It is best that I come clean at the outset. Being an author of books for children and that mysterious and powerful breed called "young adults" is a magical thing. Describing how I came to be such a creature, able to enter bookshops in a single bound and clutch my latest work in my hot little hands – is not so easy, so bear with me.

I was born on July 12, 1968 at Mitcham Private Hospital in Melbourne's east. My older brother, David, had died eleven months earlier, one month short of his sixth birthday.

I was a skinny kid who had short brown hair and could swim like a fish and climb trees like a monkey.

I can remember always loving fairy tales, my Gran used to read to me from a Readers Digest volume of fairy stories – which I still have. Aesop's fables I adored and still regale my children with. And then there was Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree and later still, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Nancy Drew.

My parents owned a newsagency so I was surrounded by books and magazines and most importantly – comics – from a young age.

For an eight-year-old I had a rather stunning grasp of American history – courtesy of Archie comics.

Unfortunately for my parents and teachers I had a disturbing tendency to take what I read very seriously. So seriously that I even managed to faint whilst reading an Enid Blyton story about the death of Robin Hood. I kid you not. Once a book cover of a particularly evil looking child made me swoon. Put it down to a vivid imagination. Even now I cannot watch gory movies.

My childhood was one of playing in paddocks, backyard pools, climbing pinetrees and coming home when the streetlights were on. Great scads of time filled with imaginary games, with me, my younger sister and the neighborhood kids.

Looking back I can remember reading saving me from dire boredom during my many bouts of bronchitis and asthma. Much better than counting the number of flowers on my wallpaper.

I was one of those strange kids that loved school and used to fantasize about everyone being sick except me so I could have the whole place to myself. A very strange child. I attended the local primary and high in Donvale, in Melbourne's east. My parents divorced when I was seventeen and my sister was fourteen.

I was lucky to have a very close group of friends and we managed to survive our teenage years more or less intact. We are still a tightknit group some twenty years later and my husband is from that time.

After high school I went to Melbourne University and that was where I came across the wonderful Classics department while looking for an extra subject. I couldn’t believe you could study mythology and from that moment I was hooked. If that wasn’t enough, in English we got to look at fairy tales and Alice in Wonderland. I was also free to indulge my love of history and then I discovered feminism – there was no turning back now.

After uni I lectured at RMIT in a unit called "Context Curriculum" – espousing truths, or what I supposed at the tender age of 22 to be truths, about "Sex, Gender and Society" and "Power, its Use and Abuse".

It was while teaching that I decided to take my own advice and follow my dream of being a journalist. So it was off to the local paper where I learnt about the Fourth Estate. I adored telling people's stories and especially fighting with local councils. After a while I decided I wanted to try radio and it was off to SBS Radio. There I won a United Nations Peace Prize for a piece on East Timor. That award sits proudly atop my microwave and I gaze at it while I wash dishes and cut school lunches.

From SBS it was off to the ABC Newsroom where I relished 15 minute deadlines and interviews with the Dalai Lama and Jeff Kennett (not together!). Around this time we decided to have a family and in January 1998 Zeke arrived, followed by Atticus in 1999 and Keziah in 2001.

One day while juggling Zeke and pregnant with Atticus and trying to get ready for work at the ABC Marcus suggested I "write that book I was always talking about writing". "What book?" I responded. I remembered. Then I did a course on "How to Write a Picture Book" run by the wonderful Virginia Lowe (see links) and came up with "The Screaming Irrits".

While waiting for the rejections to roll on in I got on and wrote "Ariadne: the Maiden and the Minotaur" which lo and behold, was accepted by Lothian in Melbourne. They also signed my beloved "Screaming Irrits" which is due out in February 2007.

Next I wrote "Persephone: Secrets of a Teenage Goddess" – yes, the love affair with myth continues.

I just adore taking those characters that seem little more than a footnote to the story (and often they are young women) and seeing what else they have to offer. I enjoy 'reading against the grain' – an invaluable skill for a journalist and historian and one of my favorite tools as an author.

I now live with my husband and three children on five acres of bush in Park Orchards. Before you start thinking I am a filthy rich author I should tell you the land is owned by my husband's parents and we are glorified squatters with wonderful babysitters up the driveway. Marcus, a physicist who builds robots that are going to save the world (see links), is also a frustrated architect and our house is an organic jumble of octagon rooms, geodesic roof and a bathroom that has see-through roof complete with pentagrams and a jasmine vine. It is like living in a really great cubby crossed with a tree house.

But perhaps the most satisfying thing is being able to say to our kids that dreams do come true – mine just happen to be on the shelves of libraries and bookshops.