Flight is a metaphysical thriller in which the classic narrative patterns of the adventure story and the spiritual journey are intermingled. The protagonist, Fern, is a young woman so damaged by her past that she has withdrawn from reality behind closed doors. But reality has not abandoned her and soon comes knocking.
The story of how Fern learns to face the real world raises questions about the nature of reality itself and our perception of it. Her journey is played out against a background of myth and metaphor; sometimes eerie, sometimes earthy, always spellbinding. This contemporary gothic thriller grips the reader from the first page.
The story opens in Sydney where Fern has immured herself in the attic of a rented terrace house. When her house-mates pack up and leave, Fern is forced to face the outside world. But her past is waiting for her and Fern is soon running scared as her sanity and beliefs begin to unravel.
Beleagured by memories and otherworldly visions, Fern gradually learns to trust her own powers and perceptions. When someone or something begins to attack her through her dreams, she decides it’s time to stop running and start looking for answers.
Together with Adam, an ex-soldier haunted by the past, Fern embarks on a journey which takes them from inner-city Sydney to the labyrinthine depths of the Tasmanian wilderness, where she must finally face down her demons.
In Fern’s search for wholeness and self-knowledge, she learns that help can come from mysterious and surprising places, and that the greatest danger of all is the life unlived. As Fern heself soon discovers, in order to fly, one must first be willing to fall.

I came early, slithering into the outside world and into safety, or so I hoped. But this was to be the first of many hopes, all dashed against the brutally sharp edges of reality.
As in all great myths, my birth was accompanied by a prophecy. I, it seemed, would be the death of my father. How this was to come about no one could say. But the prophecy was there, it escaped from the mouth of Simple Simon, the old gardener at the Botanical Gardens in Adelaide, where my mother often went to sit in her lunch hour.
On this particular day she was waiting to meet my father. He was late and the pregnant girl felt a persistent nagging worry. There was something big hovering around the edges of things, a sense that life had woken up that morning slightly askew. Nothing she could put her finger on, but it was enough to make her nervous. And then there were the contradictions: worry that he would come; worry that he wouldn’t. Fear and love tugging her between them until all she could feel was a tearing anxiety. You see my father was a strong willed man, older than her, but still too young he said, to be tied down like this. He would have walked away but he was snared by his desire for my mother. She was beautiful and fragile and needy, easy to bully but also detached in a way that he could never put a finger on. This detachment was what kept him there, waiting, wanting her to surrender completely. But my father wasn’t a reflective man, he didn’t know any of this. If asked he would have said it was his responsibility that kept him there, that it wasn’t right to abandon her, though really they were both too young for marriage and children.
It was autumn. There was a chill in the air and the sun was weak, but the sky was blue and the day was clear enough to make everyone’s heart lift. Even my mother’s, the seventeen year old girl with the rounded belly who sat on a bench chewing a deviled egg sandwich and watching the wind playfully toss the autumn leaves up and away from the meticulous piles Simon was making.
When one particularly playful gust sent the leaves up in a spiral, my mother forgot her troubles for a moment and laughed. Simon looked up, straight at her and her laughter quickly turned into a shudder. Where one eye should have been there was a socket, dark and deep. One eye looking out, the other inwards – perhaps this was the secret of his second sight. Or then again, it might have been the snake bite all those years ago which left him hovering between life and death for weeks on end. When he finally woke he knew things other people didn’t, but had forgotten how to live in this world. No one knew how old Simple Simon was or how long he’d been working in the Botanical Gardens. He was a fixture, like the giant oak under which my mother sat.
Simon stood up straight, wincing as he stretched, one hand massaging the small of his back, the other leaning on his rake.
‘Ah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That one will be the death of her father.’ He walked over to the girl, wincing again at the creaking in his swollen joints, and poked his finger into her tight belly. ‘Mark my words, the death of him.’
While my mother sat staring at him, open mouthed, he went back to his raking, still shaking his head, but with a gleam in his eye.
At that moment I moved. Well bounced really. Did a somersault in a small space, causing my mother to double over in pain and think her time had come. It hadn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. Safety I thought, lay in the warm fluids that contained me. And I didn’t want to kill anyone, especially my own father, even though I wasn’t exactly fond of him. There’d been words already. White knuckles and fists, sending me curling up into a tighter self protective ball. My father didn’t love me. Even then I was certain of that. And he didn’t love my mother. Like me she stood between him and his plans. He wanted only to conquer her, in the same way he planned to conquer the world. You see, my father had big ideas swirling inside his head. Even then he loved power more than people. Even then he would let nothing stand in his way. (more…)

An unforgettable journey will unlock a lifetime of lies. . .

English artist Storm Cizekova grew up believing that her mother died when she was born. But then Storm finds a photo of herself in the heart of the Australian desert - and in her mother’s arms.

Haunted by unanswered questions, Storm embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will challenge everything she holds dear: her family history, her art, even her relationship with her partner Max. Who is she really, and where does she belong?

Her search will take her from the snow-covered Malvern Hills in England, to the rich red heart of the Australian outback. Retracing her mother’s footsteps through the stark beauty of the outback landscape, Storm hopes to find the courage to confront some shocking truths from her past and the strength to face her future.

‘Nowhere Man’ is set in concentric airports, literal and then increasingly metaphoric and spiritual. Ivan, the central character, escapes his thirteen years of life in an unnamed airport, only to discover his need for the safety of a psychic terminal. Nowhere Man offers a bleak vision of contemporary identity, nation, citizenship and freedom and a spectacular, satiric, anti-Dickensian view of London’s streets.’

Dr Eva Sallis

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Chapter One

Ivan tastes every angle of his moment. It is sweet, but tinged with bitterness. With a sweeping gesture he brushes the bitterness aside. It is not important. Today he is going somewhere. Today he is brimming with well being. He brings his hands to his mouth, kisses the ends of his fingers and waves benevolently to the air hostesses, so perfect in their little uniforms, their hair tucked neatly into place, their well wishes gratefully received.

‘Farewell, farewell,’ he cries before being whisked into a tunnel and sucked along with the hundreds of passengers. And in this tunnel there is just the faintest hint of the seasons. Underneath the stifling internal atmosphere he is so used to, Ivan can sense, almost smell the cold winter air of outside. He can’t believe it. Not really. After so long he has finally arrived. A dream has come true.

But at the very last moment the people before him stop suddenly, quite arbitrarily it seems, and everyone is forced to stand around under the ugly glare of fluorescent lighting with nothing to look at but each other. All of a sudden they are shy, they fiddle with baggage, peer at their passports, straighten hair and collars, avoid each others eyes. Ivan stands on the tip of his toes, staring wildly out over the sea of heads, trying to grasp what is happening ahead. He too avoids the eyes of others, not wanting to witness their guilt and fear, nor wishing to reveal his own, sensing somehow that when eyes begin to meet, then panic will follow. (more…)