I was pondering a website update when I came across the image at the right end of the banner. While the woman looks nothing like me, it is an idealized image of a romance writer at work for many readers and fifteen published romances go a long way towards defining me as a romance writer.
I didn't start out as a romance writer, although my first completed manuscript had a strong romantic theme. I wrote because it kept me sane in the pressure cooker world of the offshore oil industry, providing an hour in each day when I had complete control over my environment, something that became more and more precious the higher I climbed.
In 1997, I stepped away from the oil industry and became a full-time writer, first published in 2000 with Saltwater Press, a small Australian publisher of paperbacks. By 2006, when they failed, I was published elsewhere and have since survived the failure of two more publishing firms, each merely delaying the release, or taking some of my books out of circulation. The survivors are shown in the flash presentation to the right and you can read about them on their individual pages.(See the navigation bar at the bottom of the page) The reviewers extoll their praises and I'm slowly building a fan base who enjoy the reading as much as I enjoy the writing of each story.

What's Happening Now?
I'm collaborating with the Director on the screenplay for the full feature film of "The Widow-Maker" and my learning curve is nearly vertical as I switch from writer to storyteller, re-evaluating every aspect of the story and learning to tell it in a new medium. It's fascinating and I'm having a ball condensing the story into 120 pages of screen play, identifying the essential story points of Lexie's battle with the demons of her past as she matures and grows to meet the challenges of falling in love with a man who does dangerous things. I even made a pun to the Director the the motorcycle called the Widow-Maker was only the vehicle for Lexie's journey to maturity. I'm not sure how he took it because he's in Brisbane and I'm in Melbourne and the screenplay bounces back and forth between us electronically (He probably just groaned and carried on).

After sitting on my top bookshelf for a month, I took down the initial draft of "Coasting" and read it through, marking up the areas that needed re-working. The second draft is finished now and I'm working my way through it to ensure its continuity and flow.(It always amazes me how much changes between drafts)