From the moment I learned how, I have loved to write. I think I finished my first novel at about age six, a few pages of carefully crafted words about a chipmunk, that I had my parents photocopy at work and stapled together one evening in my bedroom.

I completed an honours degree in English literature at the University of Birmingham then set off to see the world. Travel became my first love, and I decided to follow my peripatetic father into journalism so I wouldn’t have to go home and get a real job.

I worked for four years as a reporter at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and then landed in Australia in 1992, where I scored a job at The Sydney Morning Herald. During my twenty years as a print journalist, I reported on the genocide in Rwanda and famine in Sudan, worked as an editor on the foreign desk, edited sections across the newspaper, and supported the early transition from print to digital in a role at smh.com.au.

A husband, three children and a Sydney mortgage later, and my career took a different path. Since 2008, I have been working with academics, governments and not-for-profits to better communicate their stories. You can read more about my professional work if you’re interested.

But I have never lost my passion for telling a good story, whether it’s a breaking news item or an expertly crafted novel. I still love the process of writing; the whole dreamy business of allowing the characters to come alive and create their world, the chipping away at a sentence to find the right word that will make the cadence work.

Maya’s Dance is my first foray into historical fiction. It was harder than I thought – but so worth it. I do hope you will agree.