Author Archives: susan

That’s my son, Lachie, at the top of the photograph, holding this big cardboard key and looking bewildered. It was taken 14 years ago, when he was in Grade 1. What 6-year-old even knows the meaning of ‘organisation’? Not my … Continue reading →

To be released in December (a Christmas gift for brave girls) is Vasilisa the Wise, with stories retold by Kate Forsyth and illustrated by Lorena Carrington, published by Serenity Press. It includes my second-favourite fairy tale (the first is Beauty … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, there were lots of really popular, really exciting tough-guy action thrillers by Robert Ludlum. Some on them were made into films, and they were really exciting and really popular too. The titles? The Bourne Identity. The … Continue reading →

Not many posts lately  – “Blogday,” usually Sunday, has come and gone and come and gone. Time to start posting again. I’ve been sick – just a cold, but the worst I’ve had for many years. No mucking around with … Continue reading →

Rebecca Solnit is my new literary crush. I’ve just (and I mean just, as in right now) finished Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Although she does talk about her own walks, it’s not a book about the author’s walking – … Continue reading →

We went away to Port Fairy for five days after Easter. Both of us tired, neither of us intending to do much. Nothing much actually involved a great deal of eating (having breakfast late, out, going to the pub for … Continue reading →

Empathy, the way that we can place ourselves, imaginatively, in the position of the other person, is at the heart of what we do as readers, as people striving for a generous understanding of one another. Reading by Moonlight Brenda … Continue reading →

I have just come back from walking in the hills above Chewton, a township to the east of  Castlemaine. Our walk took us from the ruins of the Garfield Wheel (once a massive water wheel that was used to power … Continue reading →

We’ve just had two delightful Canadian visitors. A retired couple, on a three month holiday. They’d been to Singapore, Hanoi and Seoul before arriving in Perth. Then Adelaide and Melbourne. And Castlemaine, of course. Why not? In the gold-rush days, … Continue reading →