AKA DOING WHAT YOUR HEART CALLS YOU TO DO
I’ve always been a writer at heart. When I was still at school I would write short stories on my Mum’s massive electric typewriter. I once called up the Hobart Mercury newspaper, when I was about 14, to ask them how much it would cost me to start up my own magazine. The person who answered wasn’t sure. I remember asking “Ok. But just say … like, is it over $100?”
(They said “yes, over $100”. Darn!)
After I left school, I decided that the best way to work my love of writing into a career was journalism. Being paid to write seemed like a dream.
But as many people will know, journalism changed. What I once loved, writing about celebrities, devolved into sheer filth. I pretty much gave up when a popular UK magazine sent me to interview former EastEnders actress Danniella Westbrook, not long after her septum collapsed due to cocaine use. She had gone clean and I wanted to do a “triumph over tragedy” piece. They said “No. Stitch her up”. That was 2000. (FTR I bailed on the interview and then pretty much bailed on journalism).
I knew I wanted to do something else…
At the time, which was about 21 years ago, I was about 18 months in to studying astrology, at the time. I thought about trying to write about it, about Saturn returns and so on, but the astrologer who was coaching me told me I wasn’t good enough at it to write about it yet. She was probably right!
She actually also said that if I started to write astrology she wouldn’t be my friend anymore. Wtf?!?! Weirdly enough, I was like, “oh ok then…” So I didn’t write about it and even turned down an offer to write an astrology column for Malaysian Women’s Weekly!
Instead, I decided to try my hand at writing fiction. It really was something I did to test myself. I just wanted to see if I could do it. So I started and the more I got into it, the more my characters and story mattered to me and I became quite obsessed about getting the book published.
Lucky for me, the good people at Penguin Australia and Orion in the UK took my book on and published it. Working Title even optioned the book as a movie (they also made Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones and so on!)
What happened though was that the first novel came out, maybe (or maybe not, I don’t even remember!) flashed in and out of the Sydney Morning Herald top 20 selling books for a moment, and then basically disappeared, gaining a small and dedicated following and then … that was it really. Well, actually, it was optioned by Working Title Films (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones and Notting Hill) but that deal fell apart when their Aussie office closed down…
I had a two book contract at the time, so I “had” to write another, which I did. This one gained even less traction.
Moreover, I wasn’t that into writing fiction, I barely read it anymore myself, all I read was astrology, and I had so many ideas for astrology books that I had to write them all down in a long list.
Plus by the time I reached this point, I had another two years of astrology studies astrology under my belt … and the astrologer who told me I wasn’t good enough to write astrology and that she wouldn’t be my friend anymore if I did had stopped speaking to me anyway!!! …
So could I become an astro-writer?
At the time, writing astrology seemed kind of mad. I mean, how do you parlay a career in freelance journalism, a sprinkle of TV, radio producing and novel-writing into a life writing astrology which could pay my bills?
Actually, it turned out it wasn’t anywhere near as hard as I thought it would be to do. Mainly because I met a man you might have heard of called The Amazing Jonathan Cainer, astrologer extraordinaire, who showed me it was ABSOLUTELY possible to have a career doing something I was (and still am) obsessed with – aka writing and astrology.
Mixing writing and astrology really is my dream job. The fact that it pays my bills is a dream come true. With a lot of hard work thrown in, of course!!!
So here we are.
My latest book, the Mercury Retrograde Book, was super fun to write.
It’s here and currently cheap as chips if you buy it as an eBook!
Have a beautiful day…
