Look and Listen

Biography

I was born and raised in New Zealand, moving to Western Australia with a single suitcase when I was nineteen years old. Since then, I've packed a lot into my life, working hard in predominantly accounting, IT and management roles, but also spending a year touring the world. I've lived in the central business districts of large cities, suburbia, idyllic seaside locations, rural areas, bushland, and remote desert mining camps. Mid 2002, I quit my high-pressure management job and moved with my husband to a farm about ninety minutes north-east of Melbourne to write fulltime. Since then, I've written five (six if you count my first one, now banished to the bottom drawer never to see the light again) standalone contemporary murder mysteries. Outside of writing and reading, my main interests are design and photography. I like to laugh, drink coffee, spend time alone, spend time in company, and get close to nature. I dislike crowds, hospitals and offal.

Inspiration

I’ve wanted to write for as long as I can remember. I've always loved reading and was the bookworm of the family – writing was a natural progression. When I was in primary school, I won a children's short story competition for a national magazine. But it wasn't until 2002 when ill health had me re-assessing my priorities that I decided to pursue that dream, much to the consternation of many friends, who saw it as dropping out of society. Who was I to think I could write novels for a living? The inspiration for each of my stories comes from news articles and true crime cases, to which I then apply series of what-ifs. By the time I've finished, the news item is so bent out of shape, it’s unlikely anyone would recognize the true crime that sparked it.