About me
One of my earliest memories is standing on the seat of a bus stop in Doveton, Victoria, telling stories to entertain the elderly ladies and my mother, while waiting for the bus. I was five years old, freckles across my nose and white-blond hair.
I remember it because I was motivated less by their approval than by my story and how I needed to share it.
Throughout my life I was always going to be an author and sell books when this is finished or that is finished. I always had a ten-year plan, even in high school, and all of them involved having a family of my own, getting debt free and then writing full time.
Because "a proper job" had to come first, I combined my love of writing with a passion for planning and economics. After university I became a strategic planner and policy writer and later an economic development officer. Then I worked with people on the Autism spectrum. But always, writing was what I longed to do most of all.
By 2023 I was 56 years old and married for a second time. Our two adult children had flown the coop. Decades on I was still operating on the same ten-year plans, stalled on the debt-free part. Cancer and three rounds of chemotherapy over the past five years had taken their toll. I was exhausted. I didn't want to retire early, but it was getting harder to find work that I could do. Just as telling, I could no longer work at the pace and intensity that I felt I should.
My beautiful man, my husband and soul mate told me I wasn't retiring, I was finally living my dream of being a full-time writer. He took on longer hours at his work, to free me up.
Have you ever felt like your whole life was leading to one moment in time?
That is where I am now. That one moment where hopefully everything I have been through starts to make sense. I may make it as a successful writer, I may not.
Ability is only one small fraction of what it takes to sell books. There is so much else I must learn.
Yes, I want to sell lots of books. But I will keep at it regardless of the book sales. Like that freckled five-year-old, it is the love of telling a story or communicating a valuable idea that drives me, not the approval that I might or might not get.
So long as I stay grounded and keep writing, I have already arrived.
