I give people If You Came Softly when they demand proof that novels for teens can be as good as the best novels for adults.

My favourite vampires are all very scary indeed. So the idea of falling in love with one is just weird to me.

I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite.

Sure, Malcolm Turnbull is less anti-science and anti-culture than [Tony] Abbott, but low bar, and there's not a lot to show for it beyond rhetoric.

Iloved Ashley Hope Perez's heartbreaking Out of Darkness set in late the 1930s in a small town Texas. It should win all the YA awards.

We still have disgraceful policies on asylum seekers and Aboriginal Australians continue to die in custody.

I decided to read something I normally hate: a cosy mystery. You know one of those mysteries where everything is tidily wrapped up at the end and everyone lives happily ever after? An Agatha Christie kind of mystery. They are so not my thing. But then someone was raving about Barbara Neely's Blanche White books and they sounded interesting.