Representative Samples of Writing
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Sample One: FRANCES HODGKINS: A PRIVATE VIEWING
An exert that communicates my motivation for being a biographer. My life’s work has been about recovering histories that might otherwise be lost. The driving energy has been to lift these figures from the margins and place them in the centre of the page. The principal subjects of my books have been talented women – painters and writers. They have been as famous as Frances Hodgkins and as infamous as Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme). The power of these stories has not been in the ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’ these women have committed, but in the way they have navigated their worlds to make a huge contribution. Sample Two: THE SEARCH FOR ANNE PERRY Prelude from The Search for Anne Perry where Perry’s identity as Juliet Hulme, part of the teenage Parker-Hulme duo who murdered one of the girls’ mothers in Christchurch in 1954, is revealed. Sample Three: THE SEARCH FOR ANNE PERRY Anne Perry, her agent and publishers were approached a number of times before they accepted my proposal to write a biography. Sample Four: NGAIO MARSH: HER LIFE IN CRIME This exert is from the beginning of chapter one. My intention was to write Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime in the style of a ‘classical’ crime detective fiction novel. Celebrating and reinstating lives in history for a general readership was and is important to me. Sample Five: NGAIO MARSH: HER LIFE IN CRIME During her life and after her death, there were many questions asked about Ngaio Marsh’s sexuality. My book celebrates her complex same-sex relationship with Sylvia Fox. Sample Six: THE QUEEN’S MISTRESS [Unpublished memoir, October 2016] This is book is one of a two-volume autobiography that contains an historical fictional thread emblematic of real life events in the story. |
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