I was born in Melbourne, Australia, home of fabulous fashion, food and ice-cream. I’m a middle kid, which is supposed to mean I’m either a serial-killer-in-waiting or an over-achiever if you go in for all of that Dr Phil stuff. I have an older sister, who thankfully has taken the pressure off me by having three amazing children. Although I guess if I do decide to have kids, the pressure will be on again because Travis, Callum and Alana are pretty damn cute… I digress. My younger brother is a computer guru and Sci-Fi geek. He’s also the man who introduced me to Star Trek Voyager. For those of you who aren’t in the know, Star Trek gets great in Voyager because at last there’s a lady driver behind the wheel - go Captain Katherine!

I’ve pretty much always wanted to be a writer. In pre-school I was always rifling through the craft cupboard, looking for paper to take home and turn into “books”. And I’ve always loved reading. As a teenager, I perfected the art of walking home from school while reading at the same time. Okay, occasionally I tripped. But it was worth it.

My ambition received a boost when I was thirteen and I won a local radio competition for a short story about a Bogart-esque style rat working on a missing persons case. I had to go into the radio station and read my story out on-air as part of the prize. All I remember is a big chair, a microphone that seemed about a million miles away, and my mother on the other side of the sound proof glass signaling desperately for me to slow my reading down. I didn’t, and as a result sounded like a chipmunk with a bad amphetamine habit. So that was radio DJ crossed off the list of possible career alternatives if the writing thing didn’t work out…

At around the same time I discovered Mills and Boon romances. Both my grandmothers were fans, and I worked my way through their collections and quickly became an addict. Remember seventies romances? Alpha males with side burns, persecuted heroines in mini skirts. People smoked, and it was cool…

After high school, I did a Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing. I actually quit the fiction component of the course after my tutor looked down his nose and told me I wrote “what used to be called Women’s fiction”. I gather he despaired of turning me into a proper literature writer. I guess he was right, too. I love writing romance novels!

I started trying to write a whole romance novel around that time. Thanks to Georgette Heyer, my first attempts were Regency romances. They will never see the light of day. Enough said. Then I tried contemporary romance. Again, no joy. But I was building an extensive collection of rejection letters, so there’s always a bright side. Just after graduating university, I scored a job in trade publishing, working as editor for a magazine for hardware retailers. It was a great job, with great people, and it taught me the discipline of writing for a living. It also kept me writing at nights, looking for an escape from nuts and bolts and power drills.

After six years, I left to become communications manager for one of Australia’s largest hardware retailers. My big job there was to launch a new magazine for them. That was fun, if incredibly stressful. May I never have to wear pantyhose and shoulder pads again.

At around that time, I got the last in a long line of rejection letters from Mills and Boon. I decided I was officially beat, and shelved my dreams of becoming a romance novelist. Fortunately, my partner, Chris, had another idea for me. He was working on Neighbours, Australia’s longest running television serial drama, and he encouraged me to try out as a storyliner. I took a week off work and trialed with them, and scored a job. The best job of my life – after being a romance novelist!

As a storyliner on Neighbours, my job was to sit around in a small enclosed space with four other people and spit-ball ideas all day for what was going to happen next on the show. As each of the five half-hour episodes per week got fleshed out, one of us storyliners would peel off to go write up a scene breakdown. We’d hand it in at the end of the week, then the whole process would start again the following week. I did that for two years, helping to plot and write over 260 hours of television. Mostly, however, I got paid to laugh. A lot. I met the funniest, most clever, rudest bunch of people in my life working on that show. There were many, many times when I was close to losing my lunch or the contents of my bladder I was laughing so hard. There’s nothing like working on a G-rated show to bring out the puerile in people. Including myself, I must add. In fact, my boss at the time said that he always took great comfort from the fact that when the politically-correct police came to march him from the building for all his dirty gags, I would be going first. I was pleased to be of service.

I left Neighbours when my partner scored a job as Drama Commissioner for New Zealand’s major television broadcaster. We packed up our lives and moved to Auckland, where I promptly found myself sucked into writing on another soap, Shortland Street. Cue more poor taste, off-color jokes from the Aussie girl. Fortunately, those Kiwi’s like a laugh, too. And there’s nothing like a few days on the table of pain that is the story table to build new friendships.

But what happened to the romance writing, you’re probably thinking? And why is she rambling so much? Just before I left Neighbours, I found that last rejection letter in my desk drawer. Re-reading it without the sting of my ego to get in the way – time does cure many ills – I realized it was pretty encouraging. Pretty damn encouraging, actually. And that I was an IDIOT for having sat on it for so long. So I started writing again. And this time, thanks to nearly two years of story structuring work, I knew where I had gone wrong on my previous attempts. I wrote, and I submitted, and I sat back to wait. And wait. And wait. After twelve months (patient, aren’t I?) I contacted Mills and Boon and asked rather timidly if they had even received my manuscript. Which was when I found out that due to a programming glitch with my email software, a whole bunch of my email had gone south for a few months. Amongst which was a letter from Editor Wanda Ottewell telling me she liked my book, would I care to tweak a few things…

Much dancing-with-underwear-on-head ensued. And much rewriting. But, after many twists and turns (see Behind the Scenes for Can’t Get Enough in the Bookshelf section for more) I finally got the phone call from Wanda letting me know they would like to buy my book. A glorious, surreal, impossible moment.

There’s been one constant in all of my trials and tribulations toward getting published - my partner, Chris. I know it’s bad form to brag about your man, but I’m going to indulge myself here a little. He’s sexy, funny, kind, generous, and incredibly talented. The best story person I know. The best writer I know (damn him!). And my best friend. Yes, there’s a little bit of him in all my heroes, and there probably always will be because (brace yourself) he’s my hero. Finished gagging yet? ( If you’re reading this, it’s because I won the battle with Chris to include this on my website. Yay me! )