Hi Stakes

Life is full of exciting opportunities and unless we are careful, all too often, too late we discover others we have either missed or been too afraid to grasp. Some years back now, Val had the chance to live on a property in Central Queensland for a year. At the time having recently arrived from the UK, Val had no idea what the real outback would be like, and the trip from Sydney to the property turned out to be one that opened Val’s eyes as to the enormity of Australia. Absent were any reminders of the verdant green fields of the UK countryside as Queensland was at the time in the grip of a major drought where brown had become the standard colour of the landscape. Finally arriving at the property, the lessons began. The challenge of saddling up a horse that doesn’t want to be was inevitably followed by the far more difficult test of staying up there when your horse had other ideas. With thousands of sheep lambing at the time, Val soon learned which end of the sheep was for eating and which was for… Perhaps the most important lesson learned in the Bush was not to get too friendly or try making pets of an animal that might be a lamb roast the next day. Eventually heading back to Sydney Val never made it that far and fell in love with Brisbane which was to become home. Apart from earning a living, Val has enjoyed stage acting, relishing the opportunity to stand on a stage in front of an audience and become a different character for an hour or two. At the same time, Val also wrote for the stage and earned enough dollars from it to starve. Since then, Val has worked at a lot of different things, traveled extensively in Australia and overseas, painted and lead a full life. These days, living on the Gold Coast in Eastern Australia, Val has finally returned to writing. Spending six days a week at the keyboard, transferring imagined characters and their stories to the page, Val has a passion for writing M/M Romance. When not typing away, Val and partner will mostly be found either with their dog, Barney, taking long walks by the ocean or traveling the world somewhere.