NOVEL:

'Toy Soldier'   a spine-chilling murder mystery set around Perth suburbs and the Blackwood Valley in the magnificent South West of Western Australia.

In 1983 her brother Paddy lent her a computer for 3 months, to write her first novel.  Her family & friends has entered the Blackwood Marathon for 3 years and she saw a story in their adventures.

Frances ended up writing the first draft of "Toy Soldier" and 16 children's stories.

Although the novel hasn't been published, at university in 1998, she reworked the text as a treatment for a feature length screenplay. 

Currently she's working on the 3rd draft of her novel and yes, you guessed it - it's being adapted to the big screen too.

SHORT STORIES:

Frances has written poems and stories for as long as she can remember - she still has her notebook from 1968.  If fact, some were adopted for the class study at a prestigious private High School.

In 2002 Frances travelled to Co. Cork in Ireland & attended weekly workshops at Munster Literature Centre  with writers such as:

Gregory O'Donoghue,

Gerry Murphy,

Richard Ford

and James Lasdun to name a few...

She also attended as many festivals as she could during her 14 month stay in the inspiring cradle of storytelling.

Frances believes more publishers in Australia should support short stories, they suit the more condensed attention spans of busy, time-poor lifestyles.

(Although she enjoys writing short stories, they always seem to end up as scripts.)

Her first formal publications happened while studying for a BA in Writing with a supporting major in Media at ECU (WAAPA).  She helped establish Peter Cowan Writers Centre on their Joondalup Campus and was published in their 1st anthology "Urban Scrawl" in 2000. 

Then came the 2005 WA Spring Poetry Festivals...  

POETRY:

Frances regularly publishes small chapbooks of her poetry.

Sample poems & postcards

Her words have been published in anthologies, magazines and on the web many times during & since earning her BA in Writing with a supporting major in Media Studies in 2000, from ECU (WAAPA). 

Most recently in 'Landscapes' Vol 4 Issue 2 Summer 2010-11  Sustainabilia The Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language  Editors Glen Phillips and Andrew Taylor ISSN 1448-0778

BETWEEN 2005 & 2008 POETS CORNER  was held on the 3rd Saturday of each month at Pages Cafe in the State Library, Alexander Building in the Cultural Centre of Perth, Western Australia, for 3 years. The last held in October 2008.

POETRY PUBLICATIONS:

Although Frances has been published in many anthologies but her first book of poems was released in 2003:

'Hidden Capacity ~ a poets journey' a book of poetry published in Cork, Ireland.

(Exerpts available on the Chapbooks page)