G’Day! I’m an Aussie writer with a thing for cats. MEOW! I predominately write YA, but I have a NA series out with City Owl Press.
Some things about me: I have a thing for pink, cats, unicorns and amazeball stories.I may have a shoe fetish and a funky sock festish. Every night I use Sleep Easy Headphones as a way to help manage my OCD. Going to Romantic Times was my first ever trip out of Australia. And when I was at Romantic Times I got a hardcover copy of the first ever book I recommended for publication as an intern! I have a geeky heart. My family loves video games, comic books, tv shows based on comics… I help organise a local pop culture convention, and went as Princess Peach when I MCed it.
Some of my favourite stories:
- The Curse Workers Series – Deep, dark, gritty full of twists and turns.
- Throne of Glass Series – I adored the voice in this and the amazing plot. Masterfully written.
- The Night Circus – The time jumps and inter-weaving go the plots left me with this longing.
- Daughter of Smoke and Bone Series – Gosh, I wish I could write like that. It’s what I now aspire to.
- The Time Traveller’s Wife – Raw, intense, the perfect soft SciFi
- Illuminae – Unique storytelling and a great twisty plot.
- The Raven Cycle – Lyrical writing that breaks my heart.
- All the books by Courtney Summers – perfect anti-heroine characters that are masterfully portrayed in heart-wrenching plots
- Redeeming Love – An amazing love story.
- Outlander Series – Love the complicated twisting of history and fiction with a hot love interest: I’ll have a Scotch on the Rocks!
- Most of Jane Austen’s books – I just adore them.
- Lux Series – Hot sexy aliens jammed into action-packed stories.
- Graffiti Moon – The perfect Australian contemporary story.
- Sweet Damage & Beautiful Malice – Artfully crafted thrillers.
- Code Name Verity – Heart-breaking unreliable narrator.
- See Me – Sweet betas at their best
- If I Stay – Unique storytelling
- Across the Universe Series – It’s like the 1984 of YA.
- Game of Thrones – The masterful plot gets me.
- The Starbound Trilogy – Teenage angst in space!
- Jane Eyre – Dark feminist story that broke the mould.
- And it should go without saying, but Harry Potter. – ALWAYS!
Things I would love to see in my inbox:
- Anything that you could comp to the stories on my favourite list above (and you can see I have diverse taste genre wise)
- Diversity! I want it. Diverse settings, diverse MCs, diverse stories.
- Dark stories
- Reimaginings
- Alternative histories
- Heists
- Magicians
- Kissing
- Under-used fantasy characters, like Centaurs.
- Gaming (bonus for gamer girls!)
- Criminal elements
- Strong female characters
- Curses
- Courts
- Historicals
- Genre mash-ups
- Mental Health
- Anti-hero
- A good girl gone bad.
- Gasp-out-loud twists.
- Any POV & Tense – 1st, 3rd (or second if you’re really brave) and past or present tense. I take them all.
I am not going to define the genres. I’m open to anything as long as it fits with some of the points above (but not all of them, cause that would be a seriously weird book).
What you can expect from me:
- Fixing issues you didn’t know exist. Yes, I find things, issues, inconsistencies, problems that will cause a book blogger to go ‘Say what?!’ but seem to get missed by other readers. Although I’m a big picture person, I get the details of things that don’t work.
- An amazing pitch. My nickname is the query-whisperer. It’s a speciality of mine to take pitches and polish them until they sparkle.
- Tough love – with the emphasis on love. Every year I’ve fallen in love with my mentees MS. Not like, love. But I’m not afraid to point things out.
- Solutions, not just problems. My mind is an ideas factory. I won’t simply tell you problems, I will show you solutions so make your story shine.
- An ongoing advocate. I will be there for you after Pitch Wars is over if you need me.
What I want from you:
- Someone accepts a book is created by a village. You need to be open to feedback, open to making some major changes if you book needs it. I won’t ask for change for the sake of change. I will ask for change if you story will be the better for it.
- Information about how much revision your story has been through to date, how long you’ve been querying it/how much you’ve queried it, if it’s been in any competitions.
- A glorious story that needs some shining.
What I don’t want:
- A synopsis – I prefer just to read the story.
- Someone who is only interested in getting in front of agents. This is a journey of growing as a writer.
- First drafts.
And one last piece of trivia about me. My husband’s name begins with…
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