Lisa Walker's Blog

Today, I want to give a shout out to some standout Australian authors I have loved reading lately. It’s an eclectic mix, but all of these books were memorable and rewarding in different ways.

‘The Palazzo’ by Kayte Nunn – Friends, food, jealousy and obsession collide in an atmospheric Italian palazzo. 

‘Rytual’ by Chloe Elizabeth Wilson – A young woman is recruited into a dark feminist, beauty cult.

‘The Revisionists’ by Michelle Johnston – A compelling story about memory, friendship, ethics, and journalistic ambition in an international conflict zone.

‘A Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’ by Mark Mupotsa-Russell  – Darkly (very darkly) funny, with a take-no-prisoners mother bent on revenge.

I’m so happy to share my beautiful cover for ‘The Pact’. I love stories about youthful golden moments, which go badly wrong, and I feel like this image captures that perfectly. To me, it has ‘Saltburn’ vibes and makes me want to be one of those young people lounging by the pond in the sun.

Here’s the back cover blurb –

Tess enters the prestigious and exclusive Ravensthorpe Writing College with dreams of literary greatness but soon discovers that ambition comes at a cost.

Drawn into a tight-knit group with fellow writers Ethan, Theo, and Jaz, Tess’s world is upended when their charismatic tutor is found dead. Believing someone in their circle is responsible, Tess flees the elite literary world and abandons the future she once craved.

​Three years later, an enigmatic invitation to walk the Camino de Santiago offers Tess a chance to uncover the truth. Reunited with her former friends, including Ethan, now a literary star, Tess realises the past isn’t finished with her. Someone knows what really happened that night, and they’ll do anything to keep it buried.

The Pact is out in paperback in January 2026 in Australia and the UK, Canada in March, and the US in June. (The e-book and audiobook will be available in all these countries in January).

You can add ‘The Pact’ to your Goodreads ‘to be read’ list now here, and pre-orders open in October!

I’m working hard on my next novel, which is due for publication in 2027. It’s set on a cross-country ski tour in Arctic Sweden, so I’m enjoying re-living the memories of my beautiful ski tour on The King’s Trail in 2024. Here is my Instagram reel from this trip, if you’d like to check it out.

I’ve finished an 80-thousand-word first draft, so I’m taking a breather before I go back to figure out how to take it to the next level. My novels usually undergo BIG changes in the second draft phase, so I’ll need a fresh mind and lots of re-structuring energy. So far though, I’m loving my characters and the wild Arctic setting.

Thank you for reading!

Lisa

Reading!

What a month of reading it’s been! I’ve devoured some absolute gems recently, and it was hard to pick just a couple to share with you. But here are two brand-new releases by brilliant Australian women writers that completely swept me away:

‘Wild Dark Shore’ by Charlotte McConaghy

I’ll read anything Charlotte writes — Migrations is one of my all-time favourites — so the second I heard about Wild Dark Shore, I was all in. Set in a near-future world on a remote sub-Antarctic island, the story follows a father and his three children, the island’s only inhabitants, whose lives are upended when a mysterious woman washes ashore after a shipwreck. Like Migrations, it weaves stark wilderness, climate grief, and edge-of-your-seat suspense into something utterly haunting and unforgettable. I know this one will stay with me for a long, long time.

‘Mother Tongue’ by Naima Brown

Naima Brown’s second novel, Mother Tongue, is wildly original and completely addictive. After loving her first book, The Shot, I couldn’t wait to dive into this — and it didn’t disappoint. The premise is irresistible: Brynn wakes from a coma speaking fluent French (yes, Foreign Language Syndrome is a real thing!), and it sets her on a path of radical transformation. Dark, funny, feminist, and full of sharp insights into motherhood and identity, this book is unpredictable in all the best ways. Highly recommend if you want something that’ll keep you thinking long after you turn the last page.

Watching!

White Lotus – Season Three

Like seemingly everyone else on the planet, I got swept up in the latest season of White Lotus. Watching a group of rich narcissists ruin each other’s lives on holiday? Apparently, that’s my perfect comfort viewing. The performances were stellar, the writing sharp, and I spent way too much time guessing who the murder victim would be. Rumour has it that Season Four is heading to Morocco, and I can’t wait.

Midsommar

Ok, so Midsommar isn’t exactly new (it came out in 2019), but I finally gathered the courage to watch it. Horror isn’t usually my thing, but Swedish paganism? Very much my thing. Plus, Florence Pugh is extraordinary. I’ll admit: there were quite a few moments where I had to close my eyes, but the lush Scandinavian setting, the maypole dancing, the deeply unsettling cult — it all combined into something hypnotic and unforgettable. Worth the nightmares!

Writing!

And now for some exciting news…

My debut psychological suspense novel, The Pact, will be published by HQ (HarperCollins) in the UK and Australia in January 2026!

The Pact is a “dark academia meets hiking” story set partly in the UK and partly along the Spanish Camino de Santiago. It follows a dysfunctional writing group (Nothing like my own lovely group!) on a 30-day hike. This story has been quietly growing in my mind ever since I walked the Camino in 2016 — so it’s been almost a decade from the first spark of an idea to the finish line.

On the Camino in 2016

I’m also deep into the next novel, due out in 2027 — hoping to speed things up this time around!

I hope you’ve had a happy and productive month. Thank you for reading!

Lisa x

I have read some excellent novels in January, I hope you have too. Here are a few highlights:

Tana French:

I have fallen in love with Tana French’s writing (what took me so long?). I have previously read a couple of her novels, but then for some reason forgot about her.

This month, I read ‘The Likeness’ and ‘The Secret Place’ which are both from her Dublin Murder Squad series. What I most love about her writing is her characters. They are so beautifully developed and fascinating. French has cited Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History’ as an influence, which rings true as both these books have ‘dark academia’ vibes – one of my favourite, favourite things. ‘The Likeness’ was about a group of university students sharing an old house, while ‘The Secret Place’ was set in an exclusive girls’ boarding school. Let me tell you, you do not mess with teenage girls!

Movie and book pairing:

By chance, I read ‘Rouge’ by Mona Awad shortly before watching ‘The Substance’ starring Demi Moore. Both were extremely weird takes on the beauty industry and how women are made to fear losing their looks as they age.

If you’ve read ‘Bunny’ by Mona Awad, and enjoyed it, then ‘Rouge’ is for you. It’s a pretty out-there story about a sinister beauty cult.

I came to ‘The Substance’ without much of an idea what to expect and wow! It was way more horrific than my usual taste, but I found it compelling viewing. Only for those who like it weird.

Writing news:

I am working on both an adult and young adult novel at the moment and hope to share an exciting development soon!

Best wishes,

Lisa

2024 is the first year I have ever kept track of books I’ve read and listened to on audio. The grand total for the year so far is ninety-nine! I’m sure I can make it to at least a round one hundred before the year is out. My best month was January, with thirteen books read. Hopefully I can repeat that in the coming weeks.

My tastes were eclectic but weighted towards psychological suspense and I read a mixture of new releases and oldies. Ten standouts were – ‘Sisters’ by Daisy Johnson, ‘State of Wonder’ by Anne Patchett, ‘What Happened to Nina?’ by Dervla McTiernan, ‘The Sleepwalkers’ by Scarlett Thomas, ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson, ‘Siracusa’ by Delia Ephron, ‘The Ministry of Time’ by Kaliane Bradley, ‘Social Creature’, Tara Upton, ‘Prima Facie’ by Suzie Miller, and ‘I Have Some Questions for You’ by Rebecca Makkai.

Thank you for being a subscriber to my blog. I have renamed this page as my Readers Club, but you are still in the right place for my writing news, thoughts, events and special offers! I hope to be sharing some exciting developments in the not-too-distant future.

 I have uploaded a short story called ‘Night Calls’ as a welcome to new subscribers. You can find it here if you would like to read it, or click on the image below.  

Warm wishes for the festive season!

Lisa  

My new Olivia Grace teen PI novel, ‘Trouble is my Business’ comes out today – hooray! It’s the second in my teen mystery series set on the Gold Coast, and in Byron Bay.

Most people who read crime fiction are familiar with Nordic noir, also known as Scandinavian noir. It’s all about dark deeds in cold countries with morose detectives. Think ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ or ‘Miss Smilla’s feeling for Snow’. 

‘Trouble is My Business’ is pretty much the opposite of that. It’s not Nordic noir, but sunshine noir. In teen PI, Olivia Grace’s world everything is fun and colourful on the surface, but rotten underneath. The sea is sparkling, but dark deeds are afoot.

Olivia might not be treading the mean streets of urban California like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, or Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, but her beat has its share of both glamour and grunge.

As in the Florida crime novels of Carl Hiassen and Elmore Leonard, the happy holiday exterior provides cover for a seedy underbelly. Florida has been called a sunny place for shady people, and this could be said of the Gold Coast and Byron Bay as well. An eclectic mix of real estate developers, tourists, and eco-warriors can lead to a whole lot of trouble.

In ‘Trouble is My Business’, as Olivia gazes out at the sparkling blue sea in Byron Bay, she muses that people would, quite literally, kill for this.

Brisbane launch:

‘Trouble is my Business’ will be launched by Kay Kerr, author of ‘Please Don’t Hug Me’ at Where the Wild Things Are, in West End, Brisbane, on August 19th, 6.30pm. This is a free event, but bookings are essential. Click here to register.

Here’s the blurb …

Olivia Grace, recently retired teen PI, has her priorities sorted. Pass first-year law, look after her little sister, and persuade her parents to come back from a Nepali monastery to resume … well, parenting. But after Olivia’s friend Abbey goes missing in Byron Bay, she can’t sit back and study Torts. It’s time to go undercover as hippie-chick Nansea, in hippie-chic Byron Bay: hub of influencers and international tourism, and home of yoga, surfing and wellness culture, against a breathtaking backdrop, a short drive from Olivia’s Gold Coast home.

Olivia’s looking for answers, with the help of her stash of disguises, the PI skills her irresistible ex-boss Rosco taught her … and a nose for trouble. Her suspects include a hard-core surfer who often argued with Abbey in the surf, a charismatic cult leader and an acrobatic botany student. And then there’s Rosco, officially assigned to the case, and proving impossible to avoid.

Lisa Walker’s second Olivia Grace novel is another rip-roaring excursion into madcap sunshine noir, with nods to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and a flavour of Veronica Mars meets Elmore Leonard.

Goodreads

Add ‘Trouble is my Business’ to your to-be-read list on Goodreads.

Order

Order ‘Trouble is my Business’

Early reviews

‘I loved being swept up in this mystery. A wonderful combination of comical, high-stakes and genuine.’ 

Emily Gale, author of ‘We are out with Lanterns’

‘New mystery, new trouble, new(ish) normcore clothes… Forget Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew, teen PI Olivia Grace going deep undercover as Nansea is everything I never knew I needed. 

Fearless, fun and fake tanned, has Olivia found the perfect disguise in Nansea to take on cults, bad boy surfers and dangerously attractive acrobats? 

Trouble is my Business kept me reading, guessing and laughing late into the night.’

R.W.R McDonald, author of ‘The Nancys’

‘I am here for a brilliant young protagonist who’s solving mysteries and showing up for herself. A page-turning read.’ 

Claire Christian, author of ‘Beautiful Mess’

‘Hilarious, tender and fun, this sun-drenched teen PI mystery drips with humour and style. I adored it.’ 

Poppy Nwosu, author of ‘Taking Down Evelyn Tait’

My second Olivia Grace teen PI novel, ‘Trouble is my Business’, comes out on August 1st! It’s had some lovely early reviews and I’m pretty excited about it.

I’m thrilled to be launching ‘Trouble is my Business’ as a Byron Writers Festival satellite event on Saturday August 7th, 6pm. Kayte Nunn, bestselling author of ‘The Last Reunion’, will be doing the honours and it should be a fun evening. It’s a free event, but click here to book on Eventbrite.

Here’s the blurb …

Olivia Grace, recently retired teen PI, has her priorities sorted. Pass first-year law, look after her little sister, and persuade her parents to come back from a Nepali monastery to resume … well, parenting. But after Olivia’s friend Abbey goes missing in Byron Bay, she can’t sit back and study Torts. It’s time to go undercover as hippie-chick Nansea, in hippie-chic Byron Bay: hub of influencers and international tourism, and home of yoga, surfing and wellness culture, against a breathtaking backdrop, a short drive from Olivia’s Gold Coast home.

Olivia’s looking for answers, with the help of her stash of disguises, the PI skills her irresistible ex-boss Rosco taught her … and a nose for trouble. Her suspects include a hard-core surfer who often argued with Abbey in the surf, a charismatic cult leader and an acrobatic botany student. And then there’s Rosco, officially assigned to the case, and proving impossible to avoid.

Lisa Walker’s second Olivia Grace novel is another rip-roaring excursion into madcap sunshine noir, with nods to Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes, and a flavour of Veronica Mars meets Elmore Leonard.

Goodreads

Add ‘Trouble is my Business’ to your to-be-read list on Goodreads.

Pre-order

Pre-order ‘Trouble is my Business’

Early reviews

‘I loved being swept up in this mystery. A wonderful combination of comical, high-stakes and genuine.’ 

Emily Gale, author of ‘We are out with Lanterns’

‘New mystery, new trouble, new(ish) normcore clothes… Forget Sherlock Holmes and Nancy Drew, teen PI Olivia Grace going deep undercover as Nansea is everything I never knew I needed. 

Fearless, fun and fake tanned, has Olivia found the perfect disguise in Nansea to take on cults, bad boy surfers and dangerously attractive acrobats? 

Trouble is my Business kept me reading, guessing and laughing late into the night.’

R.W.R McDonald, author of ‘The Nancys’

‘I am here for a brilliant young protagonist who’s solving mysteries and showing up for herself. A page-turning read.’ 

Claire Christian, author of ‘Beautiful Mess’

‘Hilarious, tender and fun, this sun-drenched teen PI mystery drips with humour and style. I adored it.’ 

Poppy Nwosu, author of ‘Taking Down Evelyn Tait’

Video-making has never been on my radar. I’m a writer, not a filmmaker, after all. I’m lucky to have a son who’s a filmmaker, and he’s made me some great book trailers over the years. There really hasn’t been any need for me to learn to do it myself.

But then, this social distancing thing came along and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do bookshop visits, or talks to schools and other groups. I noticed other writers doing amazing videos, and I wanted to do one too, but… I had no idea where to begin.

So, when The Lismore Regional Gallery and The Quad offered an at-home artistic residency called Together//Alone, I thought this might be just the spur a movie-making novice needed to have a go. I applied to make a video called ‘Writing the Girl with the Gold Bikini’. A short time later, I found out my application was successful. After I finished celebrating, I realised I had only seven days to make my video and freaked out.

I’m not exactly a technophobe, but I’m coming from a fairly low base. Step one was to figure out how to use iMovie. I discovered some great templates and spent way too much time checking them out. I also spent a lot of time pondering different approaches to capturing vision and sound with the equipment I’ve got available. I didn’t want to lash out on new gear. In the end, I filmed with a phone and tripod and used the microphone from a pair of headphones tucked into my shirt. It worked okay, but I think next time I’ll invest in a microphone and upload a teleprompter app. Live and learn.

I was super-proud of my first attempt. I sent it to my son, and he said, ‘It’s um… good’, but the way he said ‘good’ made it sound like ‘bad’. Apparently, all my transitions between film clips were terrible. Secretly, I already knew they were terrible, but I was hoping no-one would notice. I went back to work.

The final result is here – a six-minute video where I talk about the inspiration, setting, character and development of ‘The Girl with the Gold Bikini’. I feel like a kid bringing their artwork home from school. It might not be amazing, in fact I am well aware that it has some technical issues, but I did it all by myself! My next video can only be an improvement.

If you’d like to read ‘The Girl with the Gold Bikini’ , it is available at your favourite bookshop, or in print here and ebook here.

Today, I chat to Dee White, who is the author of many works of fiction for kids and teens. Dee’s young adult novel ‘Beyond Belief’ has just come out with Scholastic. Welcome Dee!

LW: Where did the inspiration for this story come from?

DW: I was researching another manuscript set in Paris when I stumbled across the true story of Muslims at a Paris mosque who saved Jews during WW2. I knew I had to write about it. I received a VicArts grant through Creative Victoria to spend a month in Paris doing further research. It was amazing. My father fled Austria during WW2 after Kristallnacht. His parents were married in a synagogue and although he wasn’t raised Jewish, he was forced to wear a badge labeling him as a Jew and report regularly to the police. He and his family fled for their lives in 1939 and my father had talked about this to me. So I could relate this experience to my main character, Ruben fleeing from the soldiers and French police in Paris.

LW: Tell me about your protagonist, Ruben. Did he come to you easily, or did he take a while to get to know?

DW: Ruben, my protagonist in Beyond Belief did come to me quite easily. He’s a mix of my oldest brother who was always very gentle and serious and fair, and also trusting. I have two sons and they are very much like that too. They are kind to people and anticipate that they will receive kindness in return. I remember when they were around Ruben’s age and discovered that the world didn’t always work that way and I wanted to capture this vulnerability in my main character. My eldest son has always been a cat whisperer so incorporating this trait in Ruben’s character was quite organic. Ruben was very strong in my head and heart from quite early on. In fact he became almost like another one of my children.

LW: This is your second young adult novel, and you have also written several books for middle-grade and younger readers. What are the challenges and pleasures of the young adult genre for you?

DW: The lines between middle-grade and YA seem to be becoming more and more blurred. To be honest, I thought that Beyond Belief was middle-grade but booksellers seem to be putting it in the 12+ category, I guess because of the themes and also Beyond Belief is YA in length, but then so is Harry Potter and that’s considered middle-grade.  I never think of my writing in terms of genre or readership age. I just write the story I want to tell. I don’t consider my work to be classic YA (even my novel, Letters to Leonardo) and I’d find classic YA hard because I don’t write romance well and I feel like I’m a bit out of touch with the language and lifestyle of older teens. I guess that’s one of the challenges of writing YA. In YA your main characters are the same age or older than your readers but middle grade allows you more flexibility. As long as your main character is a similar age to the reader, you can have other characters who are older or younger, like Daan and Momo in Beyond Belief.

LW: Tell me about your writing process. Are you a plotter or a pantser and what is your writing routine?

DW: I’m quite erratic when it comes to writing process. Different manuscripts seem to call for different methods and each one is like a new experiment, an opportunity to try different things and acquire skills and knowledge that will make my writing better. I used to plot a lot but then I found my narrative lost its spark so now I tend to do a mixture of both. I know what my story is about and roughly what’s going to happen in the end, but not necessarily how my character will arrive at this place. I like to let them guide the story. As their character emerges, what they do and how they react to things will drive what happens next in the story.

When my boys were small I used to get up at 5.00am so I’d have around an hour to write before my kids got up. That way I could focus on being a parent and still feel like I was a writer as well.

Nowadays I tend to treat writing like a day job and work to fairly standard hours. It’s easy to just keep writing and write all day every day, but I’m trying to get balance in my life so I take weekends off and read at night. It can be hard to write when you’re the parent of young children or have a day job, but even if you can snatch just ten minutes a day it will still make you feel like you’re a writer and keep you motivated. Even when I’m under time and other pressures, I always try to keep my writing fun.

LW: Can you give us a sneaky preview of what you’re working on next?

DW: Eddy Popcorn’s Guide to Parent Training, my illustrated MG (Ben Johnston’s pics are hilarious) comes out with Scholastic Australia on 1 May and I’m currently working on the follow up, Eddy Popcorn’s Guide to Teacher Taming, which will be out next year. I’m also researching a couple of historical fiction works and a paranormal thriller screen play.

DW: Thanks so much Lisa, for inviting me to visit your blog.

You can find Dee online at:

Website, Twitter, Facebook

And buy ‘Beyond Belief’ at a range of booksellers, including:

Booktopia, and Angus and Robertson

In these strange times, it’s hard for authors to get out and about so I’m going to be posting some interviews with authors of new releases. First up, is Poppy Nwosu. Poppy’s second young adult book, ‘Taking Down Evelyn Tait’ has just come out. I’ve read it and found it funny and heart-warming and just the type of book we need to be reading right now!

Poppy had a chat to me about her novel, the writing process and what she’s up to next…

LW: As this is your second novel, did you suffer from the dreaded ‘second-book syndrome’?

PN: This is a strange one, because although Taking Down Evelyn Tait is my second published book, it isn’t the second one I’d ever written, so I was pretty used to working through stories by the time I came to write this one.

On the flipside though, even though it wasn’t technically my second novel, YES, I totally suffered from the dreaded second book syndrome!

I wrote this one just before my debut was released, but already I had it in my head that there might be a potential audience for the book and I think that is what really held me back and made writing this story, at times, utterly excruciating … I had kind of stopped writing for myself, and was instead writing for an imaginary audience (that didn’t even exist yet!). And I was sure that imaginary audience was judging every word I put on the page.

It meant I couldn’t have fun with my story because I was so nervous about what other people would think of it.

I ended up having to stop and restart the entire manuscript, and this time, I wrote it exactly how I wanted to, without worrying what anybody else would think. It really helped and the words flowed so much more easily and I started having fun again!

LW: Where did the inspiration for this story come from?

PN: I always feel like I shouldn’t say this, because I am a writer and obviously I adore books, but really what drew me to writing was my love of stories in any shape or form, including movies and television. So basically, what I am saying is I am a massive film and television nerd, and I am often so inspired by the stories I watch (as well as read).

I was watching a fun English show called Misfits, which has a character that was very likable, but who had absolutely no filter, said the worst (most filthy) things in the world, and was constantly a trouble magnet who always did the wrong thing. I loved the balance of writing about such a flawed character, but also making them very loveable at the same time.

That was really the initial seed for my main character, Lottie, who is a troublemaker but, hopefully, a lovable and charming one, and the rest of the story really grew from there!

LW: Lottie is a great character, did she come to you easily, or did she take a while to get to know?

PN: She came really easily, despite the story itself being a very difficult one for me to write!

I had such a fun experience writing Lottie. I think part of that is a level of wish fulfillment for me, I really enjoy writing very assertive and ‘out there’ characters simply because in real life that isn’t exactly my personality. I used to be very shy when I was younger and I still really hate confrontation, so it is fun to walk in another’s (more confident) shoes through my imagination. And once I started writing the first draft, I found it really easy to find Lottie’s voice. She’s actually one of my favourite characters I’ve ever written!

LW: Tell me about your writing process. Are you a plotter or a pantser and what is your writing routine?

PN: I started out as a complete pantser, but over time as I write more manuscripts, I have learned a bit more about plotting. The danger for me though, is that if I spend too long thinking through every detail of a potential plot or characters before I begin writing a manuscript, I tend to get a bit bored with that story. And I then want to move on to a new shiny idea instead of writing the one I have started plotting.

For me, I always have a vague idea of the characters and how they fit together, a tiny bit of the plot (usually a few scenes I want to write towards, though I have no idea how I will get there) and a very strong sense of the book’s tone and atmosphere and setting. The characters just seem to unwind as I write, and usually turn out quite different to what I thought I was going to do. I never really know the ending when I begin the book.

Writing like that seems to work for me, but it took a long time to figure out what was best. A lot of trial and error.

In terms of routine, it has all changed for me in 2020. I used to work full time, so I would squeeze in two hours of writing time every morning at 5am before heading into work, but this year I have dropped back to working only three days, which gives me a lot more time! It has been wonderful! I still get up at 5am and do my morning writing sessions, and then on my two weekdays off, I just continue working at my desk for most of the day.

LW: Can you give us a sneaky preview of what you’re working on next?

Yes! I was lucky enough in 2019 to be awarded an amazing trip from Writers SA (my local writing centre) to Varuna the Writer’s House to work on a new manuscript. I had the most amazing time writing all day every day, and am really excited about the manuscript that has come from it.

I can’t say too much about it yet, but it is a romantic contemporary YA with a lot of emphasis on the romance. It’s got a bickering hate to lovers trope, and is centred around a road trip, a lost nana and a damaged friendship. I really hope people will like it!

Find Poppy online: Instagram Website

Buy ‘Taking Down Evelyn Tait’ from Wakefield Press

Writing a book with a surfer-girl heroine has made me reflect on the relationship between surfing and writing in my life. One of my favourite authors, Haruki Murakami, has famously said that everything he knows about writing he has learned from running. For me, it’s surfing.

My surfing and writing journeys both started when I moved to the north coast of New South Wales. The surf was at my doorstep, it seemed a shame to waste it. My hometown is world-famous for its waves. A looming basalt headland captures the big swell and a rocky reef creates smaller waves on the inside. With such waves at my doorstep, what else could I do but buy a surfboard?

So I bought myself a beginner’s surf board – soft and fat. Each time I took it out I challenged myself to stay in the water for a little longer. I floundered around in the whitewash, falling off and getting pummelled by the waves, emerging with nostrils full of saltwater and hair caked in sand. But then I started catching little waves. I glided over the reef. I was hooked.

For twenty years now, I have surfed almost-daily. If I count it up, allowing for times when I was away from home, or the surf wasn’t happening, by even a very conservative reckoning this is thousands of hours immersed in the water.

My process of learning to write was somewhat similar. I got less sand in my hair and water up my nose but the slap downs were still painful. With both writing and surfing, you need to be able to take a pounding and come back for more. It takes hours and hours of thankless practice. You are going to wipe out. Get used to it. I wrote three complete novels before I got my first one published. That’s a lot of words. A lot of practice. A lot of rejections. Every writer and every surfer is different. Different doesn’t mean wrong. You can learn from others, but there’s no point in trying to copy them.

You need to go out as often as possible, no matter the conditions. Some days are good, others not so good, but as long as you keep turning up, you will get somewhere. Once in a while everything goes right. The waves are perfect. The words flow. Those days are rare, but oh so beautiful.

Both writing and surfing are more about the journey than the destination. You don’t surf with the aim of getting to shore. Nor does it make sense to focus on the outcome – the book, rather than the process of getting there. That’s where the magic is. There is always another wave on the horizon, another story to tell.

The Girl with the Gold Bikini is available at your local bookshop, most are now doing deliveries, as well as online at:

Wakefield Press, Booktopia, Readings, Amazon Australia, US, UK