My first book - The Gatekeeper

The Gatekeeper is available in Australia. As a first-time author it is not necessarily in your favourite bookstore, but they will get it in for you. The sequel, Rudigor's Revenge, will be published later this year in Australia and both books will be published in Canada and the USA next year.

The Gatekeeper was written as YA historical fiction but is being enjoyed by readers of all ages. I was a hopeless reader in my youth so I've written this story with as much action as I can pack into it. I really hope it will appeal to teenagers like I was. I also hated history as a subject. All those dates. All those countries bashing up other countries. And all those Kings and Queens getting their heads chopped off. There was a time when that was not a very safe profession at all. But once I started writing I found myself researching the lives of real, ordinary people. That's when the fun started.

Did you know that Stonehenge was restored dramatically in Victorian times? Google 'John Constable's painting of Stonehenge' and you'll see what it looked like in 1835. It was a real mess. So the Victorians 'put it right', even down to moving the location of the altar stones. But many people say they got it wrong. So when Jenny, a young student, visits the site on holidays she doesn't realise she's standing on the real site of the ancient Druid altar when the midsummer sun first strikes the ruins.

Jenny is flung through a time warp into the year 1347. Those were dangerous times. England had been at war with France for ten years of what would become the Hundred Years War. The Pope was in Avignon, not Rome. The country was in a shambles and the people who suffered most were the peasants. And it was into peasant society the young student landed. She was 19 and unmarried - girls those days were married by 15 or had to pay a tax. She had colour in her clothes. The Sumptuary Laws didn't allow peasants to wear colour, so she must be higher in class than them. And she was alone without bodyguards or family.

And when she exposes a Tax Collector as a fraud, she's really on the run. The fun really starts.

Anyway. The Gatekeeper has been accepted for the NSW Premier's Reading Challenge. So students in NSW - get to the bookstore and buy a copy. Alternatively, get your school library and council library to buy in copies.

And students in South Australia. Ask for the book to be added to your Premier's Challenge. It has been rejected because the committee which considers books say a book set outside Australia for some of the action is confusing for grades 6 -9. They don't know about Stonehenge, castles and battles in England. They don't like settings outside Australia - what about Harry Potter? That's not set in Adelaide, is it?

Anyway, support a new Australian author. Read The Gatekeeper and tell me what you think about it. If you can't get it in your nearest bookstore, order it on line from Zeus Publications