About

WORDS are my business. I bring more than 50 years’ experience to helping you put the final shine on all your printed, published and spoken material

My career has ranged from reporting to feature writing, from columnist to editor on everything from trade, technical and professional magazines to mass market publications and daily newspapers in the UK and Australia. Duties have embraced reporting, feature writing, commentary and editing.

I began by doing the hard yards with an old-style apprenticeship as a junior journalist on a venerable English weekly newspaper; everything I wrote was done under the stern gaze of an unforgiving chief reporter. Accuracy and attention to detail were paramount. These hard-learned principles have remained with me throughout a broad working life in the UK and Australia.

Specialist writing included many years as travel editor of The Age and later the Adelaide Advertiser as well as being a featured food and restaurant writer for magazines and newspapers.

For several years I held senior editorial production roles at The Age, Cairns Post, the Sun, Sunday Herald and Herald Sun.

Since setting up Yarraboy Editorial Services in the late 1990s, I have been commissioned by publishing houses and individuals in Australia and the UK to edit book-length manuscripts of fact and fiction across all genres and a wide range of topics. I have also revised and proofread dissertations and theses for graduate and postgraduate students.

In October 2008, I passed the inaugural examination of the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) to join Australia’s first cohort of fully accredited editors, a qualification renewed in 2018.  I am also an advanced member of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP), and a member of the Crime Writers’ Association of the UK and the Australian Society of Authors.

In 2007,  I completed my first novel, Done Deal. This was shortlisted for the NSW Genre Fiction Award. The sequel, Washed Up, achieved the same accolade a year later and won me an Australian Society of Authors mentorship with author Sophie Masson.

The third book in the series, Death by Diamonds, was released in 2014 after being delayed while I undertook extensive research in the UK that had led to the publication in 2012 of the semi-fictional memoir From Paupers To iPads – a Journey Through Seven Generations.

In 2016, I was placed under contract by Endeavour Books (UK) to publish my fourth crime fiction book, Twisted Trees, and republish all the earlier titles as e-books. Death Comes By Drone, the fifth book in the crime fiction series, was published in late 2018 and a sixth remains a work in progress. The entire series is available as paperbacks worldwide

After a protracted period of research, I completed a follow-up to From Paupers To iPads. This told of tracing my family’s hitherto unknown origins in Wales, Scotland and Cornwall.  Titled Celtic Skeletons, it was published in late 2019 as an illustrated paperback and e-book with worldwide sales.

In early 2016, I was one of eight crime writers worldwide selected for a residency at Canada’s prestigious Banff Centre for Excellence under the tutelage of bestselling authors Louise Welsh and Michael Robotham.

For recreation and inspiration, I have competed for many years at elite level in Masters Athletics nationally and internationally over distances from 3000 metres to the full marathon. In October 2019 I was selected for the England Masters’ half-marathon team for an international race in March 2020, although my ability to cover the longer distances is steadily diminishing as the years increase.