I am a very slow reader and a subvocalizer. That’s someone who has to say each word out aloud in their head. Until I met my husband, I thought that everyone subvocalized.

I’m not sure if it was the way I was taught to read when I was young, or whether it is the way my brain is wired. I tend to think it’s the latter. It didn’t stop me from loving books though and that’s why I am an author now. I did read but it always  took me a long time to get through a book.

Being a slow reader has its disadvantages. If you’re a student studying for an exam, it’s hard to get through all the required reading material. If you’re an author writing a novel, it’s a huge disadvantage because authors HAVE to read other people’s works. We learn from other writers about style and rhythm and use of language. And then there’s the research. I have had to do a heap of it for Little Paradise and the process has been slow and arduous. To a subvocalizer like me, with the exception of the dictionary, any book that is more than an inch thick is daunting.

To compensate for my disability, I listen to audio books as well as read.

If this problem was picked up in primary school, with a little help, slow readers would not carry this problem into their adulthood.

As I sit in my small office in a suburb of Melbourne, I think back to my nine days of solitary writing time at Lorne. While I was there, I could feel the space inside my head expanding with each day until, in the end it was as if I had a huge head like one of the aliens from the movie ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. Without the interruptions and distractions of daily life, my thoughts were given their freedom to fly. I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed there for six months. Would I have ended up being pure mind?

I am on a solitary writing retreat at Lorne, a seaside town on the south east coast of Australia. This area is one of the most beautiful places in the world – a land where mountains meet the sea. It is rugged, the beaches are pristine. It is a surfer’s paradise.

The house is set on the side of a mountain in a forest of gum trees so the birds are plentiful. There are tiny blue wrens and brown ones too, magpies, kookaburras, wattle birds, rosellas and a whole flock of sulfur crested cockatoos that sound like a coven of screeching witches. It’s a bird-lover’s paradise.

A retreat like this is essential for a writer. Dinners are simple, housework, non-existent, none of the clutter of everyday life. Once a day I drive to a secluded beach to take the dog for a swim – an estuary where the St George River flows into Bass Strait – and on the way back I might pop into the supermarket. Other than that, I don’t drive or have contact with other people.

I am more mind than body here which gives me the space to think about my novel, to follow a thought through to its conclusion without interruption.

At night I quilt while watching a good DVD.

Is this not a writer’s paradise?

I was thrilled to hear that The Lion Drummer has been named a Notable Book in the 2009 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards.

My congratulations to Andrew Mclean who created the beautiful illustrations.