Hey there . . . 

I fell in love with story as an eight-year-old, when I sat wide-eyed, listening to my teacher read Charlotte’s Web. Even then, the aspect of the story that had me most engrossed was the off-the-page romance developing between Fern and Henry Fussy. I absorbed every word of that book, and ever since, I've been passionate about story and the romance genre.

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My next moment of inspiration hit when I was nine and learned about Carly Little, the teenage author of 101 Excuses for Not Doing Homework. When I saw that book on the shelves in my local bookshop, I vowed that I, too, would be an author before I reached adulthood. Things didn't pan out that way, of course — I was in my early thirties before I started writing in earnest — but I'm here now and that's what counts.

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​So, what inspired me to pick up my pen? I visited a small town in Nannup, Western Australia, and was utterly charmed. It had everything a small town should have — flower boxes lining the streets, homely cafés, a one-hundred-year-old pub, an abandoned bakery rumoured to be haunted. I immediately started imagining characters walking the streets — a painfully shy, introverted woman arrives in town, wanting nothing more than a place to belong, and the gorgeous farmer with tanned forearms (of course!) who is instrumental in making her dream come true. I had a vision for this story, only trouble was, I had no idea how to make it come to life.

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Cue the next ten years of intense self-directed study. I read countless articles and books on the craft of writing, attended workshop and conferences, enrolled in courses, entered competitions and devoured judges' feedback. I attempted to write the manuscript three times, but each iteration just wasn't living up to vision I had for it, the story that I knew was in my heart. I put it aside and wrote other things — short stories, a novella, other manuscripts. I even smashed out the first draft of one story (60k words) in nineteen days! But nothing spoke to me as profoundly as my Nannup-inspired story.

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I went on to commission manuscripts for a UK-based publisher and worked with the authors I signed to develop their stories and bring them to a publishable standard. I learned how to combine all the elements of storytelling I'd studied over the years to produce a story with depth and meaning. A story with heart. And I used this knowledge to finally bring my vision to life. This story, percolating in my mind for a decade, became Home to the Heart Country, my debut novel, which will be published in December 2025 by HQ Fiction, a division of HarperCollins Australia.

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I now help aspiring and emerging authors who, like me, yearn to tell the stories that are in their hearts. So, if you're a writer and the words you're putting on the page just don't resemble the story you know is inside you, consider exploring my services or signing up to my Stories with Heart Newsletter.

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Thanks for reading,

Libby