Friends, I am so delighted to reveal my brand new children’s series (yes, a series!) that has been eight years in the making! Please, allow me to introduce you to Millie and Stella, Best Friends Forever.
Millie and Stella’s very favourite thing is riding their ponies together. But gates are being left open in their paddock, and Millie and Stella are being blamed! Can the girls figure out who is behind the mischief before their beloved ponies are put in danger?
Join best friends Millie and Stella for a week of friendship, adventure and a little bit of mystery . . .
This is the first book in an uplifting and inclusive series that celebrates friendship, family, neurodiversity, creativity and a love of animals and books. By the bestselling author of The Tea Chest and The Wonderful Thing about Phoenix Rose.
a one-of-a-kind collage artwork, featuring a purple hoof print from my Sparky pony (who is also a character in the series), dried lavender flowers from my property, and other floral features to symbolise the glorious ‘mindful walk’ garden at the entrance to Millie and Stella’s school.
a postcard of Sparky and myself, signed on the back (and snuffled-kissed by Sparky),
a Millie and Stella bookmark, and
optionally, if your young person would also like a lock of Sparky’s mane, I’m happy to provide that as well, but I do appreciate that non-horsey people are not always fond of locks of hair… 🙂 If you win, you can let me know.
How To Win a Prize Pack
Pre-order a copy of Millie and Stella, Best Friends Forever (The Lost Ponies) before 15th April, 2025 (pre-order links below, or order from your local bookshop).
Email a copy of your receipt (along with your name) to: submittojo@outlook.com
That’s it! I will draw five winners out of a jar on 16th Apri!
Have you always wanted to write a novel, but just haven’t found the right time or motivation? Maybe you’ve tried before and found it too daunting or you’ve got so many ideas, you don’t know where to start. If this sounds like you, then I invite you to Join Me on Sunday, 18th May, 2025, for a transformative journey where we’ll take your ideas and bring them to life.
I’m Here to Guide You Through the Process
Writing a novel can be a challenging task. It’s not just about stringing words together, it’s about creating a world, developing characters, and weaving a story that engages and captivates readers. It’s a craft that requires skill, patience, and a whole lot of creativity.
That’s where I come in. With years of experience in the world of fiction writing, I can guide you through the process of turning your ideas into a compelling novel. Whether you’re a first-time writer or a seasoned veteran looking for a fresh perspective, I’m here to provide the guidance, feedback, and support you need to bring your novel to life.
And…
Over the course of our journey together, we’ll explore the fundamentals of novel writing, from character development and plot structure to pacing and dialogue. You’ll learn how to craft a narrative that not only tells a story but also resonates with readers. By the end of our time together, you’ll have a solid foundation in the craft of novel writing and the confidence to take your work to the next level.
Book now! Places are limited, so be sure to secure yours early. I can’t wait to see what stories we’ll bring to life together.
What a delight to have met you and participated in your wonderful course. It was so helpful in many ways, and seeing the other participants once a month, hearing about their stories and nutting out our ideas and processes together was really special.
JK – Write Your Novel participant
Writing a novel is a journey that requires passion, commitment and, importantly, guidance from an experienced author. Don’t put it off for another year! Let’s embark on this adventure together and make 2024 the year you write your novel. I look forward to meeting you and helping you achieve your writing dreams.
Okay, so it’s not so much a TOUR as it is fun two-day celebration! I’ll be at Gympie and Kilkivan libraries next week! Thank you to Gympie Regional Libraries for your support. I hope to catch up with many readers I’ve not yet had the chance to meet.
Gympie Library: Friday 29th September 2023, 5.30
Kilkivan Library: Saturday 30th September 2023, 10am
Come along and celebrate The Wonderful Thing About Phoenix Rose! FREE event, but you need to register. I’d love to see you there!
I had a great chat with YouTube star, Orion Kelly (That Autistic Guy), about what terrible travellers we are, late autism diagnosis, writing neurodivergent characters, planting seeds of change through The Arts… and more! You can watch it now and marvel (as I do) at how much I talk with my hands… 🙂
Anyway…. I’ve made a guide of 23 things you can do after closing the book to keep the love going. Perfect if you have a book hangover and you just aren’t ready to let the story go.
Sign up now to make sure you get yours! Hurry! I’ll be sending it out soon!
It is only recently that I have come to fully accept this as a potentially permanent situation and learn to heal the internalised shame of this particularly frustrating dilemma. But to explain how this happened, I’m going to have to go back in time.
I learnt to read early. I was an enthusiastic reader. I had very specific interests in stories, especially anything with horses or animals or fairies and magic. I can decode text. I am not dyslexic. I was a good student and, generally speaking, excelled in almost everything (until senior years when I had exceptional highs and lows and nothing in between (I was never going to be mediocre, only top or bottom… but that is a completely different story).
However, despite being a good reader, I was always baffled at how quickly other (good reading) kids finished books. I distinctly remember thinking at a young age and beyond: I’m a good reader so why can’t I read as much as the other good readers? I was an accurate reader and I had high comprehension but I was not fast. I realise now that I compensated for a lot of this by being the best student. I did all the work. I spent whole days working on one project. The moment I didn’t get a near-perfect mark, I was asking for tutoring. I made copious colour-coded notes and taped them all over the house. I read out and recorded my study notes onto a cassette tape and played it back to myself while I slept. (I’m not even kidding.) In short, I worked and worked and worked (setting up a lifetime pattern of burnout).
As an adult, I’ve always been truly confounded by readers who say, ‘Oh, I loved it and finished it an a day.’
A day?! What?! How?!?
For me, even if I LOVED a book as hard as you could LOVE a book, to finish a novel in TWO WEEKS would be a fast rate for me.
Then I had my son and it all ended. I couldn’t read anymore.
What I didn’t know back then, which I do now, is that I am Autistic and ADHD and knowing what I know now, here is what I think happened. When I had my son (and I got book contracts, and I had to move house and renovate a house and wind-up a charity and lots more), my poor brain’s less-than-optimal executive functioning skills were pushed to levels they’d never been to before. Our brains are very clever, though, and mine worked this out and made the choice for me: my son was the priority. Essentially, my brain shut down a whole lot of other pathways in order to prioritise my child. Reading was cut from the list. I also now know I was in Autistic burnout, which I had been for most of my life since the age of 15 and burnt out brains have no qualms about dropping your hard-won skillsets.
For the past ten years, I have essentially convinced myself that this is a temporary problem. But reading ability has never recovered.
Reading and ADHD
Difficulty with reading is a common ADHD complaint. Every AuDHDer is different but for me, these are some of the ways reading poses challenges for me.
I have ADHD impatience but I also have the strong Autistic need to finish something I started and do it really well (preferably perfectly), but having a slow reading rate means it simply takes me too long to get there and those conflicting drives create stress.
The AuDHD brain craves novelty and keen interest. If the content hasn’t grabbed me by the second chapter, I’m out. I simply CAN NOT go on. (I do want to make it super clear here that often people think ADHDers have a choice in their behaviour… that if they just tried harderor if they just focused more they could get it done… but it doesn’t work that way. That’s a longer conversation for another day, all about transmitters and dopamine.)
Inertia: once I get interrupted, it is difficult (sometimes impossible) to initiate the task again.
My sensory processing difficulties (e.g. noise, smells, temperature, clothing, body position) are such high distractors that I can lose focus and have to start again.
I can’t read off a screen. (I don’t know why exactly but I just can’t.)
If I do get distracted, I need to go back and re-read passages or pages over and over because I need to feel that I have read it deeply and properly (I do not skim read!). This becomes tedious and fatiguing.
Unfriendly font types and lack of white space are a problem. I have been reading about dyslexia-friendly fonts lately and exploring those but I don’t feel I’m knowledgable enough about them to say more about that at this stage.
Having to be still is a big problem for me. Until recently, I had NO IDEA how much I fidget. Something is always twitching. This is challenging for long hours of reading. (I also can’t sit through an entire movie.)
I will finish with a final (but exceptionally important) challenge, and that is that I am a highly visual and sensory reader. If there is trauma on the page, I don’t read that in a theoretical sense with a bit of sympathy… I FEEL it. Literally. In my body. In my organs. And I SEE it in minute detail in my head and it NEVER GOES AWAY. So often, I am traumatised by fiction and simply cannot read on.
Non-fiction books
I have been able to read more non-fiction in paperback form than fiction, which I think is largely due to the amount of white space, bullet points and diagrams that break up long-form text. It’s also easier to put down a non-fiction book (whose content is grouped in chapters and sections) and then pick it up again later because the next chapter doesn’t necessarily depend on having read the previous chapter, whereas reading fiction requires that you keep a lot of story-world and character information in your head in order to link earlier information to later information to make sense of the whole story.You can also often flick through non-fiction books and skip the bits that don’t have high interest, unlike a novel, which requires you to read all of it.
A Hereditary Problem?
We know that ADHD is highly heritable. Interestingly, both my mother and maternal grandmother were also great readers until they hit a point in their life where they said they simply couldn’t read any more. I’m guessing this was about when they hit burnout and their executive functioning took a long walk up a mountain to rest.
So What Do I Do?
Firstly, I read almost exclusively on audio. If it’s not on audio, I can’t read it. (So please, publishers, can we have everything on audio at all times? It’s an issue of equity and access for all.) For example, with tremendous irony, I am waiting to ‘read’ Sally Rippin’s book, Wild Things(which is ALL about kids having difficulty reading, which my son does too) but I can’t read the book and so I am impatiently waiting to get it on audio at the end of this year. Oh, the irony 🙂
Over the years, several people have said to me that ‘audio books are cheating’ or that ‘it doesn’t count as reading if it’s not a book’ or that ‘it’s lazy’. Loves, this hurts.
Some people have very rigid beliefs and ideas. I mean, if a blind person listens to an audio book, would you tell them it was cheating?! No, because (a) what does that even mean?! (b) I doubt you are that rude and thoughtless because it is perfectly okay for someone to access a story in whatever way supports them best; and (c) story is story! It still teaches you empathy, history, culture and mood. (Hello, our Indigenous populations thrived for many thousands of years on oral storytelling.) You can still visualise the story in your head. You still cry and laugh and shudder and gasp. You’re still transported to other worlds, relax and get excited. Your brain is still working; it’s just working differently. (At which point, I’d like to refer everyone in the world to Chloe Hayden’s book, Different, Not Less.) To say it’s cheating or doesn’t count is such an ableist, elitist, privileged, crappy thing to say. Please don’t take away our joy, and don’t shame us for not being able to do what you can do.
Okay… taking a deep breath… and moving on.
Secondly, I HAVE pushed through a handful of paperbacks in the past decade in order to review them or support author friends but it is agony and NOT because their book is agony (their books are great!) but because it is just so difficult for me: it takes so much energy. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, which I guess is how kids with reading difficulties feel too. Big, huge, warm, fuzzy hugs for all the kids struggling with this right now. It gets better, I promise.
Thirdly, in my book club, there are two of us who need books on audio (one of us with ADHD and one of us with vision requirements) so we will only choose books that are available in formats that suit us all. Easy.
Where to From Here?
I am now taking ADHD medication. Will my reading ability (as slow as it was) come back? Only time will tell. And maybe when I finally get hold of Sally Rippin’s book I will know what to do 🙂
I am learning, though, to be kinder to myself. Neurodivergent individuals hear, read and absorb a staggering amount of negativity in their lifetime. We become exceptionally good at taking on this criticism and turning it into our own internal voices.
I have been carrying a big load of shame about being an author who cannot read. I’ve also had to start saying no to requests for cover quotes for books (something I see as a tremendous privilege and honour, and something I know is extremely important to authors) because I simply cannot read the manuscript. (It can take me a week, or more, simply to read my own manuscript during editing phases.)
I am learning that, as much as I might want to, I will never be able to keep up with a lot of stuff that goes on in the publishing world and that I will never be able to contribute as much in terms of reading and reviewing and talking about others’ work as much as I want to because I am atypical. And I’ll never be able to travel as much and speak as much and be as productive business-wise as I truly want to be. Honestly, that makes me pretty teary.
Difficulties with reading and writing (and learning disorders, ADHD and Autism) may contribute to poor self esteem but what I want to do more than anything is be a role model for my son, to help him learn to undo the damage that’s been done to his sense of self through the schooling system (side bar: we are now homeschooling) and know that some of us (actually, quite a lot of us in the world) do things differently because we need to and that’s okay. What’s not okay is that we don’t yet have full supports in place as normal access rather than them being ‘extra’ or ‘special’ supports.
But I am nothing if not a hopeful person who sees a problem and tries her best to change it. So here I am, talking about the stuff I still find hard to talk about because as Glennon Doyle always says, We Can Do Hard Things.
—-
In #2 of this series, I will look at the ways ADHD has negatively impacted me as an author. In #3, I will look at the ways ADHD has positively impacted me as an author.
*Autistic burnout (Sidebar: I run Autistic & ADHD Retreats on Burnout on the Sunshine Coast, just in case you know anyone who needs a retreat.)
P.S. I’m just going to finish here by encouraging anyone who thinks they have a child with a neurodivergence of any kind to seek early assessments and support as soon as possible. It is much more difficult to rewrite your understanding of yourself and your brain, and learn what supports you need in life, and to avoid myriad damaging flow-on effects and co-occurring conditions when you are in your 40s than it is when you are still in primary school. We need to know why we struggle. We need to learn how to navigate this world.
The saying goes that children who read become adults who think, and this year I am once again delighted to continue my sponsorship of a Story Dogs human–dog team. I am exceptionally lucky to be sponsoring Mercedes and Cleo who visit Sunshine Beach State School to assist early readers with their confidence by extending a paw and hand of support!
Mercedes and Cleo, I hope you have a wonderful year together with your young reading friends!
I am very proud to announce that I am now an official sponsor of a Story Dogsteam here on the Sunshine Coast, sponsoring Ella and Charlie (pictured). Story Dogs is a registered charity that supports literacy programs in schools by sending in a volunteer human-canine partnership to help students on their paths to becoming confident, enthusiastic readers.
I first came across the concept several years ago via an American website and then looked for a similar program in Australia. I looked into volunteering with my Golden Retriever Daisy, but quickly realised Daisy was too much of a clown and I didn’t think we’d pass the behaviour test! Now, with my son starting Prep this year, I came across the program again and was truly excited to discover that I could add my name to the list of enthusiastic sponsors who help to keep this program running around the nation.
While the sponsorship money is pooled across the country to ensure that no child misses out, the beautiful faces of my personal sponsorship are Ella and Charlie, who volunteer at St Thomas Moore primary school here on the Sunshine Coast, and I have committed to sponsoring a Story Dogs team each year that my son is in primary school.
As a former English teacher and now author, I know that reading is the keystone skill to a life of opportunity.
You don’t have to be an official sponsor to help out too. You can donate or volunteer your time. Just visit the Story Dogs website at www.storydogs.org.au.
There are many similarities with creating books and creating kids–the gestation, the labour of getting them out into the world, the letting go. And most of all, is the nurturing process, the drafts and drafts of ‘growing up’ with them, of listening to what they want to do while simultaneously trying to shape them into what you want them to do. Writers will tell you that each book’s process is different, just as every child is different. Here’s what I’ve learned so far from each of my very different (published) book babies.
The Tea Chest
As an aspiring author who’d been rejected over one hundred times, I truly didn’t believe this book baby was going to make it out into the world. Perhaps like a mother who’d struggled to conceive and had lost so many babies along the way, I was well prepared to ‘lose’ this one too. I was shocked when this book sold, struggling to find excitement though it was something I’d wanted and worked so hard for for so long. I didn’t trust it. Fortunately, it all worked out, and it worked out far better than I could have dreamed.
But the biggest thing I learned from this book was to trust the magic. Writing a book takes discipline, sacrifice, artistry and more than a sprinkling of magic. I wrote the book I wanted to read. That was it. It was a lesson that took me twelve years and ten manuscripts to learn, but I got it. Finally.
The Chocolate Promise
This book was written with a young baby in arms, excruciating levels of sleep deprivation, endless hours on long country roads to doctors, specialists and real estate agents as we make a difficult transition from the bush to the beach, gambling everything we had on a 115-year-old renovator’s ‘delight’, simultaneously relocating our family business to a new geographical region, with many months split between homes. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I drank so much coffee and ate so much chocolate (as research, but it doubled as caffeine too), blindly packing up my stuff to go and write for three hours at a time while a friend came to look after my young son. I never want to write a book under those circumstances again. Yet, I did it. I learned that even if a book feels like it’s going to fail, it won’t. I learned that I can make deadlines under the most crippling of circumstances. And I learned that the story always turns up. Even when I think I have no idea what I’m doing, the story has its own ideas and if I turn up at the page, it will turn up to meet me. Trust. Trust. Trust.
The Beekeeper’s Secret
This book turned up unexpectedly. I’d been trying to write a family saga set on a coffee farm and had done heaps of research into coffee but I wasn’t getting any ‘signs’ to support that I was on the right track. So I had to sit back and say, okay, what else am I interested in. Everywhere I went, I saw bees, beekeepers and honey. I began researching bees and fell head over heels in love with them. I started to write a story (a corporate sabotage), but it wasn’t working and I had Catholic nuns in the background who were trying to wedge into the story. But they didn’t belong there. Again, I had to stop and say, ‘okay, what do you want?’ Maria Lindsey started talking and she didn’t stop. This book wrote itself so easily. Don’t get me wrong; it’s always hard work. But Maria’s voice was there every time I fired up my laptop. I trusted her, stepping outside of my comfort zone, delving into some darker places, and it all came together. With this book, I again learned to trust the story but I also learned to trust my readers. I was worried my readers would baulk at the change of direction this story took, but they didn’t. They came with me and loved it. I also learned that writing a book doesn’t have to be hard. Easy books are still good books.
Three Gold Coins
Okay, so fourth novel in you’d have thought I’d learned a few things? Well, as previously stated, each book is different. This one was my most difficult book yet. I wrote three separate versions of this story. The final word count is around 110,000 words but I would have easily written over 220,000 in the process.
I mucked it up.
Firstly, I wrote the ‘wrong book’. I started this book in the Cotswolds in England and it was called Foxleigh’s Cheese Emporium and the novel revolved around two sisters, Lara and Sunny Foxleigh. But I got 50,000 words in (half a novel) and realised I’d written myself into a corner that I couldn’t get out of. So, I did what any sensible author would do and ran away to Tuscany 😉 While in Tuscany, I found a way to reincarnate Lara and Sunny Foxleigh into a totally new story.
Next, I mucked it up again. I started writing the story and backstory arrived. But I didn’t like the backstory and didn’t want to go there. I simply didn’t do books like that. So I constructed all sorts of plot and backstory to avoid writing what I didn’t want to write. I sent it off for an appraisal and upon reading my editor’s notes I realised my fatal flaw. I hadn’t listened to the story and I hadn’t trusted myself to write it.
I wrote a third version, one that went to difficult places, far darker than I’ve been to before. It was hard for me emotionally. I struggled. But good advisors kept encouraging me to continue and I pushed through it. I realised how much I have avoided writing about deep, deep pain because I didn’t want to feel it myself. But it was what the book needed and it is far, far stronger now than it was in the second version. It is now the story that wanted to be told from the start. I was a very, very slow learner on that one. In hindsight, I think that the commonly given advice to writers–to write what you’re most afraid of–is actually spot on. I know I am now a better, stronger writer for having gone to the place I didn’t want to go. I’m no longer afraid to go there again. This book made me grow ten-fold over what any of the previous books did.
Book Five?
What’s next? I’m pleased to say that book five is so far behaving itself! Phew! I am hoping it will be the easiest kid yet. It will be out in 2019.
Sisters, Lucinda and Natalie, run The River Read at Noosaville
Have you ever dreamed of chucking in your ‘real’ job and owning and running a bookstore instead? Of being surrounded by endless books to choose from? A coffee machine whirring away next to you, book launches and that irresistible smell of new books? I did, all the time when I was working in a corporate job and trying to crack a publishing deal. My fantasy life was as a bookstore owner. So I thought it would be nice to ask a real person what that dream is actually like.
The lovely Lucinda Morley, co-owner with her sister at The River Read, answered some questions on what her day job is like.
Could you tell us a bit about yourself (and your sister) and your bookshop?
My sister Natalie and I bought The River Read 5 years ago. For a couple of years we had been on the lookout for an opportunity to go into business together. We had grown up in Noosa and are big book lovers, so when my husbands step mother told me that she was thinking about moving on and selling The River Read it was the perfect opportunity for us. 6 months after buying the shop we added the coffee side of the business which was another great learning curve for us. We had never run a cafe OR a bookshop! We came into the business with a lot of passion and energy, and took on board a lot of advice from experts in both areas. We get told by customers all the time that the shop has a great energy, which we think is a result if it being something we put a lot of love into.
The courtyard at The River Read
I think a lot of us dream of quitting our day jobs and running a bookstore. Is it really as much fun as it’s cracked up to be?
It’s pretty fun! We still get a buzz whenever new release books arrive, especially from authors we love. It’s pretty great going to a work being surrounded by books all day. It’s especially great because we do it together. Obviously there’s a serious side – paying the bills, hiring staff etc. but overall we love it. What do you love most about your job?
Reading! It’s funny because people assume we come to work and get to read all day, but the opposite is true. We constantly have people (customers, book reps) telling us we MUST read this or that book and it can be really frustrating because you go home with a pile of books and not nearly enough time to read them. How many books do you read a week/month? On average I’d say a book a week – sometimes more sometimes less. It depends on the size of the books and how much spare time I get (which is often not much). What’s been the most challenging or unexpected thing that’s happened since you started? What really amazes me is that after 5 years running and working in a bookshop, there is still not a day that goes by that a customer asks about an author I’ve never heard of. There are so many books and authors out there! It used to really frustrate me but now I just listen and enjoy learning every day. You can’t read everything so we really take on board the wealth of knowledge our customers bring in.
What are your top three pieces of advice for someone who dreams of having their own bookshop?
Do your numbers. Having a bookshop is wonderful but unfortunately there isn’t a lot of money to be made from them. You need to have a variety of products to be successful.
Don’t try to be everything to all people – you will never win. You heed to decide what kind of bookshop you want to be, which is determined largely by your location. We are in a tourist area so we stock mainly the type of books people read or buy when they’re on holidays. We have a local customer base also, so we do cater for that too, however we don’t do for example a lot of reference books. There are literally billions of books out there and you can’t stock them all.
Keep reading books you love. When we first bought the shop I felt pressure to read outside my usual genres so I could sell them but reading really started to feel like a chore. I do read lots of different types of books but I’ve gone back to reading for pleasure. You can’t know everything about every type of book and you’re better off being honest to customers and saying ‘I don’t personally read a lot of that type if book, but….’ There are lots of ways to learn about different books without forcing yourself to read it all – listen to customers, friends, family, book reps. You need to keep loving books or you loose sight if why you started doing it in the first place.
The saying goes that children who read become adults who think, and this year I am once again delighted to continue my sponsorship of a 
