As a wild child growing up in rural New Zealand, I always wanted to be a writer.
I wrote stories and poems, and read voraciously - scientific encyclopaedias, poetry, stories, mythology, scripts (even dictionaries and thesauruses) - everything. I read authors like Oscar Wilde, T.S.Elliot, Enid Blighton, every mythology book I could get may hands on, Dr van der Kolk, Tenessee Williams, and Arthur Miller, and I drank in movies and theatre.
Later I studied theatre and performed in London - earned a diploma in journalism, and a bachelors of natural science in the South Island of New Zealand - and a diploma in communications and a masters of counselling in Australia. I learned all about the natural world, and people, and theatre, and stories - especially stories. Because through everything I wrote.
I have written: wildlife documentary scripts and pitches; flora and fauna encyclopaedia entries; short stories; corporate communications; feature articles; newspaper articles; poetry; advertorials; children's stories; technical documents; and children's books and rhymes under the pseudonym Mira Mee.
I am not a wild New Zealand child anymore - but I have become a writer - which is all right by me.
NB: I also wanted to be an All Black when I was about five. I didn't get to be an All Black - but I was a Southern Knight, an ice hockey player, and we won the inaugural Woman's Ice Hockey championships in Queenstown, New Zealand, which was pretty cool.
