That's one small step for man...

Ah, I love the smell of a fresh blog in the morning.

Just a few quick things to let you know what you’re getting yourself into. I was an army brat, first of all. I spent most of my childhood being dragged around barracks in third world countries. When most kids were learning social skills I was having my hair braided on a Balinese beach. In Papua New Guinea, I had a bodyguard named Michael who walked me to school everyday because the locals hated white people. Michael carried a machete with him where ever he went and told me that if I ever tried to ditch him, a “bad man” would come and chop my head off.

I don’t think my social skills ever recovered.

When I finally came back to Australia I had an IQ of 124. This, coupled with my social retardation, made school a living hell. After many long years of death threats, my peers’ speculation over my sexuality, and a battle with depression, I grew into a sarcastic, pessimistic and cynical young woman - a fairly reasonable distinction, and one I enjoy living up to.

I studied Journalism in Sydney and even got an internship with the Sunday Telegraph. Jobs in journalism are scarce, though, and since I never really learnt how to be a kiss-arse, I had to return to uni. I’m just finishing a Bachelor of Arts, a Graduate Diploma of Education (so I can mould young minds, how scary is that?) and I’m trying to decide whether to go for my Honours or not. If I do, I’ll be eligible for a PhD. Hello bragging rights!

I'm a writer, as you may have gathered by the About me thing on the left side of this page. I've had a few short stories published - not anything major, I wasn't even paid - and I'm working on my third novel-sized manuscript*. My manuscripts are a series that follow a private investigator named Robin Lacey. She's American. For those of you who aren't Aussies: yes, we do have private investigators here. But they're not nearly as cool as the American ones.

This blog really has two purposes: 1) to keep a log of my attempts to get published and entertain people with all my spectacular failures on that front, and 2) I'd like to post a few things that I wish someone had told me when I was starting out. Things like; don't staple manuscripts, don't write a synopsis without explaining the ending (despite the “suspense” of not knowing the ending – an editor would probably like to know that the books ends with the secret agent riding off into the sunset on a unicorn) and don't, under any circumstances, tell an agent that you're only writing to make money. I've never committed this offence, but I watched a man at the Byron Writer's Festival try it. Not pretty.

Rest assured, I will do my very best not to bore you. I’ll probably post a few reviews etc, just so I’m not just writing about myself.

Until then – TTFN!



*Novel size is about 60,000 although some people are known to double or even triple that! Stephen King wrote in On Writing that he prefers his novels to be at least 180,000