This interesting historical tale of a religious recluse is surprisingly sensuous and thrilling. The anchoress is a religious recluse in medieval England, a 17 year old woman who willingly allows herself to be locked inside the church anchorhold. This is a stone cell attached to the church that has a squint for her to see…
Drowned Vanilla is a deliciously intriguing Tasmanian tale of missing girls and murder. A young woman drowns in a lake, a beautiful student disappears, and unlikely amateur sleuth Tabitha Darling and her friends set out to investigate. I grew up in Tasmania, and this novel’s setting in the sandstone lined streets of Hobart and its beautiful…
This is a great example of what I love about first novels. An effortless yet powerful, completely original, risky yet beautifully engaging, and shining with poetic descriptions. There is nothing quite like this story. The Burial by Courtney Collins, Or The Untold, as it is known as in the USA, is the story of a young woman…
How To Be a Good Wife author Emma Chapman emailed me last week to invite me to join in a new meme she has begun with her friend, author Annabel Smith. The new series on their blog is called Six Degrees of Separation, based on Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy’s 1929 short story ‘Chains’ in…
Alone in a cabin on the lake was spooky at night – there was something on my roof, clambering around. It was probably a possum. That’s cold comfort when you’re up on an isolated Tamar Valley hill and your phone doesn’t work. The first panel – Where Do Ideas Come From? Starring humourous and…
The gift that keeps on giving – countless copies of the brand new US paperback edition of Bay of Fires landed on my doorstep yesterday, the same day they are going on sale in that faraway land. This edition is gorgeous; not only is it crammed with lovely comments taken from all the reviews,…
Poor neglected blog. It has not been updated since November last year. But perhaps a neglected blog is the first sign of a healthy, happy writer. I’ve been busy! All summer I’ve been madly reworking my current work in progress, Ski Season, and it is undergoing final consideration by my lovely literary agent Julia Kenny…
Here are some pictures I took during the Adelaide Body in the Garden festival. The opening address was at Edler Hall, one of the city’s famous sandstone buildings.
Last weekend, in a highly nervous state, I flew to Adelaide to speak at a writers festival for garden writers, and crime writers. This was my first writers festival as an author. I’ve attended many as a reader, so it was a thrill to be sitting up the front next to some of the most…
What Was Left, Eleanor Limprecht (Sleepers, 2013) This novel is written by a dear friend of mine and I have read it several times, in various drafts. The author (American-born, Sydney-based) Eleanor Limprecht had a succinct vision for this novel from the start, and the narrative ambition did not alter much during the redrafting, it…