I’m an Australian independent author whose work spans fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, mystery, speculative fiction, contemporary drama and nonfiction.

 

With Scottish, Irish and English family roots, I’ve had a longstanding interest in the folklore, history and landscapes of Britain and Ireland — influences that can be seen particularly strongly in works such as ALBA: Land of the Sidhe, while my Australian setting and experience inform other stories, including the steampunk goldfields of Golden Province.

 

My fiction ranges widely: from ancient landscapes shaped by folklore and forgotten agreements, to dinosaur-filled frontiers, distant worlds, alternative histories and contemporary relationships. Rather than writing within a single genre, I allow each project to find the setting, characters and form that best suit its story.

 

Many of these stories have been a long time coming. Their earliest versions were written years ago and stored away on old floppy disks, waiting until the time was right for me to return to them. During Melbourne’s COVID-19 lockdowns, unexpected time at home gave me the opportunity to rediscover some of those old ideas and begin bringing them back to life. Some have since been rebuilt, expanded and reshaped; others began much more recently.

 

Droichead Books is, in part, about finally giving those long-held stories the chance to become the books they were always meant to be.

 

Before the expanding Droichead Books fiction catalogue, I also wrote nonfiction. My book Psittaformes: Breeding of Colour Mutations in Parrots explores parrot genetics, breeding and the inheritance of colour mutations, drawing on another longstanding area of knowledge and interest.

 

Across my fiction and nonfiction, curiosity remains a common thread — an interest in understanding how things work, where they came from, and what might happen when familiar worlds are looked at from a different angle.