Bio

My short-form bio says that I have done everything from Air Traffic Control to Zoology, because I like the play on A to Z. While the statement is true, the zoology actually came first (in my science degree), very closely followed by the Air Traffic Control (yes, I was one of the few girls to get in, no I didn’t finish the course). ATC was my get-out-of-Adelaide-free card when I was 23 and wanted to be anywhere but Adelaide. For the record, I’m now back in Adelaide after having lived away for 15 years in Brisbane, Melbourne and Luton (UK).

 

What came after ATC was a bunch of other careers; cleaner, weight loss consultant, telemarketer, office manager, customer support officer, carer, salesperson, finance officer, project officer, knowledge manager… Nothing seemed to stick. But even as I did those roles (which I knew I’d never stay in), I also knew that they were all material. Everything is material.

 

In my life, my one constant has been writing. I write mainly horror and science fiction, a lot of it with an environmental or social comment. There’s often some zoology in there and a play on evolutionary theory, but only other comparative-physiology-zoology geeks will spot that. Sometimes I try to get humorous, usually when work is driving me mental, because I need a laugh. Mostly I just dive into dark places and try to help at least one of the characters survive the story. Usually the good guy. Or good-ish guy.

 

The last three years have been different. One day I just stopped writing. The stories still came to me, I watched them unfold in my head on the bus on the way in to work, but I stopped writing them down. Once the story was perfected, I’d let it go and move on to the next one, exactly like I used to. Only they weren’t written. They went back into the collective unconscious where someone else will hopefully find them one day.

 

Just recently something has changed again. A story in my head won’t go away, despite being perfected during a particularly slow run into the city. I think it wants to be written. Even more exciting, I think I want to write it.

 

So having deleted my previous website in a particularly grumpy spiral of negativity about my writing last year, I’ve decided to start one up again. I’m interested to see what happens. Have the last three years been a blip, or has the door really closed? Only time will reveal the answer. Time, and bus trips. Lots of bus trips.