This is Weird!
     It's a really strange feeling writing about your own life. Where do you begin? What would be of interest to other people? I mean, my life really isn't that remarkable. I don't have many dark secrets to share, or skeletons in the cupboard to reveal. I'm just your everyday plain old …
     Hey did I say plain? Did I say old?
     Scratch that bit.
     I'll start again.
     I'm just your ordinary everyday Mum and wife. I have two great kids and pretty terrific husband. I live in a small coastal village south of Sydney. For a long time I was a Primary School Teacher. Now I work as an editor at Walker Books Australia. Sometimes I visit schools and libraries and talk about my books and writing. And when I'm not being a mum or a wife or a presenter or an editor or a soccer team manager or a friend or Mum's Taxi driver or ... you get the picture ... I spend my time glued to my computer or notebook creating crazy alien-filled worlds or weird and wild adventures about rats or butterflies or stolen galahs.
    How cool is that? I told you I had the best job in the world.

My Life So Far
     Anyway at the very great risk of boring you all silly, I'll start at the beginning.
     I was born in 1960 in Sydney Australia. I was the third daughter to my parents, Allan and Nance, and a bit of a surprise.

This photo shows me at about five outside the shop my parents ran in Carlton. (I was always a titch - the smallest in my class!) We lived at the back of the shop and my favourite memories of this time are of sneaking into the shop when Mum was busy serving, and helping myself to handfuls (and pocketfuls and mouthfuls) of lollies from the lolly counter! As my sisters were much older, and Mum and Dad busy with the shop or work, I spent a lot of time playing with my favourite playmate, my dog, Tinky. I'd dress Tinky up and sit him at my table and chairs and have tea parties or put him in my doll's pram and go exploring the secrets of my backyard.

This fuzzy snapshot is the only photo I could find of my beloved pet.
  

   When I was about eight, Mum and Dad sold the shop and moved to Como West. We lived in a small cottage directly opposite Como West Public School where I went until high school. My most vivid memory from these days is of again of Tinky. Nearly every day Tinky would escape from our yard and steal across to the school, helping herself to scraps from the rubbish bins. It was very embarrassing as the teachers would do their block and I'd have to drag her off home.
This is me in Year 6 when we did a performance of The Mikado. I was so shy and nervous, I wouldn't let my mum come and watch. I made her sit on our front veranda and listen.
     

In 1972 I started at Jannali Girls High. I always did OK at school. I excelled at Maths, Economics and Geography and spent a lot of time in the gym playing Volleyball (my passion until I was about 19) I'm number 11!

And although I loved books and loved to read - and had done so for almost all of my life - English was definitely not my favourite subject. The fact that I am now a Children's Author is a huge surprise - especially to me. I never contemplated writing until I was nearly thirty! And then I thought about it for ten years or more before I worked up the courage to give it a go.
     From High School I went to Teacher's College. In 1981, when I first stepped into a classroom as a Primary School Teacher, my love affair with children's books began and my journey towards becoming a children's author (though I didn't know it at the time) commenced.
     I taught full time for many years until my children Brad and Lizzie were born. I then started working part time as a Reading Recovery and Learning Support Teacher. It wasn't until Brad and Lizzie were both at school and I had more time on my hands, that I decided to try my hand at writing professionally. It was a case of now or never. I had harboured the secret dream of writing kids books for too many years and I didn't want to die wondering. So, I attended writing courses and workshops, completed correspondence courses and tried to learn everything I could about the craft of writing for kids. I wrote whenever I could and started sending manuscripts off to publishers, which of course were promptly returned with a "thanks but no thanks" letter. I massed quite a pile of rejection slips before my first book, Mistie's Magic, was published in 2000. I now have more than fifty published children's books!
     Now I work as an editor at Walker Books and try to fit my writing and school visits around my "real" job.
     What next … well we'll have to gaze into my crystal ball for that one! Stay tuned …

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