ABOUT ME


I’m a freelance writer and researcher.

I’ve always enjoyed writing. I also like to discover and understand the nature of people and things. As a child, I wrote stories and poetry. Indeed, I still have the typed manuscript of a full-length story I wrote when I was ten years old! My dear dad spent hours typing it for me. At high school, I won prizes for my writing. As an undergraduate, I wrote assignments and scientific reports. I did lots of writing during my working life – first as a teacher, then as a public servant and academic. But most of that was formal or technical writing. As recently as 2002, I published my PhD thesis, Chaplaincy in Queensland State Schools: An Investigation.

Today, I write stories…from the heart.

Rather than writing assignments, reports and theses, what I really wanted to do was to write about life and people and everyday things. That is, I wanted to write in order to connect with ordinary folk, like you and me. With this in mind, between 2003 and 2005, I undertook several writing courses offered by the Queensland Writers Centre – writing your memoir, writing life stories, getting your writing published. These courses were just what I needed. And, as it turned out, when I was no longer in the workforce, I had the time and motivation to begin to write…stories from the heart!

In early 2007, long before retiring age, I left paid employment to care for my elderly mother who lived with my husband and me in her later years. As a way of revitalizing my mother’s memory and finding out more about her life while there was still time, I decided to write her lifestory. I did so, combining text with photographs and memorabilia, producing two large photobooks. You can read more about this process, and a little of my mother’s story, in My mother, a young woman (May 6, 2016). Writing my mother’s life story made me realize I had a lot of stories in me.

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In September 2015, after many months of preparation (and with much trepidation), I launched this website and short story blog. It was a ground-breaking event for me as a writer and researcher, and the beginning of an exciting new chapter of my life. If you’d like to find out how my website and blog came about, why it is called “Love in a little black diary” and what has made it so successful, read About writing.

One of my passions is photography.

I use photographs to enhance my blog stories and Facebook posts. The most widely read and shared story on my blog, The Bogantungan Rail Disaster: Have you heard the children cry? (February 26, 2019), is a good example. When my husband and I visited Bogantungan in December 2017, we stopped by the former railway station, now the Bogantungan Historic Railway Museum. I took numerous photographs of the buildings and the site. This visit, and my photos, stirred my interest in Bogantungan and the Medway Creek rail disaster (and the seeds of a story were sown).

Do you want to know more about me?

Many of the stories on my blog are autobiographical, my own lifestory in bite-size chunks. If you want to know more about me, read my stories!

And, please, make yourself known to me by leaving your contact details and writing a comment at the end of the story you’ve read. You can also provide me with feedback by completing a GET IN TOUCH form.

I would love to hear from you.

Judy

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Hi, I'm Judy


ABOUT ME
Short stories from the heart...about life, family and local history, people, places and food.

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