Jocelyn Harewood says, ‘Being runner-up for the prestigious Premier’s Literary Awards made me feel I was really being a writer. So exciting, like the previous Christmas Eve when Australian Literary Management contacted me to say they wished to take on my first novel. That was one hell of a Christmas present.

‘Now, another gift is the website, inspiring me to write again, and also revisit the past. JG Krantz says about Mussels : “The voice is timeless, intimate, hilarous. It definitely speaks to today's youth.” I found that thrilling.’

Jocelyn started writing because her son wouldn’t read. She wanted to write books with fewer words and less of the writer’s presence. She was also appalled by the work coming out of America, which seemed harsh, angry, almost brutal with obscene language. It amuses her that some reviewers criticise her language. ‘I wanted to give reluctant readers something that is theirs, their own language, their own country, their own suburb and their own interests,’ she says.

Pan McMillan published Voices in the Wash-House and gave her a 3-book contract. Then there was a wonderful morning when Voices was on the full-colour front page of the Age Saturday Extra , in ‘Twenty terrific books for family reading’.

Her next books were about the pain some of her children’s friends had to suffer, and how bravely they coped. She wasn’t aware that they were also funny until reviews kept mentioning it. ‘I’d say they’re about courage,’ she says. Worms in the Night was about Penny, whose mother died just before her 16th birthday, and Moose who was dyslexic. Movement on the Sofa was about Steven who had an horrific motorbike accident. Spiked was about another Steven (she must like that name) who suffered from food allergies and his mate who committed suicide, and Stepping on Mussels was inspired both by the problems the kids were having with drugs and a Victorian Council of the Arts travel grant to do research in Paris - where her hero and his mate sort themselves out on a world stage.

During these times, she was teaching Maths and Science part time. But she was able to leave and write full time when Michael Heyward of Text Publishing asked her to write three novels based on Geoffrey Wright’s films; what Wright calls his suburban gothic grunge trilogy. She now entered a world of writers and poets who eked out a living giving talks and running workshops at schools and libraries. ‘This was a very creative period, because the other writers I’d meet at literary events give you energy, challenge you, make you feel that it’s all possible.’

When she was finishing Wright’s trilogy, which were black, bleak, her father died and she felt black and bleak herself. Out of nowhere she started a young kids’ book, Flying Colours , which she wrote in two weeks. ‘That is my favourite book,’ she says. ‘It’s full of sunshine, colour, hope, triumph. Fifteen years later, my ten-year-old granddaughter sent me an email to say she’d just read it, and that it was her favourite book ever. That was such a buzz.’

Another interesting period started. In partnership with her daughter, they developed a business that covered all aspects of publication: text, design, illustration, editing and taking the work to a printer. They made pamphlets, business reports, booklets and books. Then they worked on layout and design for Maths books. In 1998, Jocelyn started working with Lonely Planet; first as an editor then moving to contract work as a travel writer. Again, a fabulous period in her life, travelling around with a purpose. She wrote, or co-wrote, several travel guides. In 2012, she began writing a series of travel adventures, starting with Vanuatu. Hopefully, she will write about her adventures in China and Europe, and re-vamp some of her manuscripts which have never been previously published.