Detective Dave Burrows country has a special pull on me. I guess that's why I shifted Dave to his little town called Barker. With Dave and his wife, Kim, living there, I got to hang out in the Flinders Ranges every year, even if I hadn't got back there to physically visit.

When I was growing up, and we headed off into the bush camping, there was never, ever any outback loos in the middle of nowhere.

I laughed so much when I turned up at Cave Hill the other day and found this... I was in the middle of the bush, a few hundred kilometres from anywhere, and there was a toilet.

THE CURE FOR ISOLATION IS CONNECTION!

A long time ago, when I first started writing and this website, blogs were a big thing. I'd pop in here and tell you all about my day, and hopefully you'd leave me a comment and tell me about yours.

There is nothing like the word Haighs for giving a person away as a South Australian!

‘What is Haighs?’ as a friend asked the other day. What?! Only the best chocolate in the world! Better than Swiss, better than (sorry to all native Western Australians!) The Margs Chocolate Factory (only marginally, though) and certainly better than Hershey’s, even though the Americans claim otherwise.

Yesterday, my son turned 21! Yes, 21! And I made a mistake. Every April book usually comes out on his birthday, and for some reason, I thought this year's was the same. So I thought Hayden's birthday was today, rather than yesterday. Good thing I worked out on Sunday, that wasn't the case!

It was lockdown and lockout. The WA government had told me I couldn’t visit my parents in South Australia because the borders were remaining shut for the foreseeable future. I would normally head to their place in the Flinders Ranges for a break.

Last year, I made a decision that I wanted to go camping a lot more than I had been. When I was a kid, our family used to camp a lot; we saw some amazing and wild parts of Australia, places I'll never forget. So with all that in mind, I bought this little ripper (which is now called Dusty Rose, after all of your input! I also call it the office) and started to plan a route up in the north of WA.

One of these books is not like the other… Can you tell the difference?

Yep, one is large, and one is small. One has the first few chapters of Rising Dust in it; one doesn’t. Both have gorgeous butts on the cover. (That’s a Dave butt, for all of you who hadn’t realised…)

I’m excited! I loved doing new things, promoting authors and talking about books. I also love wine and coffee.

So this new thing? It’s not a book club, but we are talking about books.

Did you spend much time in your library as a kid? Do you still now?

I loved our little library at the Orroroo Area School when I was a kid; if I lived in Orroroo, I'd still love it. I remember our library being full of fun things like beanbags so we could snuggle in and read, tapes and games.

Writing is a mysterious business. It's a lot of smoke and mirrors; living with imaginary people, crazy Google searches and staying in my head a lot. My imaginary friends talk loudly to me sometimes and too quietly for me to hear at others.

Ah, how much love do we have for Detective Dave Burrows? Well, I for one, have a lot! And obviously you guys do too, because we’re here publishing the 5th in the Detective Dave Burrows series in nine weeks, this baby is going to be on the shelf.

Here we are on the 4th of January. It’s only going be what feels like a few days time we all say: ‘wow, it’s December already, where has the year gone?!’

Anyway, I wanted to start the new year with a bit of a ditty on me for all the new people who have recently discovered my books; I’ve had a few people who have got in contact over Christmas and said they’ve read my books for the first time. I LOVE hearing this!