WRITE NOW, I'M FINE

 3. A Drag of a Guy Chloe picked up the pouch that the jacks came in and ran her finger over the monogrammed initials of its former owner. S.E.T. One of the first things Chloe found out about her family, the thing that lead to their discovery, was that Stanley Thomas had died in odd circumstances when he was eight years old.  'That's morbid.' Guy took the pouch and threw it back in the box. 'I just think it's interesting. The boy who played with these jacks was murdered a few miles away from here. You don't find that interesting?' 'What's more interesting is that you'd rather play with a dead kid's toy than contemplate what a potential goldmine you're sitting on. Anyway, murder was never proven.' 'What do you think happened, then?' 'I think he saw one too many westerns, decided to camp out in the woods, fell down a hole, and accidentally set himself on fire.' 'I think it was murder.' 'Well whatever it was, ...

 Little Treasures was a novel that came to me when I thought about all of the little collectables people amass over a lifetime, that they pass down to their families. It occured to me that even the cheapest stuff must've meant something, had a past of its own.  LITTLE TREASURES 1. Chloe Chloe Brady couldn’t believe how twisted fate could be. She lost her parents in February, found out she was adopted in March, and discovered that her last blood relative was dead in April, which made her the sole inheritor of a magnificent, Cape Cod-style house. What she wanted more than anything was a family but, in lieu of that, a mansion would suffice. Then she saw the place. ‘Jesus.’ ‘So it’s a fixer-upper,’ said her boyfriend. Up until April, Chloe thought she’d have to bop Guy over the head, caveman style, and drag him up the aisle, but he’d been very keen to commit since the reading of the will. These days, it was Chloe’s feet that were turning blue. She wasn’t an idiot, she’d wa...

 This story was loosely inspired by a very famous missing persons case that happened here in Australia before I was born. Three children went to the beach on their own for the day, and never came back. I grew up hearing about this story at school, usually from a teacher in the context of the danger of talking to strangers, but as a child all that struck me about it was that it was a spookily intriguing mystery. Back in 1998, when I became a mother, (admittedly, not the greatest one), it took on a whole new degree of obsession. Nobody appreciates the needless tragedy of a missing child like a mother. THE BEACON Erin and Connie Danvers loved the beach. They lived with their mother and their little sister, Daphne, in a little white house at the top of a road, at the other end of which was the beach. The twins set out every morning of the school holidays, carrying their towels in one hand and a coin purse full of ice cream money in the other, (Erin also kept a Lucky Coin in hers – one...