Cecelia grew up in the Barossa Valley, an area of South Australia predominantly settled by German immigrants. She loved school and learning. School plays, school picnics and events. Despite that, she remembers the struggle to learn to read – painfully stringing three letter words together - until one birthday, she sat down with my gift, a Famous Five book by Enid Blyton. The mystery story was so exciting, she finished it in one session and was a fast reader from that moment onwards.
Cecelia loved Enid Blyton, her Wishing Chair stories, Magic Faraway Tree stories, fairy-land and toy-land stories as well as the mysteries. A couple of years later, she discovered The Lion, Witch and Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It was so amazing, she read it seven times in a row! Eventually, she discovered there was a whole series… and she survived on this sort of fair until she was sixteen and read The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. That gave her a taste for adult fantasy. In search of more riveting reading, she discovered Stephen King and James Herbert. Stephen King’s Danse Macabre led her to H.P. Lovecraft.
Cecelia learned to sew when she was ten and fashion design was a creative passion. She dressed herself throughout high-school and university in her own designs. She tried putting seams where seams traditionally did not go, or had not gone for a decade or two. She also put zippers in unusual places and added flounces and uneven hem lines. In the mid-1990’s fashions available in the stores began to catch up to her originals.
Cecelia enjoyed writing poetry and short stories, although she was discouraged she had no success in competitions. (Competitions do work for some writers and give a limited few their start.) In 1988, she wrote her first full length manuscript, often scribbling on the train as she travelled from Newcastle to Sydney to attend post graduate study at university. In the year 2000, she brought my second full length manuscript into being, and 2004 saw her third full length manuscript. None was published at, that point, but she still keep writing.
In the year 2001, she explored another creative passion, which was dance. Cecelia spent five years learning Ballroom dance and participating in dance school showcases. She also learned Belly-dance and had a go at most other types of folk dance. She spent a year with a performing group, the Matinee Entertainers, before moving onto coaching after school sports, circus and gymnastics.
Cecelia loved fun and games and spreading the enjoyment among others. Always keen to find a dramatic outlet, she joined the production committee for a community Nativity performance and in 2010, a Nativity Play she wrote was produced by a local church.
Cecelia also tutors English and has been doing so under her own ABN since 2007 – trying to create that “aha” moment when reading becomes pleasure instead of pain for children struggling to read and write.
