Where were you born? Since how long have you been living in Western Australia?
I was born in Tasmania, which is the island at the bottom of Australia that most people don’t realise exists. My parents moved back to Western Australia when I was 3, and I haven’t been to Tasmania, since. I’d love to go there on a holiday, sometime.
How has your husband supported you in your writing career?
My husband is amazing, I think the best way he’s supported me is by taking care of the kids. I wrote The Wedding in five weeks, and I have a “day job”, so I basically only came up for air to have dinner and do the bedtime routine with our sons before I rushed back into my imaginary world.
What do you love the most about writing romance stories?
Exploring the emotions and feelings of my characters, and seeing how they work through whatever troubles are facing them before they reach their happily ever after.
At what age did you begin writing? What do you enjoy the most about writing?
I don’t know exactly, but I do know that some of the first things I ever wrote were Labyrinth fan fiction. I wrote an ending where Jareth and Sarah end up getting together. I also loved to tell stories to my best friend, and would spend hours spinning tales for her to listen to.
Which song inspired you to write a book?
“Gives You Hell” by The All-American Rejects. That, and the album “Songs About Jane” by Maroon 5. I used to joke, “whoever Jane was, she did a real number on someone.” But “Gives You Hell” was the real catalyst. I just liked the idea of the regular girl who was with a rock star, but left him to have an ordinary life, causing him to write an entire album about her. Why would she leave him?
How did you begin writing the Cruise Control series?
It started as a project for NaNoWriMo, which is where you write a minimum 50,000-word novel in one month. I wrote just over that amount, and promptly stopped writing. I picked it up 7 years later, when a friend messaged me saying that she’d found the old manuscript in her email and she desperately wanted to know the ending.
Do you ever imagine yourself falling in love with a rock-star?
Haha, yeah, there was definitely a band that I followed around a little too closely in my youth. In some ways, this series is my romanticisation of that life. My characters/band are very nice people, though. I like writing about a band that hasn’t let fame go to their heads. Though, I do plan to write a standalone novel in the Cruise Control world, which will be about Evening Star, who were the support act in The Album. That will explore how they have let fame go to their heads.
How did you come up with the idea for your second book in the series, "The Wedding"?
I always knew it would be about Heather and Harrison’s story from getting engaged through to maybe wink getting married. They’re the perfect couple, so what could possibly ever come between them? I liked writing a heroine who had been with the band so long that she didn’t see them as these famous rock stars, because they’re just her friends of over a decade. It was a nice juxtaposition for Ariana in The Album, and Lita in The Baby, though I did love writing about an actual fan and getting insight into the Cruise Control fandom in The Baby!
Who inspired the character of Ariana in "The Album"?
She’s the character who is the most like me. She’s very much what I was like before I started to get therapy, and work on my personal issues. So, writing a character who has low self-esteem and anxiety was pretty easy for me. Even now, when people say how much they dislike her, my brain will often translate that as, “She’s like you. If they don’t like her, that means people don’t like you.” What can I say? I’m a work in progress! But yeah, the more that Gabriel was completely perfect and tried to show Ariana that he was in it for the long haul, the more her scumbag brain told her that it couldn’t possibly work out and she was bad for him. She needed the time apart to work on her issues or they could never really be happy.
How do you overcome a creative block?
Outlining!!! I outline in Excel. I use it to lay out the dates and events in each book. This is so helpful because there are different events throughout a year that will occur. If you’re stuck on something to happen, when in the year is it? December? What are they doing for Christmas? Write that. It also helps me to know where the story is going and how to get there.
What is the one advice you would like to give to young writers in the world?
Just write. It doesn’t have to be good, in fact, it probably won’t be. Terry Pratchett said, “The first draft is you telling the story to yourself.” I rewrote The Album after I released it, because it was initially written in a flashback format. Some reviewers found this confusing, but also, as I wrote The Wedding, I realised that it didn’t fit right in the series, either. There’s a reason that “first editions” are a thing…it’s because a “second edition” was written that improved the story.
How are you keeping yourself and your kids engaged during quarantine? Are you spending more time with them?
I am incredibly lucky to live in Western Australia. Our kids were home and we worked from home for about 7 weeks in March/April, and we’ve had a “hard border” since then. That means no one can come in or out of our state without spending 14 days in quarantine. As a result, we currently have only 5 active cases and our kids are back at school/we walk around without masks on. It’s odd to be living through a pandemic, while our lives are essentially continuing on as normal. I feel a strong sense of guilt about it, and my heart is breaking for the people worldwide who are suffering so badly, right now.
What is the best writing tip you ever received and who gave it to you?
The most important thing is telling a good story, most readers won’t notice if you’ve made some technical errors in your writing, but they will notice if you don’t tell a good story. It was advice given to me by a fellow author when I was freaking out about being a “technically bad” writer.
What are you currently working on?
I just finished writing a book in two weeks! I started it in 2008, which was before I even started The Album. I had about 15,000 words written, and I wrote 55,000 words in the last two weeks to finish it. It’s called Dreams, and is about a woman who meets the perfect man…in her dreams. It explores how being in love with someone who doesn’t exist affects her real life as she becomes more and more obsessed about dreaming with him. So, I’m in the process of running through the edits for that with the editor. I’m also going through the edits for The Baby before it’s released in November. Now that I’ve finished Dreams, I’ll go back to working in Gabriel’s Album, which is the companion book to The Album and is due for release on March 14th 2021. It’s the story retold from Gabriel’s point of view. I’m really enjoying it because he notices different things, and is in different places, etc. I also chose to do the companion series in first-person present POV instead of third-person close limited POV which makes for a different experience, as well.
When did you join AllAuthor? What do you think of the experience so far?
I joined AllAuthor about a month after I released The Album. It’s a wonderful website, the community is so supportive, and the features are brilliant. The book teaser creator is one of my favourite features!
