From childhood, Moira loved to write. Throughout school she enjoyed writing, but pursuing it professionally was never a possibility. Her father was a doctor, her mother a nurse. “Medicine was a fairly safe choice,” Moira says, “and writing was a career where it wasn't a certainty that you'd have high income.”
She became a doctor but still wanted to write something. However, being a doctor was so demanding that she didn't take up writing until her thirties. She produced a novel—a fictionalized version of her travel in China after university. She got excellent reviews. Moira sent it off to as many agents as she could find, and found one who wanted to represent her. Suddenly, it seemed she was on her way as an author.
“I had one lengthy phone call with the agent where we went through all possible areas that she thought needed polishing. I worked on those and sent it back to her but didn't hear anything.” It wasn't long before Moira found another agent who was interested if she was willing to rewrite it from the first person to the third person. She did the hard work and sent it off again. “I got back a really brief letter: 'Thank you, I'm no longer interested.' It was really disappointing.”
A decade went by, and Moira found herself eager to write again, this time purely for her own enjoyment. She set herself the challenge of creating a thriller and chose Western Australia as her setting.
As she was writing just for herself, something surprising began to happen. “The characters took on a life of their own; they started doing things I hadn't thought about. It justflew.” One day, an agent called from Australia. Three weeks later, Moira had a publication deal. Her novel, Cicada, was published in March.
“Even if it hadn't been published I still gained so much from the process,” says Moira.
