I make periodic stabs at eating properly. I don’t drink, smoke, or do enough exercise.

In short, I’m an only child with an overactive imagination, 3 dogs, 2 cats and not enough hours in the day. Vocalists I enjoy are Josh Groban, Russell Watson, Sarah McLachlan, Simon and Garfunkel, Queen, The Moody Blues, Steeleye Span, Meatloaf, Mike Oldfield. Favourite film composers include Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, James Horner and John Williams. This helps access emotion during tough scenes. While writing I listen primarily to film soundtracks, because they’ve been written primarily to evoke emotional responses in the listener. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica (the new series), Stargate, Firefly, X-Men, Buffy, Angel, Supernatural, The Professionals, Forever Knight, Due South, The West Wing, The Shield, Sandbaggers, Homicide, Wiseguy, The Shield, The Closer. When I’m not writing I’m heavily involved in the Castle Hill Players, my local community theatre group, as an actor, director, prompt, stage manager (but not all at once!) and publicity officer. I used to have horses of my own, and spent lots of time and money showing, breeding, training and judging, but then I came off one time too many and so a large part of my life ended. Money for jam, there! I also managed to squeeze in a Master’s Degree in Children’s Literature from Macquarie University. Since then I’ve done customer service in the insurance and telecommunications industries, been a training officer, PR Officer in local government, production assistant in educational publishing, taught English and Business Communication at TAFE, been a supervisor and run my own sf/fantasy/mystery bookshop. After 18 grueling months I woke up, and came home. I worked for a bunch of nutters in a community health centre and got the sack because I refused to go do EST with them (you stand in the middle of a circle and thank people for hurling verbal abuse at you for your own good, they said, and then were surprised when I said no), was a customer services officer for DHL London (would you believe at one time I knew every single airport code for every single airport in the world, off by heart?!?), got roped into an extremely dubious life insurance selling scheme (I was young and broke, need I say more?) and ended up realizing a life-long dream of working professionally with horses. After graduating with a BA Communications from the then Institute of Technology (now University) a few years ahead of Hugh Jackman, dammit, talk about rotten timing, I headed off to England and lived there for 3 years. I’ve always lived in Sydney, except when I didn’t. Dad’s an Aussie, Mum’s English, go figure. I was born in Vancouver, Canada, and came to Australia with my parents when I was 2. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

The innocent mage