Other Stuff

After the fires

People fall in love with Mallacoota. Families come for a summer holiday, and a second one, and then keep returning for fifty years or more. People drop in to look at the view, buy a house on a whim, and stay for good. It’s that sort of place.

Mallacoota is my lifelong love affair. I’ve holidayed here forever, and now it’s my home. I’ll be here for good, because this is where I feel truly alive.

Watching Mallacoota burn was an experience I can’t quite believe ever happened, even though the brutal evidence is everywhere. It’s as though I’d been plucked out of normal life that day and dropped into another place; a strange and threatening landscape. It was how I imagined the end of a dying world might look – pitch black except for a vivid orange glow.

I’d left my house and taken shelter on the foreshore, with thousands of others, and the thing that struck me most was how calm everyone was. We’d all clicked into survival mode, I think. I sat in the car  going over and over what I would do if the worst happened. It didn’t happen – despite the devastation, we were lucky that day.

A few weeks on, the atmosphere is unnaturally quiet. Normally, the big campground would be full of people having fun with their families and friends. But now, it’s like a ghost town; almost empty. It’s eerie – an unsettling reminder of that other strange reality. Continue reading “After the fires”

Facing the monster

It’s the first day of the New Year, and I am writing by candlelight, while my dog and cat snooze at my feet.

Yesterday, after an eerie dawn revealed an ominous glow along the coast, I continued my fire plan by watering around the house as I watched sinister black leaves slowly drift to earth. They were very elegant actually, falling in graceful spirals, but I wondered about what was to follow. The smoke worsened, and my neighbour appeared in the gloom and said we’d been advised by the Country Fire Authority (CFA) to leave, because Karbeethong was on fire. Karbeethong is the area of Mallacoota to the north-west of my place, and I turned around to look at another orange glow in the sky. Fire ahead of me, and fire behind me – it was time to go.

Trying to stay calm, I stuffed the rest of my emergency supplies into the car, put the disgruntled cat into his transport box and shoved it into the station wagon, then got my dog, Tilly, onto the back seat. With one last glance and a whispered, “Good luck, little house,” I began to follow my neighbours’ car around the inlet towards the main campground where I knew fire trucks were defending our ‘place of last resort’. Continue reading “Facing the monster”

Working, working, working . . .

There’s been lots of very serious work going on around here lately, just like in this picture. In fact, that’s me in disguise in the middle, madly tapping away at the first draft of Book 2 in the Mirrabooka Romance series. Having just gone over the 30,000-word mark, I’m calling that halfway! Meanwhile, it’s springtime here on the coast, which means wind, wind and more wind – a bit like Tilly after she’s eaten too many of the revolting, squidgy things she finds on the beach.

We haven’t had anywhere near enough rain, unfortunately, which means everyone’s a bit nervous as fire season approaches. To quote one of our fire station personnel: “We’ve got 1,000 houses and two fire trucks. You do the maths”. Yikes! I’m glad my place is in a fairly cleared area. Even so, I’m doing lots of cleaning up in the yard to lower the fire risk as much as possible. Here’s hoping we get some decent rain soon.

Progress at last!

It’s been ‘all systems go’ around here. Mirrabooka Magic (Book 1 in the Mirrabooka Sweet Romance series) has been published both as an ebook and a paperback, and Planet Single is now available in paperback too. Now to write Book 2 of the Mirrabooka series!

I’ve actually written quite a lot of it already, but only in my head. I do a lot of long drives to Melbourne (about seven hours on the road) and that time is perfect for picturing the scenes and listening to the characters interact with each other in my head. When they get too noisy I have to tell them to shut up so I can concentrate on driving. After all that, merely writing it down will be a cinch, right?

I also have another romcom that I’m about a third of the way through, but I’ve parked that one for now. I will get back to it someday, though, I promise!

PS – Do you like The Mirrabooka Magic cover? It’s from The Cover Collection. They do a great job and provide exceptional service Iincluding this 3D marketing image).

Planet Single’s new look

I am making progress with Mirrabooka Magic, honest, but in the meantime I decided Planet Single needed a new cover. I found this one at Beetiful Book Covers and thought it was perfect for the genre and the story. Hope you like it!

I’ve also recently discovered Instagram. It’s so much fun! I live in a photographer’s paradise surrounded by beautiful beaches, inland waterways, and unspoilt forests, so I’m enjoying rekindling my love of landscape and seascape photography and publishing the pics on Insta. Tilly also features in my feed – she’s very photogenic too – and even the grumpy old cat gets a look-in sometimes. Come and join in the fun – and if you mention any of my books I promise I’ll follow you. 🙂 Find my Instagram feed here.

Dog derails author’s attempts at everything

My hopes of finishing my romance novel, Mirrabooka Magic, by Christmas were completely derailed by the arrival of Tilly – an 18-month-old rescue dog. She’s an Australian cattle-dog cross, and the ‘cross’ part is anyone’s guess. It’s lucky she’s cute, because it’s taken a lot of time and energy to settle her into our household. She gets very anxious when I leave her, and that anxiety manifests itself in house-destructing tendencies, which has been a challenge. Of course, it’s not her fault that I went crazy and bought a house too, and then had to transport her, the cat, and all my belongings 300 miles to a remote coastal village – but that’s a whole other story.

So is the time I went out to dinner and left Tilly in the house, then came home to find she had jumped up on the kitchen bench, got the lid off a container of cooking oil, eaten it all and then been sick on the brand-new rug in the living room. Twice! When I’ve recovered from the trauma, that and other Tilly exploits may become a new blog post. Now that life is settling down, I’m back to making progress on the romance, so stay tuned for more news about that. In the meantime, here is a picture of my gorgeous bundle of trouble, because she’s just so damn CUTE!

First romance novel is on the way

I’m happy to announce that I’ve been working like a slave – or perhaps a slightly obsessed accidental cat owner (see below) – on my new manuscript. Mirrabooka Magic is the first book in my Mirrabooka Sweet Romance series, which is planned to be a trilogy.

I’m in a frenzy of editing at the moment, and in my attempts to get enough peace and quiet to allow me to focus on the book (i.e. not getting interrupted by young-adult offspring, demanding cat, friends who think I should actually socialise, or other assorted life inconveniences) I look like this:

Then, when I knock off for the night, I look like this:

It’s all fun, fun, FUN!

To be serious for a moment, the book is coming along very nicely, and I’m excited about getting the editing finished, choosing a cover, and then doing a final proofread and writing the marketing blurb. Not long to go, so watch this space!

(Re the cat: I’m not a cat person, right? But when you realise some poor frightened cat is living under your house and slowly starving to death, what do you do? You feed it, that’s what. And, eventually, that cat realises it’s on to a good thing and begins to roll out its plans for complete household domination. It’s a pretty smart cat.)

On the road again

It’s winter here in Australia, and I’ve been thinking with much longing about our annual summer holiday in January.

This is a blog post I wrote years ago for a parenting website. I still like it.

On the Road Again

Ah, summer… time to fill the car with kids and luggage and head to the beach. Max, Lauren and I are soon off on our annual holiday, and I’ll be following my own handy hints guide on how to survive long drives with kids, which is honed from many hours of ‘are-we-there-yet’ experience.

  1. Preparation

Make sure your car will get you there without getting its hoses tied in a knot and having a hissy fit. Check the oil, coolant, tyres and other important things … whatever they are. Better still, ask some nice bloke to do it for you.

Continue reading “On the road again”

Go the under-Doggies!

bulldogsThis blog piece is football-inspired, since this city is going crazy over football at the moment. Even non-football fans like me are interested in this year’s AFL grand final, because it’s going to bring barracking for the underdog to a whole new level. Facing up against the Sydney Swans tomorrow are the Western Bulldogs – ‘Doggies’ by name and ‘under-Doggies’ by nature. Their one and only premiership win was in 1954, and they haven’t played in a grand final since 1961. Their fans have endured heartbreak after heartbreak, with the team getting oh-so-close to a grand final many times over the years, but not close enough. Until now!

Somewhere in this city, there’s a man called Steve, and I just know that tomorrow he’ll be watching the game and cheering for the Bulldogs, and hoping and wishing and praying for a win with everything that he has.

I encountered Steve when I was travelling home from work a couple of months ago. I got onto the train and found a spare seat, and was surprised when I noticed that the middle-aged man opposite was staring straight at me. Continue reading “Go the under-Doggies!”

Pelicans of Joy

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I’ve come to the far-east corner of Victoria to Mallacoota, my favourite place, for some solitude and writing time at the coast. Mallacoota has always been special to me. I was a baby the first time I came here; my parents brought our family here every summer.

Now, although Mum and Dad passed away years ago, the tradition lives on with my siblings and I bringing our own children every year. I love this place. I come here whenever I can get away from the city, and I’m so happy to be here now for a week in winter, when the campgrounds are nearly deserted and the beaches and walking tracks around the inlet and through the national parks are quiet and serene.

I was walking on a surf beach today at sunset, with no one else around. It was wild, with the wind and the spray and big banks of dark clouds moving across the horizon, tinged orange and pink from the lingering rays of winter sun. I loved the wild beauty and the solitude.

Continue reading “Pelicans of Joy”