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Total books written: 19 in 6 years
Ages of readership:
Most typical wordcount per book: 40,000 for Kirby's Crusaders novellas & 120,000 for Crystal Coffin and Project Apocalypse.

Countries published in: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and US.

Movie rights, merchandise or other exciting offshoots: Merchandise gadgets for Kirby's Crusader series includes rulers, calculators, maze pens, voice-recorder keyrings, hats, library bags, booklights. 2 books adapted to audio CD. And as for movie rights... shhhh... cross fingers!

Title of Featured Book: Project Apocalypse
Blurb: A floating fort knox, a network of modern day knights, and a plot to save a cruise liner full of VIP hostages... Corporal Locklin undertakes a dangerous mission to hunt down an international spy, but with enemies everywhere, he's blackmailed and ambushed into a darker conspiracy, then smuggled aboard The Lady Peacemaker as she's escorted to her doom by her own bodyguard fleet... He's young, he's trained for battle, but fighting means losing everyone who's dear to him.

Place where your book is set: Ring of Fire, Pacific Ocean.

Genre(s):
Blockbuster-style action thrillers with military-style strategy, cutting edge technologies and crime.

Extract from an independent review:

"Project Apocalypse is dynamite! As an international thriller, it's right up there with the best of them! Intrigue, fast-paced action and well developed characters, this book balances them all in a brilliant style! ... great scenery... treachery and a masterpiece of interwoven research... Move over Kings of the genre. Here comes the queen!"

What's the inside info about your life as a writer?
I love training and spending time with my horses, dogs, cats, sheep, cows, husband and children... not necessarily in that order, hehehe. I also love watching movies, painting, sculpting, making unusual things and helping other people... when I was a teenager, I always thought there'd be 3 things I'd never do: 1) own a brown horse, 2) fly and 3) travel on a boat or large ship. But now, because of writing, I'm no longer terrified to say that I've done all three.

Do you have another job as well as being a writer?

No, my investments helped me to retire in time for my 26th birthday. Before that I worked as a payroll officer for a government department and before that as a checkout girl at Woolworths. I've also worked on my parents' farm and at their service station as an unpaid slave.

Why do you love to write?

It's incredibly fun to research amazing places, people and plots and be able to devise dastedly wicked schemes for the baddies to commit -and then work out even more clever ways for the goodguys to defeat them!

What inspired you to write your book (or series which includes this book)

Crystal Coffin was originally inspired by a village massacre that really happened in East Timor in 1999. The Kirby's Crusader series was inspired by a Crimestoppers' Sticker that said "Crime pays: for those who report it!" and "Project Apocalypse" was inspired by a cruise ship that I spotted in the background of a few newspaper photos (all reporting on US-led military actions in Afghanistan, Kuwait and East Timor) and a little subsequent research uncovered the reason why it lurks in the background and is always heavily defended. But I also try to slip in an amazing snippet from research into every chapter.

What surprised you during research, writing or publishing of this book?
Many things! I had to physically go inside a submarine, a chinook and a cruise ship. (I tried ringing up their captains and asking how to blow up each one, but they kept hanging up on me for some reason.)

If students are doing assignments on this book, what special insight into
symbolism, metaphors, choice of title, characters or research can you
provide:

Crystal Coffin was structured like a diamond (52 plot shifts, one for each facet. Each scene has 3, 4 or 6 characters coming together, depending on which facet of the "diamond plot" I'm writing at the time. And just like a diamond, the first chapters build facets of a plot around the central facet character until everything begins to draw together and spears off to a sharp end.)

Project Apocalypse, on the other hand, was plotted with the help of various chess strategies. Two in particular: The first is a "Smart Alec's" game. (That's where one Player sits down to a fresh game, looks at their oponent, assesses them as inferior and cheekily says "Checkmate. Want to play again?" ... as is the case of the rat-faced sub-lieutenant who attempts to manipulate Locklin after ambushing him.)

The second game used for plotting is the one being played by the apocalypse riders as an attempt to checkmate Locklin in 4 moves. However Locklin doesn't behave as he's "supposed to" (even when it becomes obvious he can't win) so he forces a draw through a serious of unconventional "moves" under the guise of feigning defeat. Then to make it even more interesting, I plotted the story as a conventional
2-dimensional chess game from Locklin's POV (point of view) and a 3-D chess game from his oponent's POV. (And with specific decks of the ship or "elsewhere scenes" providing the "various playing boards" for each 3-D game level).

Secret writing tip for students:

Non-fiction is "telling" a true story about someone or something, but fiction is putting on a "show" using action and dialog between characters. So when you want fast-paced fiction, try deleting every adverb (words that end in "ly"). For example creeping slowly... you don't need the word "slowly" because a "creep" is usually a slow motion. (Same reason you don't need "softly" in whispering softly, or "quickly" in running quickly.

For fast paced action and dialog, it's also helpful to delete any adverbs that "tell" what's happening, instead of "showing."

For example, many writers will say: "Suddenly, the bomb went off..." Because they're when they're speaking to their friends, they're used to "telling" stories and want it to sound exciting. But if an author has done their job expertly in setting the tone and pace of the scene, then the word "suddenly" is not needed, because the reader will realise the action happened "suddenly" without needing to be told. It's therefore a waste of your reader's precious time - being 3 syllabuls long, by the time the reader has read "suddenly", the action is already over.

I therefore NEVER use the word "suddenly" in any of my fast paced action-adventure thrillers. (Note: There was ONE use of the word that magically appeared in the first print run of Crystal Coffin, but neither I, nor any of my editors put it there... it slipped in by accident during printing when a typesetter, who was so sucked in by that stage of the story that he "thought" the word "suddenly" while reading that scene and inadvertantly slipped the word in while making corrections... which just goes to "show" that I transmitted the idea of "suddenly" without having to mention it specifically myself.)

Personal pet peeves:

I'm guilty of quite a few typos while vomiting words onto paper during the first drafts, but thankfully the editing stages give me a few chances to fix them. So here's two of my biggest pet peeves about publishing generally:

1) Falling into the trap of starting too many sentences with the, and, then or but. I do it quite a bit myself during the first draft or two because these days, a lot of people do speak this way, myself included. But as an author (see? I just did it then!), I think it's really important to keep sentences short during fast-paced scenes, without using cheap tricks like that. Soooo many authors go overboard with up-pacing by simply splitting sentences in the middle at a but, and or then, it makes me cringe. I know it's a lot harder to write a fast paced scene without cheap tricks like that - and at the same time making the writing appear fast and effortless - but I also think the finished product is a lot classier and enjoyable for the mature teens and adult readers.

2) Authors and publishers who think you have to have sex, drugs, depression or excessive violence in a book before it's appealing to teenagers really bug me big time too... I mean, really! We're not *all* fans of Terrence Tarantino! And at the other end of the scale, it really bugs me to see young adult fiction confused with childrens books and shelved that way in bookstores - when most teenagers wouldn't be caught dead in the back of a bookstore between the picturebook aisle and the bookpacks with crayons.

When you were aged 8 to 15, what job(s) did you think you would have (if not a writer):

A cartoonist, vet or research scientist. And as it turns out, writing allows me to do bits of each!

What you're working on next: Kirby's Crusaders 3 and 4, the sequel to Project Apocalypse and another surprise thriller which ventures even deeper past next-gen technologies into speculative fiction.

Are you available for paid school visits at ASA rates?: Yes

Are you blue-card approved to conduct school visits in Qld: Yes

Are you available for free school visits in your local area during book launch months?: Yes

Is your computer/internet connection set up to do online chats?: Yes

Do you speak/webchat in any languages other than English?: Hmmm, does chat lingo count?