Joy Dettman was born in Echuca, Victoria, and now lives in Melbourne with her husband and Footrot, the dog. It was a creative writing course in 1988 that helped to turn a lifelong interest into an obsession. The mother of four, Joy is a full-time writer and published author of several award-winning short stories as well as her best-selling novels
Mallawindy,
Jacaranda Blue,
Goose Girl and
The Seventh Day.
Joy Dettman sees herself as a wife, mother and grandmother, who steals time from her family to satisfy her obsessive need to write.
Joy was not always a wife, mother and grandmother. She can recall her early obsession with newspaper cartoons. They were her picture books. A newspaper shoutline allowed her to break the code of reading prior to entering a school room, thus addicting her for life to the printed word.
Joy's early draft of Woody Creek, single spaced, margin to margin, messy, was typed on the family room table, where in 1986-7, she wrote Mallawindy. Her number one fan, her little sister, read it, and for the next ten years, publication became their joint obsession.
In 1997, she received a phone call from Pan Macmillan. Mallawindy was accepted for publication and by '98 Joy and her number one fan held that book in their hands.
Her other books include: Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry's Daughter, One Sunday, Diamonds in the Mud, and bestselling the Woody Creek series.
Woody Creek originated as a novel, in the singular, but its characters too long buried, would not be contained. It grew into a series of six - Pearl in a Cage, Thorn on the Rose, Moth to the Flame, Wind in the Wires and Ripples on a Pond, the latest instalment being The Tying of Threads.
