I'm writing on Substack!

Here's hoping it takes...

Substackians! I’m taking the plunge and starting my own Substack publication. I’m an Australian writer of many and diverse things over the decades. I’ve worked as a screenwriter and editor of many Australian television drama series, as a screenwriter-producer, as a librettist, and as an author of short stories and articles. My novel The Second Cure is published by Penguin Random House. (It’s about a global pandemic transforming societies and a right-wing Christian-adjacent demagogue. It was written pre-COVID, pre-Trump. Weird, as the kids of today say. And yeah, Walz is a kid.) My passions are diverse, as have been my various careers, including biology (mainly plant science and ecology) and as a solicitor in criminal law, both prosecuting and defending. And music. And movies. And literature. And politics. And food. And travel. And gardening. And...

Two years ago, my family and I migrated from Sydney to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where we’re putting down solid roots. (Well, as solid as they can be when your city is built over an actual swamp.) I’m spending my time taking Dutch language classes, tending our new biodiverse urban garden, renovating our home, travelling, and writing. My next novel, set in Australia, Ireland and the Netherlands, and spanning half a century, is currently baking in the oven.  

This is the Heemraadssingel, the canal near our home in Rotterdam. In winter, it freezes enough for the seagulls to carouse and cavort on the ice. In summer, at the merest glimpse of sunlight, people flock to the banks to absorb the photons.

When I first dipped my eyes into Substack, it was with what was, by that point, well-earned skepticism about social media. I’ve been a member of various online communities since the early 1990s, starting with Internet Relay Chat—I was the first person in my circle buy a modem, leaving my friends bewildered as to why my phone was always engaged, while I merrily chatted away with other geeks across the world (and back then, the only people online were geeks. We rejoiced in finding our tribe, untroubled by geography). Since those pre-graphical-web days, I’ve been a blogger and a member of various online communities, and of course have seen the rise and fall of many a platform.

Like so many others, after I left Twitter, I’d pretty much given up on finding a good online community again, fearing they were all doomed to be tainted by the limited worldview of megalomaniacal billionaire techbros crafting communities in their own shallow images, imposing their own idiosyncratic, neolib, selective concept of ‘freedom’.

But now, cautiously, I look at Substack and think, ah ha. So this is where the good people have gone.

And here I am. Hello!

I’m going to be writing about an eternal outsider’s perceptions of the Netherlands (because, let’s face it, at my age I’m never going to pass as a local). And about travelling in Europe, something I love doing but which entails way too much when you travel from Australia—in distance, expense and carbon emissions. And about flora and fauna and my new Dutch garden, about literature, about politics, about life.

Me, in Delft. Photo by my old pal Adrian.

I won’t be paywalling anything on Substack. I no longer need to make money from my writing, so please, if you think what you read might be worth paying for, spend that money instead on another writer here, someone earlier in their career. It might make a big difference for them.

But I do hope you’ll subscribe, and maybe share. That would be lovely.

I expect that Ruby, the gorgeous pooch with whom we share our lives here in Rotterdam, will feature a fair bit here. So let me introduce you. As you can see, she is a real looker, with bucketloads of charisma. In love already? Well, you’re only human.

She’s a poodle/cocker spaniel cross. Also known as a spoodle, or in places that like a good potty joke, a cockapoo. (Yes, England, I’m looking at you.) Ruby is four years old. She joined our family as a pup in Sydney and moved with us to Rotterdam. And here she is, standing on that weird white frozen dirt they have here in winter.

Talk again soon!

Mx