Creating and sharing content is central to the success of my business as a freelance writer and editor, but it’s also something I love to do for its own sake. After more than five years of creating blogs for my Writing for Councils business website, I suddenly had a desire to write and publish a whole new range of articles that aren’t a natural fit for that site. I tried to suppress this publishing dream (my sensible business-oriented self knows how wise it is to stick to a niche!) but I simply couldn’t.

These book reviews and reflections on writing, publishing and freelancing keep bursting to the surface and demanding to be written, so I have created this place for them. This is particularly important to me now that I no longer write fiction. Dean and I co-authored two novels (‘The Driftwood Seekers’ and ‘The Water Race’) in our younger days. We were partway through a third novel before abandoning it at a time when we needed to focus on paying the bills!

Dean and I live in Nelson, where Dean paints abstract landscapes. I have highlighted some of his recent paintings here, but you can view the full collection on his website.

If you dig deep enough into this website you will also find some family stories, which I have published on this website to make sure I don’t lose them. If you are interested in personal history writing you can access these by typing ‘family stories’ into the search bar or by scrolling down to the earliest posts in the online publishing category.