I'm sure other writers have no difficulties writing nice.

I spent the year behind on deadlines and everything else. It's only now in December that I feel even slightly caught up. 2016 has to be better.

The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken.

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.

I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.

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.