about m.a.hudson

​Where do you live?
I live about ten minutes from the beach in Sydney, Australia.

What were your favourite books when you were a kid?
I adored Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables, but the book that got me hooked on reading was The Good Master.

Three things people may not know about you?
1. I spent my first birthday on a plane emigrating from Chile
2. I was captain of my high school cricket team
3. We had a waterfall at the end of our garden

When did you realise you wanted to be a writer?
When I decided to illustrate a picture book and needed a story to work with. I ended up enjoying the writing so much that I ditched illustrating altogether. That book was never finished because I never got around to completing the pictures!.​

What I've learnt about writing & the publishing industry...

• ​Ideas are easy. Shaping ideas into a finished novel is hard work.

• It's unlikely anyone will steal your ideas because everyone's too busy working on their own amazing concepts.

• There are thousands more unpublished writers than there are publishers looking for new talent.

• Getting a publishing deal is hard but selling your book is even harder.

• The publishing industry moves at a glacial pace.

• It's only bestselling authors who get a big marketing budget from their publishers.

• If a newly published book doesn’t sell within a certain amount of time, it gets sent back to the publisher. ​And if it doesn’t earn out it's advance, then it’s even harder to get a second book published.

• Everyone's got different tastes in books - just as they have different tastes in clothes and food.

• The average reader only buys about 5 books a year, and usually by an author they  already know.

​​Some of the books I loved
​when I was a kid...