About me

I am Australian, and I live in rural Victoria. I have moved around a lot, from living outside the tiny town of Newry, population 500 or so, to living in Sydney. I have worked in many places, managing to secure, or should that be unsecure, many temporary positions or positions that were relocated or made redundant.

Along the way, I studied a lot. I like to learn stuff. It started with an Economics Degree straight out of high school. It took four years instead of three. I struggled with computer accountancy and using card-reading computers. I was also having too much of a good time. I was involved in student theatre and winning scavenger hunt teams, and I was elected to the SRC (Student Representative Council). I wrote sketches for comedy cabarets, and a friend and I had great fun writing a very irreverent magazine for a college we resided in. 

It wasn’t until a decade or so later that I started writing a novel, I’ll Just Watch it on YouTube, when living in Brisbane and working as a storeman. A virus then went through my workplace, leaving me with an enduring illness, ulcerative colitis. It made work impossible, so I evacuated to live with my parents. While convalescing, I completed a diploma in professional writing and editing. I also finished the first draft of the novel.

I completed an online Master of Creative Writing while working part-time at the ATO. As part of my master’s, I started writing a second novel, Stalking Tigers.

After many changes of medication, my ulcerative colitis was somewhat controlled. But my father was diagnosed with dementia, so I decided to stick around at home and help my mother look after him. 

2010 was a momentous year for me, as my father finally sadly succumbed to dementia. I also got my first paying job as a writer. I wrote articles for the Divine website—a website for people with disabilities written by people with disabilities. I wrote for them for six years until a change of government had the Victorian Department of Health close the site. 

While writing for Divine, I completed National Novel Writing Month three times: in 2011, when I started writing Jack Logan: Astronaut. In 2012, I finished off the first draft of Jack Logan. I then missed a year before doing it again in 2014, where I continued Branded after writing the first two chapters during my master’s.

Diabetes and asthma added to my health issues. I like to think that diabetes is hereditary, as my mother has it, and the brother of my father also had it. When I was diagnosed, I had been a bit of a fitness fanatic for years, as I swam three kilometres three times a week and completed weight training three times a week. I also did a set of exercises every day. It also seems that people who have ulcerative colitis are susceptible to other inflammatory illnesses. 

After Divine finished, I enrolled in an online BA in Internet Communications. It involved learning all about the web, including web design. I also completed a few writing electives.  

I then started my own business, Wangaratta Website Design Services, right on the eve of COVID-19. I will forever wonder how my business would have thrived if COVID-19 had not struck. Contrary to what the media said about all businesses heading online during COVID-19, I think many businesses were not confident spending their dwindling finances on web designers. 

To supplement my income from my business, I looked for other work and started my next paid writing job as a contract writer at North East Media. But then I got COVID and debilitating long-covid for seven months. My contract was not extended. I just wanted to get well again.  

This leads me to November 2023, when I once again completed NaNoWriMo and started writing the sequel to Branded. I finished it in June this year. I have now returned to redraft the original book in that two-book series.