About Me

I was born and grew up in Perth, Western Australia, which has the dubious honour of being the most isolated city in the world. I spent my childhood in the city's bushy outskirts, failing to climb the steep eucalyptus trees and instead filling my surroundings with acted-out stories, both copied and original. Despite this wonderful, imagination-fuelling environment, I still managed to become bored enough to be given "The Lord of the Rings" to read during the summer I turned nine. This kicked off a passion for fantasy that has never faded. 

 As a teenager and throughout my twenties I wrote intermittently and became an archaeologist and then a primary school teacher. In 2009, with Western Australia's teaching jobs becoming scarce, I threw caution to the wind and moved to London on a one-way ticket. This turned out to be the right decision, and I've never looked back except to miss my family, my friends, and Cadbury's Cherry Ripes. 

After one wild year in London and five happy ones in Hertfordshire, I have now settled in Derbyshire with my wife and step-son. By day, I work for an education charity that provides post-secondary education to young people with autism and other complex needs, a role about which I am deeply passionate. I strive to be an innovative and compassionate educator, and although I am happy in my current role, I still dream of opening a revolutionary school and changing education for everyone, forever. I have big dreams and big ideas... and very little time or money. Ho hum!

The stories I choose to write fall within the somewhat niche genre of "lesbian fantasy adventure". Discovering that this genre existed at all was a revelation; however it was followed shortly afterwards by the further revelation that it was going to take me less than a year to read everything that already existed in this genre, even if I stretched the definition to include weird 1970s sci-fi. My current favourite authors are Jane Fletcher, Barbara Ann Wright and Jacqueline Carey, and I hope to eventually join their ranks and expand the genre of LGBTQ fantasy a little. 

 When I am not writing, working, consuming fantasy media or doing "family stuff", I can generally be found re-creating the medieval world with the SCA, researching my family history, or arguing with people who are wrong on the internet sharing my knowledge and opinions in a completely respectful and non-combative way, obviously. I also enjoy nature walks, identifying plants, geeking out about the weather, photography, sewing, drawing and playing musical instruments (I own a flute, a broken tenor and working descant recorder, and a dodgy violin; I play the flute and recorder reasonably well and the violin hardly at all). I do not get enough time for any of these. 

Occasionally I sleep.

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