written, and I wondered how I would react if I had suffered what she did. I’m looking forward to getting feedback from readers about her, as I feel there will be conflicting views on whether Ruth was justified in doing what she did.
Drugs in Boats
Bundaberg made the national headlines recently, but for all the wrong reasons. Police seized 300kg of cocaine from a boat that had arrived at the Bundaberg Port as a finisher in the annual Port 2 Port rally and arrested four Spanish nationals.
Customs Officers check every boat that comes into the Port, but in this case they probably would have only given a cursory inspection as the Australian Federal Police had been tracking the drug syndicate for some time and were waiting to catch the Australian-based members with their hands on the drugs.
But don’t think that that means that the drugs would have been easy to find. When I was writing Deadly Tide, I spoke with a lot of the women involved in the trawling industry and they were aware that rumours abounded about trawlers that were involved in drug smuggling, and one even said how she and her husband bought a second trawler and discovered many secret compartments when they began refurbishing. This was wonderful background information for me, even though my villains weren’t smuggling drugs.
Truth can often be stranger than fiction, but it’s how a writer presents it to the reader that gives it authenticity. The scene where Chayse falls overboard when trying to free a rock caught in the nets during rough weather actually happened, but to a local trawler operator. His wife told me how terrified she was, watching his yellow raincoated-figure disappear under the water as she tried frantically to turn the boat to go back to get him. Fishers trawl at night, so the chances of finding him again were slim, but luckily he was able to discard his raincoat and boots and float to the surface.
I love talking to people when researching for my books. Sometimes they reveal fantastic stories that are like manna from heaven for a writer, and I’m very very grateful to them for sharing. So if a writer asks if they can interview you for research purposes, don’t worry that they will find your life boring – everyone’s life has something in it that will be interesting to someone else.
RWA Conference
It’s hard to believe it’s three weeks since I returned from the Romance Writers of Australia national conference in Melbourne. It was their 20th Anniversary conference and undoubtedly the best I have attended. The quality of the workshops, tutorials and … Continue reading
Coming into Winter
With a week of freezing weather before WriteFest I thought we’d be rugging up and having our workshop presenters huddled around heaters instead of enjoying beautiful Bargara Beach where they were staying. But the cold eased, and except for the … Continue reading
Finished!!!
Murder, Mayhem & Menopause is finished! I was beginning to think it wouldn’t happen. Months ago I thought it wouldn’t take long to get to the end but my characters had other ideas and took me on the journey they’d … Continue reading

















