I am so pleased to be on your delightful blog today to talk about a Christmas memory of mine – a memory that's all about those wonderful things that can happen during that special time of year and … Christmas cookies!

In my house, making kolucis was an EVENT.

They were the favorite Christmas cookie recipe of my Gram Mogilewsky and my mom. You pronounce the Polish (maybe Lithuanian?) cookies as “kuh LOTCH eez.” The cookies are like tiny nut rolls, only sweeter, crispier, and flakier. And don't worry, you do not have to decipher my Mom's writing underneath years of baking stains - the full recipe is written out at the end of this post.

When I was growing up, making the kolucis was a BIG DEAL. After all, it took two days. Two days! And it meant that-gulp-Christmas was officially comin...

Creating authentic and believable characters can sometimes be a challenge when writing and for that reason many authors often use elements of themselves and their own personalities, or of people they know and love.

Sometimes you get a great idea and launch into structuring the bones of this amazing new story, but creating characters who will ultimately do all of the talking and really bring it to life can take much more time and work. How they walk, talk and act, or how they dress and what they like and don't like all become vital in making them feel real and like someone the reader can identify with or recognise.

As a first time author, one of the biggest things I struggled with was facing the fact that readers, family and friends might be thinking that the main character was ba...

In the last few years I’ve had the opportunity to not only write 4 books, but have also been lucky enough to bring 2 of them (so far) to publication. In that time I have also read. A lot. Not just for fun, although that is the best kind of reading, but also many text books as part of the Bachelor of Writing I have been studying forever! (That’s a slight exaggeration, but it feels like forever!)

From women’s fiction, chicklit, and historical romance, to instructional guides, text books about editing and how-to’s, there have been only 2 books that have had a real impact on me and now have pride of place on my desk, within arms reach so that they can devoured again and again.

My writing career began at the April 2014 Fiona McIntosh Masterclass in Adelaide. I’ve mentioned this in cou...