Why I (Really) Started This Newsletter

And what I've learnt in the first 9 months

A Falling-Out

A few of my achievements have begun with a falling-out of some description. The first noteworthy example is the revenge novel I started a month after my first agent dumped me, out of the blue, without having sold a scrap of my work. Heavily pregnant and the main carer to a two year old, the following month I started a new manuscript under NaNoWriMo conditions, paused to deliver my baby, and thereafter completed the first draft by writing 500 words a day once the baby hit eight weeks.

That (Girl, Aloud) became my first published novel.

You know where this is going: I began Voracious because I fell out with someone.

The is the defining film / line of my youth, which explains everything.

Towards the end of 2022, trying to make noise about The Goodbye Year, I wrote some pieces that I hoped would do a couple of things: 1. tick the publicity box for my book, and 2. encourage wider discussion in mainstream media of Australian children’s literature.

By degrees, the cultural conver…