About Jodie

Jodie wanted to be a genie when she grew up. Then she discovered they could spend centuries locked in a bottle and now writes about them instead.

When not writing about Ruby's adventures, Jodie has adventures of her own.

As a traveler, she's crossed the Rajasthan desert on a camel, plied Asian rivers on an elephant, driven a tuk tuk in Sri Lanka, dined in a haunted Scottish castle, climbed an active volcano on a tiny Pacific island, swam horses in the sea, dived with sharks in Sydney Harbor, parachuted from an old Cessna biplane, visited witch doctors in Africa, and explored overgrown temples in Cambodia, underwater caverns in Jamaica, and bat caves in outback Australia.

Jodie has now settled in Colorado with her husband and their adopted cat, Lola.

Random Facts

During school visits I am asked some interesting questions. Here are a selection. Click the question to jump to the answer.

1. Did you always want to be a writer?
2. Do you have any pets?
3. Did you do well at school?
4. Where do you get your ideas?
5. Where do you get your character's names?
6. What made you start writing?
7. How long does it take to write a book?
8. What is your favourite book?
9. What are you writing now?
10. Will there be any more Ruby books?
11. What's the scariest thing you've ever done?
12. How did you first get published?
13. What advice can you give people wanting to be a writer?
14. What's the best thing about being a writer?

1. Did you always want to be a writer?

The thought never entered my mind as a child. I was more interested in becoming a genie. After a while I realised this was never going to happen so I set my sights on becoming an elephant rider in a circus, or an entertainer who did tricks like tossing a top hat from my foot to my head. (I mastered this trick but, sadly my aspirations for becoming a clown never came to anything.)

I also wanted to be a vet, an architect, a trapese artist, an interior designer, a zoologist, a painter, a travel agent, an air hostess, and a photographer for National Geographic, amongst other things.

What I actually became was a hairdresser, a bar tender, an art student, a backpacker travelling around California in a rusty VW beetle, across India in a red double-decker bus, and through the desert on a camel. I tootled around Europe in a small van with a dodgy fan belt, beach-hopped the Mexican Baja picking up two stray Aussies, several Californian banjo players and a crusty old hippy in need of a beard trim. I cleaned houses, painted fences, catered for dinner parties and waitressed. I became a photo researcher and a Greenpeace photographer which had me on adventures in helicopters, on the Rainbow Warrior, and in small inflatable boats. I became a web designer and a multimedia teacher until I finally decided (at age 34) that writing was the career for me. That's when I moved to a beach house in Australia and wrote my first book, Ruby Rosemount and the Magic Carpet.

Funnily enough, throughout my careers I have always written constantly, every day, without even thinking about it. I have volumes of journals and boxes of letters to friends (which they have kept!) It never crossed my mind that I could actually write for a living.

2. Do you have any pets?

In 2011 my husband found a cat abandoned in the large park near our apartment. We took her to the animal shelter. After ten days no one had claimed her so we adopted her and called her Lola.

But my first pet was Honey a Labrador/Cocker spaniel cross who didn't mind me dressing her in bonnets. I was eleven when she died and cried for days. Freddy was a white budgie who liked to eat rice bubbles and ride on my shoulder. To-To, a blue budgie (named after Dorothy's dog in the Wizard of Oz) admired himself in the mirror, nibbled my earings, and talked a lot. He was a great little friend. Kitty mt first cat chased a German shepherd from our garden when she was a kitten and really ought to have been called Fang or Killer. She had a habit of sitting on the book I was trying to read and drooling on it. Bruce the black and white spaniel wandered into our lives one day and decided to make us his family. (I think he liked the banana cake I fed him when Mum wasn't looking). But how could I not? Look at those eyes. Cohuna (An Aboriginal word for companion) was my first horse. I loved to swim her in the ocean although she wasn't too fond of the waves. Sometimes, we'd race my friend and his horse, Cherokee, bareback along the mud flats by the lake. I fell into a lantana bush and broke my collar bone doing this, so don't try it at home please boys and girls. Cohuna grew very fat during the first year and we soon discovered that she was in foal. The school bus passed right by her paddock so the progress of her pregnancy was watched by everyone. She became a celebrity at my school and every day someone would ask 'when is the foal due?' While I was in class a message came - I was wanted in the Principal's office. The Principal's name was Mr Deadman and we were all terrified of him. I went to his office, trembling. Someone driving past the paddock had notified the school that the foal had at last been born. Mr Deadman told me to take the rest of the day off to spend with it. (He wasn't so bad after all.) I named the foal Taipan after a deadly snake. It was an inappropriate name for such a gentle giant. He'd poke his nose into whatever I was doing like a curious puppy. When I rode Cohuna he'd follow. He was never separated from his mother until the day she died.

3. Did you do well at school?

I'm asked this by students who might not be doing so well at school and wonder if they could still be a writer. I have to admit that I only did well when I was focused. The report below is of my early years at high school when I was focused on my school work. I did so well, in fact, that I was the dux that year.

A year or two later, although I remained an A grade student, my position in the class began to slip. I had a lot of turmoil going on and stopped giving my school work the same level of attention. My teachers were VERY dissappointed.

I blame it on the Dark Tunnel of Adolescence.

I could have done better. Even a half hour after school to go over what I'd learned would have helped.

If you're having a rough patch at school, it's never too late to change and become the best you can be. But the sooner the better!

Writing takes a lot of self discipline. Books don't get written by themselves while you're watching TV. The way to be a good writer is to write and write and write. There is no other way.

4. Where do you get your ideas?

This one is tricky to answer because I never have NO ideas. The idea can be something quite ordinary like the relationship between a dog and a child. It's when you start asking yourself questions such as what if?… how did?… why is?… that the story starts to build.

I collect my ideas by writing them down and keeping them in an ‘ideas' folder. There are so many ideas in there that even if I live to be 110 (and I'm hoping I do) I will never be able to use them all.

Ideas are the easy part. Turning the idea into a story is what takes the time, but it's fun!

5. Where do you get your characters' names?

I have a book of baby names which I have used but most of the names I use I made up by playing around with sounds like inkaperkle (a dried fruit Ruby uses to make a Healing Ointment in The Magic Carpet) and Polliwog (the dangerous flowers that threaten Mrs Pinkus in The Traveler's Telescope). Here are the explanations behind some of the character's names in the Ruby trilogy.

Granny McQuirky: Quirky means ‘having peculiar traits' which Granny McQuirky certainly does.

King Fantasma: The definition of fatasma is ‘illusion-caster'. King Fantasma is the genie king.

Uncle Cumulus : Uncle Cumulus is a genie in the Charm Police Force. Cumulus is also a type of cloud. Genies are very light because they are composed largely of air with a small portion of water, just like a cloud. This is why they are able to transform, levitate (float), vaporise (turn into mist), and permeate (pass through solid objects). We humans, on the other hand, are composed of much more water than genies, which makes us considerably heavier with very limited shape-shifting powers.

Nimbus : Nimbus is another type of cloud. In the book, Nimbus is Cumulus's son. Both of them are genies.

Sergeant Stratus: Stratus is a type of cloud which sits higher in the sky than a Cumulus cloud. Sergeant Stratus is a higher rank than Cumulus, so the name reflects this rank.

Ms Finkel: Finkel is the German word for finch, a small bird. All genies take bird form and tiny Ms Finkel takes the form of a finch in The Doomsday Curse.

Mr Swank: The word swank means ‘to behave in a way that you think will impress others'. Appropriate for Mr Swank, a genie with a big ego in The Doomsday Curse.

Horas: Horas (usually spelled Horus) is a god in Ancient Egyptian mythology who is portrayed in hieroglyphs as a man with a falcon's head. Horas's bird form is a falcon.

General Dreg: The meaning of the word dreg is ‘the most worthless part of something'. For example, the dregs of society . General Dreg in The Magic Carpet fits this description.

Mrs Pinkus: Mrs Pinkus is a fussy elderly woman who likes a lot of frills and lace. Her bathroom is described in The Doomsday Curse . ‘Everything in the bathroom was dressed in a layer of lacy pink frills: the toilet seat, the bag with the spare rolls of toilet paper, the bathmat and even the towels were edged in pink ruffles. Avalon was busy inspecting a frilly tissue box and screwed up her nose…'

6. What made you start writing?

I used to run a business and had a lot of work and deadlines. On the floor of my office was a Persian rug I referred to as The Magic Carpet. From this Magic Carpet came the idea of being whisked away unexpectedly. From the idea came the desire to write a book about it, and from the desire to write a book came the desire to be a full time writer. And here I am!

7. How long does it take to write a book?

It took me two years to write Ruby Rosemount and the Magic Carpet because I was still designing web sites full time while I wrote it. Ruby Rosemount and the Travellers Telescope took one year to write and Ruby Rosemount and the Doomsday Curse took less than six months. I'm getting quicker!

8. What is your favourite book?

There are way too many, but here are a few.

• The Hobbit
• The Lord of the Rings
• The Magician's Nephew
• The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Alice in Wonderland
• Anne of Green Gables
• The Secret Garden
• Matilda
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• The Harry Potter series
• A Wrinkle in Time
• A Charmed Life
• The Lives of Christopher Chant
• Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism
• A Series of Unfortunate Events
• The Unfortunate Incident of the Dog in the Night
• A Horse Called Elvis

9. What are you writing now?

Two young adult novels. One is set in London. The other is set in the Mississippi.

10. Will there be any more Ruby books?

I am not writing a fourth right now but that doesn't mean I never will. ;-)

11. What's the scariest thing you've ever done?

Leaving Australia on my own when I was 21 to backpack around the world was scary at first. But I soon grew accustomed to it.

Skydiving was also a scary moment. I learnt how to do it on my own rather than jumping tandem. Skydiving was always something I wanted to do because it seemed like the ultimate challenge - a sort of personal test. The logic was, 'If I have the guts to jump out of a plane, I'll have the guts to do anything.'

I was taught how to hold my arms and legs out like a starfish, arching my back so I fell chest first. If you don't do this you'll topple through the sky and get disoriented. Next I was shown how to check my altitude on a little dial on my chest, how to pull the rip chord, and how to control the direction of the parachute by pulling on two toggles.

The first man to jump hadn't listened to the instructors. He didn't steer his parachute and shot across the sky disappearing over the hill into somebody's farm. We had to go looking for him in the jeep. I was next.

At 10,000 feet I climbed out of the little Cessna biplane, and onto a cross bar attached to the wing. I could see rivers and farms below. The wind was whipping around me and I had to let go. That was the scariest moment because what I REALLY wanted to do was to wrap my arms around the cross bar, shut my eyes tight, and wait to land.

Anyhow, I jumped.

I fell through the air so fast that I could feel it pushing my face into weird shapes. I checked my altitude and at 7,000 feet pulled my rip chord. The chute opened (phew!) and I landed on target. I have to admit, I felt pretty invincible after that.

12. How did you first get published?

1. I wrote my book for almost two years in my spare time while I ran my web design business.
2. When I thought the book was finished I sent it to an editor for editing.
3. Then I bought the Australian Writer's Marketplace – a book listing all the literary agents and publishers in Australia.
4. I mailed my manuscript to all the literary agents listed and they all sent me a rejection letter. I have a small collection of them in a folder. Example: 'Thank you for your letter telling us about your work, which we read with interest. Unfortunately, after careful consideration, we decided that this is not really something for us...'
   Stephen King collected a lot of rejection letters. So did J.K. Rowling, so I consoled myself that I was in good company. It's part of the process and you shouldn't be discouraged by them.
5. The next step was to send the manuscript to some publishers. Most of them only accept manuscripts from literary agents but there were three suitable publishers in Australia who would accept a manuscript from the author. One of them was Omnibus. Three months after I sent it, Omnibus contacted me to say they were interested (at which I point I ran around the house waving my hands in the air like a lunatic). It was published in 2004.

13. What advice can you give people who want to be a writer?

1. Write a lot. The only way to become a good writer is to write. It takes self discipline to keep writing especially when you don't know what to write next and the sun is shining outside.
2. Read a lot. You can learn a lot from other writer's by reading their books.
3. Be persistent. You WILL be rejected by literary agents and publishers. It's part of the deal so don't take it to heart. If you really want to be a writer, never, EVER, give up. Success could be just around the next corner. If what you're trying doesn't work, try doing it a new way. But don't give up. If you do, you'll regret it at the end of your life.
4. Be happy with your own uniqueness. Don't compare yourself to others. There will always be someone richer, someone poorer, someone selling more books, someone selling less books, someone getting better reviews, someone getting worse reviews than you. There is no point in comparing yourself to others so just enjoy your unique talents and make the most of who you are.
5. Don't wait until you are 'successful' to be happy. Be happy now. We are as happy as we make up our minds to be. Some people have nothing and yet they are happy. Others have everything and it is still not enough. Decide to be happy, right now, with what you have. Don't put it off until you are a published author, or until you are a famous author, a rich author, an international best seller... or you will probably never be happy. The best time to be happy is now.

14. What's the best thing about being a writer?

1. Daydreaming. When I was at school I used to get into trouble for daydreaming. Now it's my job!
2. Writing: Coming up with stories, creating characters, developing a plot, building suspense and mystery, that's the best part of being a writer.