Featured News
The saving grace of Beverly Hills 90210
You’re in the final throes of a novel. This is always painful, but it’s even more painful when you suspect that your plot is coming apart at the seams, and you lost your sewing kit somewhere around chapter 15. Characters have not arc-ed, your premise is wobbly, and...
Jack Russell joy
My puppy turned one yesterday. As I’ve had a series of hideous pet disasters ending in the death of my pets and/or others’ (cat-eating escaped greyhound, myxamatotic rabbits etc), I feel rather relieved (although the pup was chewed on by an escaped Husky a few months...
Audiences and applause
I was very pleased to have The Push reviewed by Ian Nichols in this weekend’s West Weekend Magazine. There’s nothing like a review in your hometown, I have to say. The review started, ‘a premier exploration of the vague boundary between young adult and adult...
S*x and cars
Well, I survived my speech to the Western Australian Children’s Book Council, although I was so nervous beforehand I could barely eat (now that’s nervous!). There was a bit of the blind-man-and-the-elephant going on: the next day one person said, ‘I hear you were...
Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards shortlist for The Push
I didn’t realise The Push was up for an award so soon after publication, so it’s all the more delightful to be on the shortlist – and in such great company too. This is what the judges said: This is a fascinating work which evokes the historical setting of early 50s...
Blind in Brisbane
Brisbane streets are full of helpful instructions, but this one was the best.
The art of chess
I’m giving up YA fiction until I have some sustained time to do it, and am having lots of fun writing a novel about chess (well, it’s ‘about’ chess in the same way that The Push is ‘about’ The Push, but we won’t quibble about that) for upper primary kids. Chess is...
Pushing the Push
All singing, all dancing … the launch of the Push is on Thursday night. I’m paranoid that I’ll get the flu before Thursday arrives, for reasons will become evident on the night, but am delighted at the prospect of having all the aspects of my life intersecting in one...
What I did on my holidays
There’s something inherently good about thrillseeeking, and it’s made me feel braver about what I’m attempting with writing, which is rather like this picture. I also, on holidays, went vertical at 160km an hour. Whacko.
Why I wrote The Push (from Penguin’s magazine thingy)
Freedom and The Push Like the grasshopper in the fable, they lazed in the sun or in the gloom of a hotel bar, gambling, drinking, fornicating and endlessly talking. John Tranter on The Push. At 18 I was disaffected and restless. Fashion bored me; I tried on ideas. ...