Welcome to The Resilient Author!

I’ve spent twenty-five years surrounded by professional authors, publishers and creatives, first as an editor then as a novelist, and now I’m bringing all that experience and insight into The Resilient Author, to talk to you with hand-on-heart honesty about the immense challenges and incredible joys of writing and publishing.

Writing isn’t just a career: it’s a lifestyle, and a way of being that affects every part of our lives.

Authors go through so many battles just to keep going: whether it’s prioritising time, finding an audience, overcoming self-doubt, needing to pay the bills, or enhancing our craft. The challenges are immense, and yet we don’t have government sectors or publishing departments dedicated to creative support. We’re mostly left to glean comfort and guidance from others like ourselves, taking what we can from those like us whose paths we cross. Therefore, we all desperately need honesty, insights, encouragement, occasional tough love and ongoing support from others who are traversing the same path and understand the passion and pitfalls around writing for publication. 

So many authors start with big dreams only to see their books don’t sell and their publishers lose interest. Authors often take this personally without realising the industry is flawed and relies on a model where some books must fail for others to succeed. Therefore, financial realities or demoralisation pushes talented writers out of the industry when they’ve hardly begun. I’ve come up against many pitfalls during my time as an author, but I firmly believe there are always ways through them: we just need some creative thinking, to knock on new doors, and to know that we’re not alone.

I’m also a mum - and mothering has impacted my career on so many levels: inspiring me in ways I could never imagine and making me more determined than ever to thrive; but also, of course, having a substantial impact on my time and emotional resources, and adding more layers of complexity to the challenges of writing and promoting.

Here’s what you’ll get if you subscribe to The Resilient Author:

I’ve based The Resilient Author around the three things I think we all need to thrive as creatives:

1.       The right mindset: failsafe ways to support ourselves through the ups and downs of writing and publishing.

2.       Practical tools: the insights and resources that will always move our work forward

3.       A respect for the alchemy of the creative journey: the continual dance between your unique perspective and everything you know about the world – wrapped in how you meet the moment and channel your creative expression.

Here's how I break this down, and everything you’ll get when you subscribe to my free weekly posts:  

Writing resilience: craft, creativity and mindset insights with tools to set you up for success. Here I’ll tackle the difficult topics and stumbling blocks that leave us vulnerable, in order to support creative mindset and growth. There are so many factors that go into producing a first-class book that it’s important to continually cut through the overwhelm and stay close to your essential needs and goals as a writer.

Publishing resilience: behind-the-scenes knowledge of the business of writing and marketing books, based on my 20 years of industry experience (this includes my monthly ‘Author Notes’ round-up of the latest publishing news and recommended reading). It’s essential that writers understand how to navigate the constantly changing publishing industry, because commercialising our work is a very different beast to our writing endeavours, and first-class knowledge of the industry is inextricably linked to our careers and success. Here you’ll also find practical advice and time-saving resources to grow writing careers and earn money from your work.

My writing journal: this is the place where I share all my passions and my personal stories with you. I’ll give you insights into my books and writing, my setbacks, wins, behind-the-scenes stories, and everything I’ve learned along the way, along with reviews of books I love and personal essays about my passions and the topics that fire me up. This includes some deep dives into some of the motivations and experiences of both historical and contemporary creative women – and the challenges they’ve faced while bringing their work into the world.

All my weekly posts have the same essential purpose of encouragement and support. I want to help you to keep writing, to love and celebrate your work, and to fulfil your potential!

Each of our creative voices is unique, but when it comes to living and working as a writer we’re all in this together – and taking a broad, balanced and big-picture perspective will help us all to breathe, relax, refocus and then dig in to our creative goals. I want you to take my insights and use them to do the work that only you can do.

My paid community:

Paid subscribers get access to my top tier resources and insights: from plotting charts and character questionnaires, to breakdowns of bestseller lists and next-level mindset practices, this is everything I’ve learned and used to help me succeed as a writer and how I’ve sustained my career in an industry where many authors struggle to keep going. I’ve taken years to develop these practices, and you can access them instantly.

My posts for paid subscribers contain:

• Exclusive writing resources and time-saving tips to accelerate your writing productivity

• Mindset practices to help you stay focused, accelerate your writing career, and beat overwhelm: including hacks to shortcut everything that takes you away from your writing

• Insider news and insights into the world of writing and publishing

For less than the price of a coffee a month, you get the best of my resources and you’ll also support my work and help make it possible for me to continue writing The Resilient Author.

I’d love you to join my author community! However you choose to subscribe, I’ll be looking to bring you valuable topics and insights every single week!

A little more about me and my writing journey so far:

I’m the author of eight published novels and one novella, and my work has been published in Australia, the US, the UK and Europe. I’ve hit bestseller lists, had international and translation deals, moved publishing houses, self-published, written for Audible, worked as a ghostwriter, had two books optioned for TV, and my novel You Don’t Know Me was adapted into a chart-topping drama podcast. I’ve also moved publishing houses, tried self-publishing, been rejected many times and had to rehome my novels on numerous occasions. In other words, I know about both the highs and lows of a writing career!

I write mostly psychological suspense, mysteries and thrillers, and as a reader I look for variety, but I especially love psych suspense, crime and thrillers, dystopian and YA fiction, commercial and literary fiction that celebrates and empowers women, and environmental fiction (often known as cli-fi). I also love reading inspirational nonfiction and autobiographies, and I draw on all of this in my work. I wrote my near-future dystopian novel The Hush as part of my PhD, which looked at the missing mothers in dystopian fiction with young adult heroines. My ongoing aim is to write psychological page-turners that centre female characters across generations and explore contemporary issues around culture and identity. My next novel, When She Was Gone, will be released in April 2025.