ABOUT ME

Hi there!

I'm the New Zealand author of the zany junior fiction novels, How Not to Stop a Kidnap Plot and How I Alienated my Grandma.

As a child most of my time was spent with my nose buried in a book, much to the disgust of my younger sister who was always trying to entice me to play with her. Despite a love of reading, I followed a career path that led away from words – training and working as an accountant. I have a love for numbers and logic too.

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It wasn’t until much later in life I decided to try my hand at creative writing. In 2011 I completed the New Zealand Writer’s College Introduction to Creative Writing. This was followed up by a weekend novel-writing course where the idea for my first novel, How I Alienated my Grandma, was born. Spurred on by the encouraging remarks of my tutors (and without so much as a short story to my name), I gamely, and rather naively, set out to write a junior fiction novel. Miraculously (albeit slowly) I finished it in late 2012.

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In 2013 I entered my manuscript for the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon award – a competition for unpublished writers. Five months later, I was visiting my elderly mother-in-law in hospital when I received a phone call to inform me that I had won. My excited shrieks brought two panicked nurses rushing into the room.

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Since then, How I Alienated my Grandma has been published by Scholastic NZ (NZ and Australia) and ARS Edition (Germany). It was a children’s choice finalist in the 2015 NZ Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and is a Storylines Notable Book.

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My follow-up novel, How Not to Stop a Kidnap, was released by Scholastic NZ in October 2017. It is also a Storyline Notable book (2018), and was a finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults in 2018.

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These days I juggle my time between writing and writing-related activities (I'm available for school visits), as well as working part time as the finance manager for a charity, and doing Mum duties for my two children and our two dogs.

I love hearing from readers, so feel free to send me a message via my contact page. I will always reply.

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Suzanne