Writing Award 2023
Three friends begin a weight loss journey, prompted by vanity, competitive spirit, and health concerns, but along the way, they learn critical lessons about relationships, friendship, and what it really means to love yourself.
In 1916 Hew Butler is serving two years in prison with hard labour and has lost his rank as an officer. Jack Garvin, the senior warder, selects him for a sexual relationship, and in return secures parole for him. Conscripted back into the army, Hew is promoted to sergeant and awarded another medal...
Suffering from amnesia, astronaut Edred Starling emerges from cryogenic sleep aboard a malfunctioning deep space vessel, Aspire. He can trust no one as he races to recover his past and expose a saboteur hellbent on keeping Aspire’s crew from finding an ancient secret at the Sol system’s edge.
'The Fostered' is Drama about a man who inherited an old manor house, and fostered many children over the years. At first his disinterest borders on cruelty, but as the years go by his heart begins to melt. The story is told in the form of interviews with the participants in a docuseries.
When Daisy Thorne loses her man Sheldon Trent to reality TV superstar Melody Diamond, the most famous nobody in the world, she sets about winning him back in this deliciously satirical romantic comedy, shamelessly sending up England’s ditzy, glitzy celebrity culture where talent is so overrated.
Sally Robson must save the world. No. Two worlds. Grieving her beloved mum and reeling from a move across the country, she is dragged into Isglair. She agrees to retrieve a powerful crystal to save Isglair and Earth. She must brave ice, snow and deadly ice bears. Can she survive let alone succeed?
When Agoraphobic food critic, Peter Potts, accidentally time travels 20 years into the future – he discovers he’s going to be famous. Back in ordinary time, will he work up the courage to leave the sanctuary he calls home?
16yo Jodi is falling for the handsome teenage ghost living in a miniature replica of their house in her attic. Every night she watches him re-enact his death. If she doesn’t find the identity of his killer, she could become the next victim. But if she solves his murder, she could lose him forever.
Terry’s life is falling apart. An opportunity to take on a local milkround offers hope. Then Martin, his layabout son, announces that his seventeen-year-old girlfriend is pregnant, and Terry makes a visit to the doctor that changes everything. This is a novel about family, and friendship. And darts...
When several of us discover that our friend and fellow inmate is not only in love but also pregnant in a federal prison camp during Covid, we must find a way to hide this fact from the prison authorities so she and her baby can leave the prison safely, and no one is the wiser!
Two has been royals survive a brutal massacre. Aleksei is spirited off to the Bering Sea by a half Yupik, half Appalachian shaman. Mariia runs away with her Bolshevik beau to Finland, where, abandoned, she resorts to prostitution to survive. They find each other in a tale of luck and tenacity.
It's the next best thing to a time machine - thoroughly researched, vivid and immersive, it whisks you back to the underworld of early Georgian London, where you will meet some people you'd like to be friends with, and quite a few you wouldn't.
On the verge of spinsterhood, a jilted chemist searches for an irreversible love potion. But just when she spikes her ex, he's abducted by an all-powerful psychopath. The chemist must team up with a righteous cop to save her man, thwart oppression, and discover the real formula for love and loyalty.
Friday the thirteenth has always sprinkled good fortune on Tanya Bartek, but this over-the-rainbow luck runs out on her eleventh birthday when her not-so-imaginary friend, Dora, reappears after a six-year absence.
During the Napoleonic wars, a young woman with a secret past has her life thrown into upheaval, and learns that resilience is something she must fight for, and love may be found in the unlikeliest of places.
'The Descent' charts the turbulent lives and fortunes of three generations of the Iraqi-Jewish ben Kaif merchant family, from their rise to unparalleled wealth trading opium under the Raj as Asian colonials, to their Europeanisation and acceptance into the British aristocracy. From the Opium Wars to...
One common link connected the two women in Buck’s life, they both did their best to kill him. Alexandria sent him into freefall by writing him off with a letter, and Linda used her connection with criminals to threaten his life. But only one can succeed in earning the title of soul mate.
During the war, the paladin Kassander married the necromancer Silver. After all, the world was ending, so anything went. Unfortunately, they survived the war. With their marriage now messier than ever, a mysterious demon attack forces Kass and Silver to work together to save the realm.
Humiliated in front of the entire school by her ex-bestie Aimee, sixteen-year-old Mallory posts a false and vicious rumour about the girl on social media. When the post goes viral, Aimee commits suicide, sending Mallory and everybody around her into a downward spiral of chaos.
Addiction is a powerful force. However, on my journey to overcome addiction, I discovered that the mind, body, heart and soul of a human being is more powerful. Enough Is Enough shares my journey as an addict and how I learned to conquer not one but two drug addictions, with my supernatural powers.
Bridges of Madison County romance with a fantasy twist What if you were given up for adoption not because your mother didn't want you, but because she was trying to protect you from a curse? Great loves come and go profound ones mark your soul in ways that take the rest of your life comprehending.
In a world under extreme surveillance, we follow a lonely hit-man with a unique penchant for predicting people's behaviour, as he uses his savant-like skill to try and covertly murder a terrifyingly evil politician. All while struggling to deal with his attachment and co-dependency issues.
Felicity is the eccentric female heroine who along with her friend Jocelyn is on a mad cap quest to avoid a personal financial meltdown. The zany duo find themselves on a wild and wacky rollercoaster ride through life's up and downs. The sample shows the current dangers they meet in the local A& E.
Sixteen-year-old Diego Gutierrez possesses special abilities. He's faster and stronger than... well, anyone. When he's forced to moved from Iowa to inner city Boston, he'll discover many more kids like himself, and why they all ended up this way.
Novice detective, Elvis Carfrae, is invited to help his mentor and friend, detective Raymond Jake, to investigate a pedophile claim in Raymond's hometown.
Two women go to China a century apart. The first survives the Siege of Peking in 1900 and throws herself into British Consular life there for 30 years. The second goes to see where her grandmother's seemingly outlandish stories were played out and to discover if they were true. They were.
To save her dying mom, a snarky teenager from the suburbs must learn magic, even if it means facing a tradition-obsessed high priestess, blasphemous protestors, and the pantheons themselves.
When Luke wakes up, he doesn't know how he ended up at the manor, only that his sister his missing and that a friend he thought dead was involved. Glamoured and weak from an ordeal he can't remember, Luke is forced to trust his new wardens to find his sister, all while trying to hide an ugly truth.
Bourbon Jones, an aging Australian rocker, leaves London to confront his best friend carrying little more than a baseball bat and a bottle of opiates. Ravaged by the scars of his childhood, he stumbles to the heart of Ireland, where truth and fiction lie too close to tear apart.
Army widow fights to prove her husband is not a traitor while raising the child he never met.
No way did Sally mean to conjure up these rude and talky ghosts, but now that they’re threatening her family, she’s a one-girl no-mercy phantom-busting crew - until she realizes they’re unread characters from an unpublished book.
Lured by a rogue AI to "the Embassy," Atlantis and its crew must outsmart its deadly plot. A high-stakes battle for survival unfolds as they expose the AI's true agenda and fight to secure humanity's future in the Milky Way.
Idealistic eighteen-year-olds James and Alfie take to the road to escape another stifling summer in rural south-west England – but youth is both a blessing and a curse, and when they meet the captivating Bella, a dangerous love triangle soon unfurls.
A woman climbs out of a dark well of memory loss and guilt to rebuild herself, resurrect her marriage, and defeat a devil in a silk suit.
Johnnie Lambert's Guide to Life is a story of friendship, belonging and the magic of Edinburgh. Johnnie's trying to escape his broken heart; Calypso is looking for love; Denver feels he's past it; and Geordie is looking for a place where he belongs. Luckily Edinburgh is there to lend a hand.
1980's Post-Recession New York, the bulls are back on Wall Street and disco rules the night, Seventh Avenue hot shot Polly Gross dreams of making it big as a Broadway producer and gets his shot when he stumbles into a space musical being created by a colorful ensemble of downtown theater nerds.
Ann, a seasoned and respected advocate for abuse victims, is increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the justice system. Her search for her missing family forces her to confront her own past, a journey which will raise questions about justice, retribution and the sacrifices we have to make to...
Julia and daughter Mia must forgive themselves and each other before the lessons of a Russian doll can teach them to how to unscramble a thirty-year-old Russian riddle, to rekindle an old love affair, to trust in a new romance and to expose a Soviet and Putin villain.
Forced to flee his native Scotland, Lochie McGregor soon finds himself s an indentured slave in the wilds of Canada, but when his master is killed, he finds himself alone and hunted, until he is saved by another tribe where he learns their ways and rises to become a hero in the French/Indian wars.
In this richly researched novel, we throw two brothers into the pitiless conflict they called “The Great War”. In the terror and the blood-drenched battlefields, they lose their youthful innocence. Then they have to handle a revolt between mine owners /workers and a plan to assassinate Jan Smuts.
Strikes, wars, palace intrigues--what's an imperial couple to do? When Nikolai and Aleksandra's beloved faith healer is slain, they must go it alone. The tsar befriends a dead aviator, while the tsaritsa holds seances for her dear Rasputin. Seeking to save their empire, they end up clawing it apart.
In Ancient China’s Tang Dynasty, a young slave girl fights to escape a wealthy home teeming with intrigue.
In a fishing village on the Oregon Coast psychologist Jet Taylor is drowning in guilt for the mercy killing of her sister, contemplating ending her own life, or leaving when the body of a young dancer is found at the bluff, causing her to stay and help Detective Santiago, knowing she is at risk.
An impossible world - a neutron star imprisoned within its core A civilization on the brink of defeat Two siblings divided by choices made in childhood, one to integrate and the other to remain pure, are forced to confront their differences when their planet is attacked, and their parents killed.
“The Magdalenes” is a story of Jude Madigan who appears strong and successful on the outside, but is shattered on the inside after being raped and impregnated by a Catholic priest when she was fourteen. Now as a plaintiff’s attorney, she keeps her secrets close.
The resilience of the Maguire family is clear in last-born Mary's life; brought up to be a good Catholic girl or so her famine-surviving granny thought. On ending up in a tricky situation, Mary discovers a way to fight back with Cumann Na mBan in 1920s Glasgow, before deciding to travel to America...
Turkey is a book-club-fiction/new adult novel following Ollie Rocke, a twenty-one-year-old man living in Crewe who's going prematurely bald. He travels to Turkey for a hair transplant with his former teacher and his wife, and unexpectedly becomes entangled in their unconventional relationship.
With the economic fallout of a flu pandemic still felt among a population losing trust in its government, another more threatening virus emerges, and a group of loosely connected, ordinary people struggle to survive as society’s reaction to the new virus proves as deadly as the disease itself.
Ari Blum has no idea he’s disappearing from the universe, or that it will take the love of a quirky medium and her haunted death masks to bring him back to life.
A bass player in a successful band must come to terms with his complicity with a toxic music industry mired in cancel culture storms whilst navigating a fractious relationship with his lead singer, a sexual predator whose career is guided by a cabal of record label executives and corrupt management.
Singing in a rock band is all thirteen year old Ruby has ever wanted to do, and if only her dad wasn’t Kokabiel, the last of three angels sent to protect the Earth from demons, everything would be fine.
A fastidious designer craves success, but his carefully planned life is side-tracked by sex with an unkempt artist. While her career blossoms, his plans disintegrate and after a failed suicide attempt, he sets out to salvage a life
As the world swings from crisis to crisis, Bell is shaken, disgraced, and falling without a net, until an invitation from her socialite cousin unlocks a world of parties with film stars, Wall Street tycoons, and Arlo Sheikh, a global phenomenon hiding from scandal and a semi credible death threat.
Shelly is 43, single, stuck in a dead-end job in a hick town. When the haunting song she discovers by a long-forgotten hippie band becomes the first viral clip on YouTube, the suits send her to re-form them. But can she reform them?
When a young graduate mistakenly becomes the personal assistant to a secretive businessman in bustling corporate London, she uncovers a dark truth—her boss is a lethal assassin with a haunting past.
A naive young man in the 1960s explores sex, war, love and art around the globe until his PTSD-fueled self-medicating drags him to the bottom of his noble pursuit where he must get a grip or die. A coming of age story that never ends.
When classical guitarist Suzanna Archer’s regular restaurant gig embroils her in a local politician’s corrupt scheme, she must escape an aging hit man who is obsessed with the Jersey Devil.
In exile and despairing of her chances for survival, Mariia throws herself at Jouni, a handsome Bolshevik guard. He begs her to run away with him, but warns that he can save her alone. She's paralyzed by guilt. To be with the man she loves, she must let her family die.
A psychologist shares her client's secrets with her best friend - who writes them into a bestselling novel, putting the psychologist in danger of losing more than her career.
Orla organises a birth for her husband, who is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's, foretelling that this very well could be his last and brings his friends and family together leading to stories and complaints about his life and theirs.
Javier Jimenez, on his way up and out of the barrio, gets pulled into the crosshairs of hedge fund fixer George Jones when he finds a burner phone at work. “Some people flip homes. I flip zip codes." Once the bodies start falling, Javier who has to find a way to beat Jones at his own game.
A devoted father enters the ghost train with his four-year-old son and emerges from the ride without him, but finding the boy leaves questions unanswered and a mystery that can only be solved when shameful secrets are revealed.
How do you find someone who's already dead? Ninety year-old Eleri needs to find her beloved Jack. When she meets her estranged granddaughter, her desperate soul makes a leap – not into the past, but into Laura's body. Now it is Laura who is trapped, and time is dangerously close to running out.
In a high-stakes escape from a dangerous cult, a young man finds courage in unexpected friendships. Amidst chaos, he grapples with the conflict of newfound freedom and the guilt of leaving his sister behind, discovering hope in the transformative power of faith and the promise of rescue in the...
Race, class and homicide--urban America in the Twentieth Century. A coming of age social mystery set at the height of the Civil Rights era in a Brooklyn neighborhood that came into prominence during the Gilded Age but now falling into decline with crime, poverty, white flight, and urban malaise.
Facing homelessness, Lucy (17) takes a job as a little artistic interpreter. But when her charge (a naïve tree spirit) is kidnapped, her home, intergalactic peace & her wolfishly handsome flat-mate are on the line. She must speak. But is she Little Red Riding Hood or the Red Queen?
Clever Adiana procures a new human lover for her Queen, Titania. The lover, Greg, is a famed American political pollster who promptly calls for an election. It goes horribly wrong. While Adiana tries to conserve the kingdom, Greg tries to change the world(s). But can Faery really become a democracy?
Never lose hope – a photo tells why in this historical fiction of a Northern Irish schoolgirl and a German POW separated, reuniting forty years later. This intergenerational saga is unique in its Irish setting, having the female lead on the home front, and following a reluctant Nazi in post-war...
Proconnesus is a dark thriller and love story set in virtual reality. Spanning continents and centuries, Proconnesus is science fiction to challenge the imagination.
A troubled nineteen-year-old with psychological issues discovers her consciousness can project itself into the body of her past or future self at any point during her lifetime. Is it a gift? Time travel? Or is it all in her head?
Eldora hopes to ride out the blizzard in her home, but her car tumbles down a hill. Forced to ride out the storm with her mysterious rescuer awakens more than her curiosity. Not only does Kian’s history unravel, but Eldora is confronted with the truth about her parent’s death.
The world is plunged into an all out animal apocalypse, but a single hope is sought to return the order of man and beast back to normal. Will man survive this animal uprising or will we take our place as the next species on Earth’s extinction list? This is the sequel to Super Moon Protocol.
In a Realm where privileged individuals can create material reality in their sleep. A powerful Dream Traveller finds a way to release his imaginings into the Waking World.
It's 1688 AD, in the midst of the British "Glorious Revolution" and Dutch invasion, wealthy widow Rebecca DuMaurier, an African British royal court favorite, flees a forced marriage to a general and English earl, and into a tan-skinned, Irish Catholic pirate walking the shores of her Cornwall home.
Cozy crime caper: An ageing rocker finds himself framed for a political assassination.
In this memoir, the author questions his life-long study of the Book of Revelation. His analyses of the text, historical context, scientific plausibility, exegesis and influence challenge the conventional wisdom of scholars, but moreover, reveal a disturbing connection to the Holocaust.
Lured into a relationship in which she unknowingly becomes the other woman, a high-flying career girl is forced to question everything she believed to be real, as she fights for love, sanity, and the truth.
An ageing, glamorous film star's unlikely romance with an infatuated younger man leads to a a fateful decision which questions his integrity. Is assisted death murder or mercy? At her funeral, a mutual attraction develops with her daughter, but feminine insight warns that all is not as it seems &...
Nina is born into bohemian affluence but her expectations dwindle through three European wars, and a baby born and stolen in a Siberian labour camp.
Molar, a grumpy tooth, who is also the Captain of the teeth team, fails the landing mission from the space to his owners mouth. After internal strife, external discrimination, orthodontics, several decades of ups and downs with the owner, he finally knows his mission, and the owner, who has ignored...
INTERWOVEN recounts one woman’s journey through 20 years of family trauma, and her attempts to find the grace on-route to stay true to self and firm in faith. Through the rollercoaster of accidents, unexpected parenting and unconventional marriage, everything she believes is tested and recalibrated...
When Rose’s brother becomes a werewolf, they move to a remote town, hiding until a cure is found. But can they succeed when the local Guild can sniff out the paranormal to destroy at any cost? And can Rose trust Sky, who somehow knows what Rose is hiding, including what she’s hiding from herself?
When Emma’s wizard father dies, her mother tells her of a secret second family that lives in New York, along with 3 half-brothers she’s never met. The children from each family will battle over the magic inheritance left by their father.
Mona, creator of Earth, is caught trying to delete humankind yet again. Her sister Penny, maker of humans, challenges Mona to live as one of them before carrying out her plan. MO(ther) NA(ture) explores sisterhood while imagining what playing The Sims with a defibrillating 3D printer would be like.
Angus Kincaid is a down-to-earth working-class Aussie bloke. He wouldn’t hurt a fly—or would he? Until, that is, he finds himself drawn into the shady world of gangsters, protection racketeers, and The Mafia In 1930s Australia, life was simple. Angus is about to see how complicated it can get.
Madison’s drawings of an extraterrestrial craft hiding beyond Neptune have stunned the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Accused of spying for the hacker cell Zbot2 and a love affair with PDCO agent Stacey Wise, has Madison on the run. Refusing to divulge where the drawings came from, has...
A love story of forbidden love lost, and forty years later, discovered with the help of two young couples who, through chance, meet one another. They unearth the tragic story which happened in their town many years previously and set out to find the, by now, elderly couple and unite them
Two teenagers must journey underground to learn more about the mysterious Sludge before it tries to eat them again.
It's a story based on true story. Some facts have been changed so that characters couldn't be recognised.
Devil’s Claw Bay washes up the tragedies of Lydia’s family. Is her mother a child killer and can Lydia discover who’s targeting her loved ones before they all become victims of the sinister Bay?
What do you do when your duty no longer makes sense and the bedrock of your life becomes unstable?
Bella Guérin is Australia's first 'lady graduate.' She graduated from Melbourne University in 1883, a real character. Born on a ship to Irish parents, she lived on prison sites, educated by her mother before going to college and admitted to Melbourne University in 1881. Who marries an eighty-year...
Carpathian village 1899: An icon painter gets murdered, his house burned. Lidka, a visiting city girl, joins forces with a young priest to decode a message he left in a trail of hidden paintings that leads deep into the mountains. Broken hearts, broken promises and a dark secret buried in the woods.
‘Left With No Choice’ – a work of fantastical fiction and a coming-of-age adventure romance based in 1990s South East Asia aimed at the young adult reader.
Men lie. Men cheat. Men should be very afraid. Following a string of violent assaults by wives against their husbands, rookie police officer Kaitlyn Green goes undercover at a support group for female victims of infidelity and abuse, unaware that she too will fall under the group's wicked spell.
Based on true events, House of Words takes readers into the mind of a writer, exposing the darkness and joys that go into creation, while balancing the interwoven stories of those lives forever tied to the Milstrom estate. It is chilling, tragic, and mind bending all the way through its final page.
A beautiful weaver, a medieval sleuth and a fugitive knight meet in an Alpine village under threat from the Habsburgs in 1315. Can a mystery be solved before a mighty battle ensues? And who will be the victors in their turbulent triangle of love?
Biddable Lily Page has spent 50 years living a life defined by others. But when her father dies and she chances to meet two strangers, change seems inevitable. And not just for Lily. It is 1983, social and political turmoil are rife, the era in flux, as Lily attempts to embrace an autonomous future.
Driven by atmospheric prose and slow-burning suspense, GHOSTED is about loss and how the ghosts of people we love live inside us. It’s also about the hidden violence that can pervade our most intimate relationships, and how even the most unexpected person’s life can unravel – if they let it.
The true story of a Mexican American US Special Agent's career realizing that as a Spanish speaker, he will always work drug cases unless he changes agencies. His investigations around the world include one that stopped US nuclear equipment from reaching Iran that has not been previously publicized.
Sue meets Jack in a cafe. They strike up a conversation, then a wild night of passion. What happens next is even wilder: a Mr. Mosaic "wants his money" and a mystery man is hunting Jack. Can these two survive to see their relationship flourish, or are they doomed to die like all the rest?
A misguided student of theology named Cassandra has disturbed a sleeping Titan. As a horde of malevolent gods unleashes against the world, it will be left to Cassandra to wield the powers of eternity as she attempts to save those she loves. (the first 3,000 words of the novel are enclosed below)
It follows a shy, brilliant mixed-race teenager who struggles with mental illness as she navigates her teen life, made more complicated by her family's move from a racially diverse town to a small, predominantly white village. Cathy struggles to find her way in a city where kids aren't friendly.
In a gritty Cornish fishing town, a woman fights to uncover the ten-year secret behind the sinking of a lifeboat which killed all eight crewmen.
Sublime Splendor of the Morning Star asks this provocative question: Is it better to conform to society’s rigid, archaic norms or to accept one’s true self, even at a great personal cost?
The devastating Black Rain has turned all water into a gel-like substance. Those who drink gelled water become “Corrosives,” disfigured by a verdigrislike substance covering their bodies. Geo secretly leads the fight to save the people of Torono from the dangers of the hazardous climate.
When Patrick's faith and hope are shattered by his wife's death, God uses an impossible journey into Neolithic Ireland to restore them while granting him a new family and a renewed purpose in life.
1812 and two young women, Rachel and Susanna, independently and together, challenge themselves to overcome the expectations that their corner of Georgian England seeks to impose on them. Seascapers is a crossover between Regency romance and an adventure story, on land and sea, for (grown-up) girls.
A young woman journeys from faith to independence when her beliefs clash with her desires for sexual freedom and equality. Through vivid conflict, she engages internal and external forces to free herself and her two closest friends from the repressive rubric of a fundamentalist Christian subculture.
When Clara’s abusive husband is lost in action, she secretly returns to the job she loves, nursing – but more than pain and suffering lurk in the misty corridors of the vast military hospital where she works. Frank may not be dead.
The White Bassinet, takes you into the life of Allison, a young wife that is tormented by her past and personal demons as she battles through her turbulent pregnancy, and discovers the twisted truth that lies at the heart of all her troubles.
16yo goth loner Beth gets the shock of her life when the dead girl in her stepdad’s morgue grabs her and asks her to investigate her death. Help the bully who nicknamed her Beth Death—no way! Until she learns the dead girl’s sister—who Beth outwardly hates but secretly has a crush on—might be next.
Lucas ‘Mal’ Malanders has been missing for five years. Olly, his left-behind best friend, is jolted from his struggles to navigate adult life by Mal’s mother: she is ill and begs him to find her missing son before she runs out of time. But the closer Olly gets to Mal, the more the truth eludes him.
Neil Bidstrup, an under-employed Sydney-based actor, stars in “Reputation Alone”. Banned from mobile phone, wallet, media and staying put for too long, Neil concludes his fortnight will be a conga-line feast, unaware that producer Rodney Pine (senior) manipulates his situation at every turn.
A space-age story of a bright, sensitive boy named Colby Blue who becomes alienated on Earth after losing his parents, devises a way to escape the planet by constructing a tower towards space made from stacks of books that reach the stratosphere. While there, he unexpectedly encounters and is...
Yli Uil is in love & happy, suddenly she finds herself on trial for a crime she didn't commit. James Cary is a recent widow & single dad obsessed with making contact with intelligent life beyond earth's atmosphere. When their world's collide, who would have guessed it would be the end of humankind?
In the1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, an aging agent overcomes treachery & violence to trap spies & bombers, aided by a female American, with whom he finds love.
