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Every boy’s fantasy
A nerd’s first lesson on charisma. Like many of the awkward, nerdy boys at my high school (and there seemed to be a larger-than-usual number of us), I was drawn very quickly to the Fantasy genre. I...
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The Grim Reaper in the lunch room
A Writer’s first day job. In my last year of school, I was gently encouraged into some kind of employment. Having illustrated a local history book, I had a contact in the manager of a local printing...
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E. M. Forster – literature’s God of Love
A Writer’s first hero. From the moment I saw the trailer for David Lean’s 1984 adaptation of his A Passage to India during an English class, I became a sucker for the literature of Edward Morgan...
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The prophet Elijah got me published
A Writer’s narrow escape. By the time I got to Sydney University to start my arts degree I was so sick and tired of essays, studying, research, and examinations, that I pretty-much floated my way...
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Meryl Streep – a difficult woman?
A Writer’s first exposure to great acting. At the age when society would have preferred I develop a teen-crush on Arnold Schwarzenegger, I began an addiction to the work of Meryl Streep. It started...
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Drama School Dream Factory – Act 1
A writer’s first backstage pass. Once I’d saved myself from the clutches of academia (for how I nearly ended up an Ancient History professor, read my post on How the Prophet Elijah got me Published), I...
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Drama School Dream Factory – Act 2
A writer’s first lesson in high stakes. While reading the paper one morning in a cafe during the summer break, I took-in a story about how the city’s best and brightest theatre professionals were being...
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Sumner Locke Elliott – left us but loved us
A Writer’s first Australian hero. With his intriguing, genderless triple-barreled name, novelist, playwright and screenwriter Sumner Locke Elliott (1917-1991) remained almost unknown in the country of...
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Overdosing on Community Spirit
A writer’s send-off. The morning of Mum’s death dawned like a new world, or at least a world in which the gloss that Pat Burge put on things was now gone. Our home, which had been a hospice bustling...
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Oh England, my Lying Heart
A Writer’s pebble-dashed vision. I first encountered England through her literature. Walking the moors with the Brontës and their wayward brother Branwell; inhaling the sea-spray of Whitby and digging...
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Living the dream … well, trying at least
How a Writer wrote from inside a bubble. I have been ruminating on this post for many days now, trying to get a handle on where my writing life was in the midst of my three years’ living in London....
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Always putting on a play
A writer ventures back into theatre. I was one of those children for whom the world of theatrics was the most sought-after form of play. Whether it was reciting poems for my assembled grandparents, or...
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Writing my way out of London
A writer gives up on the big city. I lived in the city of London for three years. During the first I was heady with hope, not caring that I hadn’t “made it” yet, sure that I would at any moment....
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Annie Lennox – tarnished angel
A Writer’s musical anti-hero. Amidst the gloom of Yorkshire in the late English winter of 1992 when I arrived in the United Kingdom, two bright things stood out. The first were the swathes of...
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The thing about Britain
A Writer’s experience of Thatcherism. Towards the end of my second year working for United News and Media, the staff received news that our company was in the final stages of broad economic reforms...
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Writing my way out of the closet
A Writer finally comes out. The late great Monty Python comedian Graham Chapman was the inspiration for my coming out. In the year that homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, he famously hosted a...
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Tony and Bern Sutton – equality people
A writer’s encounter with PFLAG. As the editor of a regional lifestyle magazine, it’s easy to focus all the content on sumptuous homes and gardens, and interviews with local business icons. But for me,...
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