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Friday 17 February 2012

Penguin has released a SECOND edition of JACKAROO in the smaller 'C' format. This brings the number of printed copies to 14,000.

Penguin has now nominated JACKAROO for a second award: the Colin Roderick Award ($10,000 and the H T Priestly Medal). Again, I am completely blown away by the response and support.

My one gripe is the way bookshops put non-author celebrity books up front in high stacks -- but don't give emerging authors a real go!

We've added another radio interview below. Michael Cathcart from Bush Telegraph on Radio National did a kind interview a while ago. Here it is below.

JACKAROO was nominated by Penguin for the 2012 National Biography Award. Unfortunately, nothing came of it, but it was nice to be nominated.

Click here to read a review in The Melbourne Anglican newspaper

Click here to listen to radio interview on 4BC

Click here to listen to radio interview on 89.9LightFM

Click here to read about and listen to an interview on Bush Telegraph

JACKAROO: A Memoir ( Penguin ) is about the four years I spent as a jackaroo on four sheep/cattle stations, a year working in relatives’ woollen mills in England, and a chapter on my schooldays. As well as in bookstores, you can buy a copy at:

Dymocks, Fishpond, Collins Booksellers, Readings Books, Australian Online Bookshop

To order outside Australia: The Nile and Fishpond

The eBook is now available online at Borders Online 

Book Talks and Signing Events

Please email event requests (inc. interstate) to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Recent Reviews

Reviews just out in The Melbourne Anglican newspaper and OUTBACK magazine have been wonderfully kind and generous.

 
 

Week's Thought

Memoir, more so than autobiography, is the most special of writing genres because you open up for public view an intensely personal and powerful and specific period of your life; it must be so otherwise no publisher would bother to publish it. Privacy plays no part in this; you bare it all, telling your story warts and all, but honestly.

There is no greater reward from publishing a book than feedback from professional critics and readers. In my case I have been extremely blessed. The Age ('Gutsy story; absorbing read') and The Weekend Australian ('Engaging and engertic') just blew me away, especially when the samer reviewer in The Age wrote a few weeks earlier about another book, 'I don't know why this author bothered'. OUCH! Likewise, readers have been most generous, including new-found connectedness with at least ten former Habbies Howe jackaroos. All mind blowing; all fascinating; all very kind. Wow! What a privilege I have had. Thank you all.