Tag: writing

Lockdown Writing Playlist

If anything, in ten years I can look back on the Covid 19 pandemic and check on what I was listening to while trying to keep healthy – and creative.

My wife Patricia and I were also completing a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of the Eiffel Tower during the Lockdown.

My new crime novel Burned is progressing nicely (23,000 of projected 75,000 words completed). But the burning question is: What was I listening to while penning this thrilling tale?

  • Dave Graney – ‘n the Coral Snakes, and the Mistly, Show, and Claire Moore. Pretty much all of his bands. Albums: ‘You’ve Been In My Mind’ “kiss Tomorrow Goodbye’ ‘The Devil Drives’
  • EOB – Ed O’Brien from Radiohead. Album: ‘Earth’.
  • Damon Albarn – ‘Everyday Robots’
  • Spoon – ‘Hot Thoughts’

Trade Children’s Books

The writing trade for children can be broadly broken down into two types: Trade publishing (books that can bought in bookshops – both physical and online) and education publishing (books that are used to teach children reading, comprehension and the like). Inherent to both of these forms of publishing are age brackets:

  • Picture Book
  • Early Reader
  • Chapter Book
  • Middle Grade
  • Older readers
  • Young Adult.

Phew.

Here are the trade titles I’ve had published:

Published by: Reed for Kids, Australia
Published by: Reed for Kids, Australia
Published by: Addison Wesley Longman, Australia
Published by: HarperCollins, Australia
Published by: The Five Mile Press, Australia
Published by: The Five Mile Press, Australia

The Journey Begins

Welcome to my website.

Where to begin . . . Well, I’m an Australian children/YA author and I’ve published about thirty books here in Australia as well in Asia, New Zealand, U.S.A and U.K. Short stories, too.

Oh, and once upon a time, I wrote scripts for Australian television dramas such as Neighbours and Home and Away.

But now, my writing is focused on crime fiction for adults. A while ago – a long while ago – I started a crime novel. Started but didn’t finish. Until eighteen months ago when, after encouragement from my wife, Patricia, I finished, edited and polished the manuscript . . .  and sent it out into the world of publishing.

My manuscript, now called The Highlands landed me a chat with literary agent, Lyn Tranter of Australian Literary Management. I’m now on the books of ALM and my second crime manuscript Corruption is making itself known to Australian publishers. As they say in the classics, fingers crossed . . .

I’ll be keeping you up-to-date with my writing life, my reading life, my movie-watching life, my television-watching life, my life life and anything else that’s interesting.

Please feel free to comment – agree, disagree, expand and even, ahem, praise (I won’t discourage that!). Okay, that’s it for the introduction. Let the adventure begin!

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That’s me. On a mountain. In Switzerland. It’s much colder than it looks (yeah, I’m tough). And see in the background, those mountains are the Swiss Alps. We don’t have mountains like them in Australia. Oh no. Compared to The Alps our mountains are hills.

Okay. That’s it for now. But I will share more holiday snaps with you. Seeing photos of holidays past encourages me to write, so I can (hopefully) sell a book to a publisher and travel some more. And hey, I’m not just having fun all of the time, I’m researching, too. Research is very important to a writer. Very important.