About

The road that led to writing was strewn with painful and passionate detours...

I was born in Australia and, apart from two childhood years in England, grew up in Sydney.

As a youngster I was a keen cricketer. One sunny Saturday I launched a hopeful hook shot at a vicious bouncer. "Did I hit it for four or six?" I asked the paramedic. "I think you missed it," was his reply. "Try not to speak."

The ball had struck my chest and caused a cardiac arrest. I was clinically dead for two minutes. But we won the match, apparently, so it wasn't a complete disaster.

Once you're dead you've got little to lose, so I decided I was going to enjoy life.

After school I studied aviation for two years and qualified as an aerobatics pilot. I loved flying so much that I wrote about it to share it with others. My interest in journalism had taken off.

I studied Communications and English Literature at Macquarie University in Sydney, then put my life in a bag and set off to visit the places I had read about.

J.P. Donleavy, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce were my favourite writers, so I went to Ireland to learn more about them, or at least drink Guinness where they had. I fell in love. Not with Ireland. With an Italian. She invited me back to her eccentric fishing village in Puglia - the 'heel of the boot', where we lived for four years (including one in Milan) and I wrote HEAD OVER HEEL: Seduced by a Southern Italian.

HEAD OVER HEEL has sold around 40,000 copies, been translated into three languages, made into an audiobook and won a Victorian Premier's Literary Award. I recently finished my first novel and am now working on a sequel to HEAD OVER HEEL and a sitcom.

I am guest lecturer at City University in London, where I hope I give the MA Publishing students an idea of the author's role in the publishing processs (as well as how much authors suffer!).

After 10 years in Europe and the UK I recently returned to Australia, where I work for News Limited as a journalist, editor and columnist.

In my spare time I spoil my two children, squabble with my Italian mother-in-law and crick my neck watching aeroplanes while wishing I was in their cockpits.

I have also discovered a cure for hair.

Oh, and I'm planning an astonishing cricket comeback. At 40 I reckon I could still play for the Australian eleven. If I can just master that hook shot. …