Author: Suzy

Suzy writes from a quiet corner of rural Tasmania, in a 120-year-old station house that has seen more stories than most people ever will. Surrounded by books, cats, and an ever-growing list of ideas, she spends her time building fictional worlds filled with complicated people, found family, and relationships that don’t always fit neatly into a box. She writes under multiple pen names, exploring everything from hockey romance to military stories, magical realism, and fantasy—each one connected by the same emotional thread: people trying to find where they belong. Her personal blog, Life at the Station House, is where she steps out from behind the pen names. Here, she writes about the quieter side of life—rural living, creativity, community, and the moments in between writing sessions that matter just as much as the stories themselves. When she’s not writing, she’s likely tending to her garden, thinking about her next project, or sitting with a coffee while her mind runs a little too fast and a little too unfiltered.

A Day of Small Wins and Smaller Disasters

Today has been a day.

Not a catastrophic day. Not a triumphant day. Just… a day. The weather has committed fully to this assessment by refusing to commit to anything else — it has been hovering somewhere between put a cardigan on and take the cardigan off since approximately seven this morning, and I have given up trying to predict which direction it’s heading next. The sky is doing what it wants. I have made my peace with this.

The bigger concern today is one of our girls, who is not herself. We think she has a blocked salivary duct — poor love — which means tomorrow morning I’ll be on the phone first thing trying to get her an emergency appointment, and Monday we make the trip to the vet. She is being very stoic about the whole business, as cats tend to be when they are unwell, wearing their discomfort with a quiet dignity that makes you feel simultaneously heartbroken for them and slightly judged by them. We are keeping a close eye on MuMu tonight. Fingers crossed.

On the more chaotic end of the animal household updates: the ducks have entered their nesting phase, and they are taking the mission very seriously. Two of them have decided that the catio roof is the ideal location to survey their options, which means we currently have ducks on the roof and cats underneath watching them through the wire with expressions ranging from baffled to professionally offended. I cannot tell you this is not my life every single day, because it absolutely is.

Inside, the hierarchy has been firmly established. Mumma has taken over the Pusheen bed with the air of someone who has always owned it and simply allowed others to use it until now. And Hopalong — my little broken sunshine — has had the fire going since eleven this morning and is, by all observable measures, in a state of complete bliss. She has barely moved. I respect this. If I could spend the day in a pink fluffy bed in front of a warm fire, I would not move either.

On the productivity front — well. It was going to be the day I finally taught myself Reels and Instagram Shows. Or whatever they’re called. I had a whole plan. The plan required the printer. The printer, as it has been doing with grim consistency, refused to cooperate. And without the printed notes I’d prepared, I found myself staring at the platform with the particular blank energy of someone who knows there is a system here and cannot locate the entry point without their cheat sheet.

So that’s an agenda item that lives to fight another day. These things happen.

What did happen — and I am claiming this victory fully — is that I got my emails sorted into an actual email client. Everything in its place, properly organised, no longer living in the chaotic wilderness of a browser tab I was afraid to close. It is a small thing. It is also genuinely satisfying in the way that only administrative tasks you’ve been quietly avoiding for longer than you’d like to admit can be.

One tick. I’ll take it.

So that’s today. A sick kitty to worry about, ducks on the roof, a printer that owes me an apology, and one small organisational win that I am holding onto with both hands. Hopalong has the fire. Mumma has the Pusheen. The weather remains undecided.

Tomorrow we call the vet. Tonight we count cats and make sure everyone is where they’re supposed to be.

That’s enough for a Saturday.

🖤🏒

The Day the Wheels Fell Off (And Hopalong Asked Nicely)

I had a plan for today. A proper, colour-coded, very-adult plan. Blog content, scheduled posts, maybe even a newsletter draft if I was feeling ambitious.

Reader, none of that happened.

Instead, I am writing to you from the middle of what I can only describe as domestic chaos theatre, surrounded by furniture that has migrated to the centre of every room like some kind of indoor Stonehenge, waiting for an electrician who — bless him, he’s busy, it’s not his fault — won’t be able to get back to us until next week. So here we all are. Me, the cats, the cousin, Jo, and approximately four hundred kilograms of displaced furniture, just… existing together in the middle of the floor.

Jo, for her part, would like to burn it all down and start again. This is not an exaggeration. Jo has a very particular relationship with order and tidiness, and what is currently happening to her living environment is the stuff of her personal nightmares. She is coping. Barely. With the energy of someone who is very pointedly not looking at the corner where three chairs and a bookshelf are having an impromptu meeting.

The internet has been up and down for two days. Seriously, more up and down action than a cheap hookers knickers at happy hour. Two days! I will not tell you what I have been calling my hardware situation in the privacy of my own head, but let’s just say it rhymes with “Turdy McTurd Pants” and leave it at that. The connection has been spottier than a chocoholic teenager’s face, which has been a particular adventure given that we have a houseguest electrician. I’ll be honest — I was bracing for the cousin to struggle with it. She has not. She is, in fact, handling the Great Internet Outage of this week with a cheerful resilience that I did not see coming and which I find both impressive and slightly annoying, given that I am over here refreshing my connection every four minutes like it owes me money.

So. Nothing scheduled is getting done today. And I’ve decided that’s fine. Sometimes the universe puts its foot down — or in this case, pulls all your furniture into the centre of the room — and you just have to work around it.

Which brings me to the actual highlight of this entire chaotic day, because every terrible day needs one.

Yesterday, I lit the fire, and Hopalong — my little spina bifida girl — claimed her spot in front of it in her pink fluffy bed and basked. That’s the only word for it. She basked in the warm orange glow like she was on a very small, very cosy holiday, and it was the best thing I saw all day.

This morning we woke late, which meant the whole household launched immediately into that particular brand of morning chaos — feeding everyone, sorting the animals, trying to impose some kind of order on a house that is currently doing its best impression of a furniture warehouse. I was moving through it all on autopilot when I walked past the fireplace and stopped.

Hopalong was there. Quietly, politely, pawing at the glass door.

Just asking. Just wondering if perhaps today she might have her warm orange sunshine back again.

I lit the fire.

Obviously I lit the fire.

Jo could not even be annoyed about the delay to the morning schedule. Some things transcend OCD.

So that’s where I am today. Off-schedule, slightly frantic, very much typing this to clear my head rather than hit any kind of content goal. Some days are just like this — the house has its own agenda and your job is mostly to get out of the way and try not to make eye contact with Jo while she contemplates arson.

Normal transmission will resume. Probably once the electrician comes and the furniture goes back where it belongs and the internet stops performing its impression of a very indecisive yo-yo.

Until then, I have a fire, I have a cat who knows exactly what she wants and asks for it with the quiet dignity of someone who has earned it, and honestly? That’s enough.

In Which The House Wins Again And Hockey Lets Me Down (But I Have A Plan)

Luke is having a day off. This is not because Luke has had enough — Luke is a professional and professionals do not have enough — but because the house has been so comprehensively unpleasant about its lathe and plaster shenanigans that a strategic retreat became necessary before he exhausted his entire vocabulary of swear words and had nothing left for future jobs.

Yesterday, in addition to the walls defeating him at every turn, we also had no internet. Not in a dramatic way. In the specific, vindictive way that old houses and earnest electricians can produce between them — a quiet, total absence of connectivity that arrived without announcement and declined to leave until it was good and ready. We responded the only way available: hotspotting determinedly from our phones, in the crouched-over-a-device posture of people who will not be beaten by their own infrastructure.

The house is winning. I respect the commitment even as I resent it.

Now. Hockey.

I am a hockey girl to my bones. This is not seasonal, not occasional — it is a fundamental character trait that predates most of my other personality features. Every year, even when my team isn’t in the running, I can find something to attach to in the playoffs. A goalie. A story. A team doing something unexpected. I am not a difficult hockey fan to satisfy.

This year has vexed me.

The good news: no Florida teams. I am taking this as a personal gift from the hockey gods.

The bad news: Vegas. Again. Has Vegas missed a playoffs since they started? I cannot be bothered to look it up because it doesn’t feel like they have, and confirming it will only make me more annoyed than I already am. Every other expansion team has had their years of being authentically terrible at hockey in the way of new teams finding their feet. Vegas just turned up and started performing and the rest of us have been processing this injustice ever since.

Last year I had Bob. Sergei Bobrovsky, for those not fluent in goalie nickname. All hockey girls have a soft spot for goalies — this is not a choice, it is simply how we are wired. Bob gave me something last year. This year I cannot even go there.

The best I can do — quietly, and I will deny it if directly confronted — is hope the Habs win. Don’t tell anyone. They are Canadian, and Canadian is the bar I am working with this year, and I am not too proud to work with it.

Hockey is dead to me this year.

That said.

I have also just joined the AIHL viewing network. The Australian Ice Hockey League runs in a completely different season to the NHL — which means that rather than having hockey from October to May and then staring into the void for the remaining months, I now have the theoretical capacity for hockey twelve months of the year. This is either the most sensible thing I have done recently or a harbinger of something my optometrist is going to have opinions about.

Either way: hockey. Always hockey. The big boys can vex me all they like. I have contingencies. 🏒🖤

In Which The House Continues Its Campaign Of Attrition And I End Up Behind Bars

Luke was here today. Luke is our favourite electrician — loyal, patient, competent, and possessed of the specific spiritual fortitude required to work in this house — and he spent the day installing power points. Twelve in the living room. Eight in the library. And then he got to my bedroom and asked how many I wanted in there.

I said: all of the power points.

I am getting eight. Which is, in fairness, a lot of power points. But I want it noted that my ambitions were significantly larger, and I stand by the impulse, because I am extremely tired of daisy chaining power boards across the room to access basic electrical services. Particularly since my bedroom also hosts the modem and the network hub, which means it is functioning simultaneously as a bedroom and a server room and the power situation has always reflected this in the most chaotic possible way.

The house was, as is its custom, an absolute arsehole about the whole project.

The walls are lathe and plaster. Old school to the point of being genuinely historical, and plastered over so many times that what we have now is not technically plaster — it is powder, held together by an outer skin of paint and apparently spite. We have tried to hang things on these walls. What happens is: you put the screw in, the wall considers this briefly, and then opens into a gaping maw you could put your head into. Luke dealt with this with patience and muttered commentary I have learned not to fully register. He left at 4.30, which is early for him, which tells you everything about the nature of the day. The walls foiled enough of his plans that we currently have no power to the entertainment centre area, which means no Jeeves and Wooster tonight, which I am taking personally.

Now. The boudoir.

The reason my room has been resembling the city tip is simple: I open the door, shove my personal belongings approximately in the direction of the room, and close the door. I create stacks on surfaces. Towers of intention. And Chooky, who conducts regular patrols with the thoroughness of a quality inspector and considerably less care, knocks the stacks over. Pushes things off counters. Redistributes my belongings according to her own inscrutable logic. I used to pick everything up daily. At some point I reached the threshold and said, not quite out loud but absolutely spiritually: fuck this, gravity wins. Everything stayed in its landing spot for longer than I will specify.

Today everything was stacked. Not sorted — stacked. Luke needs access to finish the installation. This is apparently the motivator that years of personal resolve could not provide.

On the subject of Chooky: I also bought cat gates yesterday. Until now my system for giving her a safe space was a gate hook that pulled my bedroom door to — open enough for air and dignity, closed enough to keep the other twelve from deciding that wherever Chooky was constituted an excellent place to be. It worked, technically. The limitation was that Chooky had to remain at hook-height or above, which meant floor time was largely theoretical. The gates solve this. What they look like is my doorway is now the entrance to a medium security facility. I am on the inside. I feel like I’m in Alcatraz.

Chooky is lying flat on the floor. Whiskers forward. Entirely at ease. She is, by every available measure, significantly more content than she has been in some time. She has the room. She has the floor. She has a view of the hallway through what I must now accept is her personal portcullis and she finds this arrangement extremely satisfactory.

She does not care about my feelings on the matter even slightly.

In much better news: my best friend, who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, has been having a fortnight. She was given notice to leave her rental by August and has been sad and cranky and frantic accordingly. I have coped with this by trawling Zillow at all hours and sending frantic links — how about this one, what’s the neighbourhood like, have we seen that house on COPS — which I’m certain has been enormously helpful.

Last Friday, she and her wife put in an offer on a house.

Today, they heard they got it.

I am so excited I am practically a liability. Entirely disproportionate response to something happening to someone else. I cannot be regulated. She deserves it completely.

Now if the orange turnip would vacate the premises, I could actually get there and celebrate in person. I miss the Pacific Northwest. I miss my Hawaii. I miss my friend.

One of these days. 🖤

In Which The Cat Holds Nocturnal Bootcamp And Sunday Does Its Worst

Arse crack o’thirty this morning, my cat, Chooky, my bedroom cat, began doing laps.

Not quiet, contemplative laps. Urgent, something-has-breached-the-perimeter laps. Frantic circuits of her sky-level sanctuary with the energy of a small furry soldier who has detected an incursion and is not prepared to let anyone sleep through it. I became aware of the situation in the most direct way possible — specifically, she ran across my head, and then, in what I can only describe as an inspired tactical decision, straight down one bare leg and onto the sky bridge to continue her patrol. Repeatedly. At Pace.

There was nothing for it. I climbed down from the loft bed, conducted a full visual inspection of the room, confirmed that whatever had committed the incursion had either retreated or was very good at hiding, and returned to bed. Before doing so I secured the drawbridge under the watchful supervision of Colonel Chooky. The cat, satisfied that her human had attended to the situation with appropriate seriousness, eventually settled. Her visage deserves a second blog visit for her security determination.

I returned to the sleep of genuinely delightful dreams.

When I woke again it was 10.30, which I am choosing to frame as halfway between naughty-sleeping-Suzy and my 7.30 alarm, which seems entirely reasonable given that I had been conscripted into nocturnal bootcamp at arse crack o’thirty through no fault of my own. I stand by this. The maths works out.

The day, unfortunately, did not reward the effort of waking up for it. It was ugly when I opened the curtains and proceeded to get uglier as the hours went by, in that committed way that a Tasmanian winter day has when it has decided to make a point.

I spent it restructuring my filing system, finishing the graphics, and learning how to make TikTok slideshows.

Fun was had by all.

I have not yet located the sarcasm font and I hope, my faithful readers, that you understood that sentence in the spirit in which it was intended. Learning TikTok slideshows is exactly as delightful as it sounds and I say that with every ounce of sincerity I can muster, which is to say none.

Early to bed tonight. Early appointments in the morning. The day is done and I am releasing it without ceremony.

I hope your Sunday was everything a Sunday should be. 🖤

In Which It Rains And I Have Ideas I’m Not Allowed To Start Yet

It rained today. Properly, committedly, Tasmanian-winter-is-coming rained. Which did not stop us loading ourselves into the car and heading to the Westbury markets, because reconnaissance waits for no weather system and the book van isn’t going to scout its own prospects.

The verdict: disappointing, with an asterisk.

Westbury is lovely. The drive is lovely. The idea of the markets is lovely. The reality was somewhat thin on the ground — not a great deal on offer in terms of what we were hoping to find — but the more surprising discovery was the payment situation. Or rather, the lack of one. A remarkable number of stall holders were cash only, which in the year we are currently living in is a choice that I find genuinely baffling. The book van will absolutely have electronic payment because I would like to actually sell books to people who, like most humans in 2025, do not routinely carry cash. Filed under: lessons learned before we’ve even started.

Came home damp and slightly deflated, spent the rest of the day making graphics for social media because apparently that is just my life now. The three universes require a frankly unreasonable amount of visual content and I am the person who has to create it. Future Suzy will be grateful. Present Suzy’s eyes are doing that thing they do after too many hours of screen time.

Watched a few more episodes of Off Campus in the evening. My verdict remains: it’s fine. It’s perfectly okay television. The thing that is keeping me watching is the hockey, and the hockey alone, because I am a died in the wool hockey person and we support the hockey in whatever form it presents itself. This is not negotiable. This is doctrine. The show could be considerably more compelling than it is and I would still be there for the ice time, and I will say no more on that subject except that Heated Rivalry remains undefeated in my personal rankings.

And then — because my brain apparently decided that what today needed was one more thing — I had a realisation about the Compass Point universe.

The origin series. How they got to be the soldiers they are before I got my hands on them and broke them. Except here is the thing: it already exists. All of it. Two hundred and seventy thousand words of it, sitting there, fully written, because that was the original form of Compass Point. The babies. The fledgling soldiers. The version of these men and women that existed before everything that comes after happened to them.

I wrote it. And then I made a decision.

I decided that writing broken ex-soldiers trying to rebuild their lives was more enriching than writing soldiers I was in the process of breaking. The destination interested me more than the journey. So I pivoted, and Compass Point became what it is now, and the 270,000 words went into a drawer, metaphorically speaking, where they have been sitting ever since in the particular patient way that large manuscripts have when they know their time will come.

Their time will come.

Just — not yet. I have two novels releasing in thirty days, a book van to launch, and a renovation bearing down on me. The 270,000 words will keep. They’ve already waited this long.

The future will deal with it accordingly.

The future is already making a list. 🖤

I have three additional observations about Off Campus that I feel compelled to share.

First: the MMC has curls. Magnificent, abundant, absolutely delicious curls that even a granny-aged woman finds herself wanting to run her fingers through. Full credit where it’s due. Those curls are doing a lot of heavy lifting for the show’s watchability and they know it.

Second: the FMC has, and I say this as a purely aesthetic observation, probably the roundest, perkiest breasts I have ever seen on a television screen. They sit there. They jiggle politely. They are present in, and occasionally almost out of, whatever scanty top she happens to be wearing in any given scene. I respect the commitment.

Third, and this is the one that actually matters:

I’ve worked out the difference. The real one, underneath all the budget and chemistry conversations. The Heated Rivalry boys lived their characters. This lot act theirs. And that distinction — small in description, enormous in effect — is everything.

HR gave us great ugly tears. The kind that aren’t pretty, that come with awkward silences and people not knowing where to look and absolute, overwhelming, unperformed joy when the moment called for it. You felt it in your chest because they felt it in theirs.

Off Campus gives me dry cheeks in the crying scenes and vacancy behind the eyes in the happy ones.

The curls remain exceptional.

Enough said. 🏒🖤

In Which I Have A Word With Myself

Today feels like a wasted day.

Except it isn’t, not really, because I’ve spent most of it creating what feels like approximately one million social media images for all three universes so I have them ready when the time comes. That’s productive. That’s genuinely useful work that Future Suzy will be grateful for.

Present Suzy feels like she achieved nothing and is sitting in her own head like an unwelcome houseguest.

I’ve been trying to work out whether the blah is situational or physical, and the honest answer is probably both, because they don’t really separate neatly. Here’s the current full inventory, because apparently I collect conditions the way other people collect stamps: Type 2 diabetes (better than it’s been in ten years, which I’ll take), hypothyroidism (miraculously perfect at the moment), ADHD with a probable ASD flag that I haven’t officially pursued because the diagnosis costs upwards of two thousand dollars and I have a renovation coming, bursitis in both shoulders, fifteen-plus ganglions in my hands that make them considerably less reliable than I would prefer, no cartilage left in my ankles, and depression, PTSD and anxiety as the foundation layer underneath all of it. I’ve also just come off a week-long migraine, which does things to your energy levels that are difficult to overstate.

So. There’s that.

The sleep has become its own separate problem. I’m sleeping until midday if Chooky doesn’t intervene — and Chooky, bless her, does not always intervene. This is not me. I am a person who loves the early morning. I love the light and the quiet and the particular quality of a day that hasn’t been used yet. Sleeping through it feels like a loss every single time, and yet here we are.

When I do surface I’m pinned to the laptop, which is partly because I have two novels releasing within thirty days and the anxiety about that is its own weather system. I have five ARC copies out in the world and I have heard back from exactly one reader. Tensions, as they say, are high. I’m trying not to catastrophize. I’m not entirely succeeding.

Meanwhile the house needs prep for the renovation — the plans are with council, which means it could actually happen sooner than I thought, which means the moving and sorting and shifting needs to happen — and the garden is sitting there in the last of the good weather waiting for me to do the winter prep work that I keep meaning to do and keep not doing, because instead I stay inside and refresh my inbox and create social media graphics and feel vaguely guilty about the garden.

I know what I need to do.

I need to get out of my own head. I need to boot myself firmly up the bum, close the laptop, go outside, and remember that the daylight and the fresh air and the physical work of being on the land is exactly the thing that makes me feel like myself again. Every time. Without fail. I know this. I have known this for years.

I just need to actually do it.

Tomorrow, Chooky.

Wake me up. 🖤

In Which I Have Feelings About Hockey Shows

I watched the first episode of Off Campus last night.

Before I say anything else, let me be clear about something: I idolise Elle Kennedy. Have done since I read the Out of Uniform series, which is when I understood exactly what she was capable of, and from that moment I have made grabby hands at everything she’s written. The woman is a giant of this genre and I say that with complete sincerity and zero caveats.

Which is precisely why I want to like the show. I really do. The cast is lovely — every single one of them — and the people in their orbit are well played and I have no complaints about the performances on an individual level.

But.

You heard that coming, didn’t you.

Here’s the thing. When Heated Rivalry wrapped its first season, some intrepid reporter announced that Off Campus was on its way as a replacement. A successor. The next hockey show to fill that particular gap.

No. I’m sorry. It really isn’t. And not just for the obvious gay-versus-het reason, though that’s obviously significant. This is something else.

Heated Rivalry was shot on what I can only describe as the most heroic shoestring budget in recent television history. Two cameras. Two complete unknowns in the lead roles — we didn’t get a recognisable face until episode three. And those two? They had chemistry that sizzled on the screen even when they were supposed to hate each other. Especially when they were supposed to hate each other. That’s the thing about rivalry done right — the friction is the heat, and if you can feel that heat in the middle of open hostility then you’re in extraordinary hands.

Off Campus has a larger budget. More established names. Better resourced in every technical sense.

And the two leads had no chemistry for me. None that I could find, anyway. I kept waiting for it and it didn’t arrive. The character I found myself genuinely interested in was the FMC’s best friend, and one of the MMC’s teammates — which is a lovely sign for the future of the supporting cast and a slightly worrying sign for the central romance, which is, after all, the engine the whole thing runs on.

Here’s my possibly controversial take: the budget increase didn’t do Off Campus any favours. There’s something about a small production that has to rely entirely on performance and chemistry that can produce something extraordinary when it works. When it doesn’t have the money to dazzle you, it has to move you. Heated Rivalry moved me. Repeatedly. While being shot in what appeared to be three locations and a car park.

I’m giving Off Campus a proper shot because it’s hockey and because Elle Kennedy’s source material deserves that much from me at minimum. The books are wonderful — Garrett Graham has been making readers weak in the knees for years and rightly so — and I live in hope that the chemistry finds its feet as the season settles in.

But I know which is the better hockey show for me this year, and it’s not a close contest.

Come back, Heated Rivalry. All is forgiven. You were irreplaceable and the replacement proves it. 🏒

In Which Yesterday Was A Lot, And Mumma Knows What She’s About

Yesterday was one of those days that gets quietly written off. Medical things happened — nothing dramatic, just the kind of thing that is efficient and necessary and still somehow uses up every bit of available energy by the time it’s done, leaving you with approximately enough fuel to sit on the couch and watch the fire and call it a victory. Which I did.

Life on the farm, of course, does not pause for energy deficits.

The guinea fowl remain numpties. This is a constant. I have stopped expecting improvement and have found a kind of peace in it. The geese are currently performing their Evil Overlord routine, which involves a great deal of purposeful waddling and meaningful staring and an overall air of barely contained menace. They’re not fooling anyone but they’re very committed to the bit.

And then there are the chickens.

My next door neighbour’s chickens — eight of them — have decided, apparently without consulting anyone, that they live here now. They have moved in with my menagerie and they will not go home and they cannot be reasoned with. My neighbour has assessed the situation, recognised a lost cause, and formally ceded ownership.

I now have eight more chickens.

I am not counting them. I know the number will bother me and I have made the executive decision not to know it. They’re here. There are some of them. That’s as far as I’m going.

In more soothing news: Mumma has moved on from the Pusheen bed, but let no one think for a moment that Mumma has given up on warmth. Mumma has simply upgraded. She has installed herself in the fluffy donut bed, directly beside the wood fire, and she is glowing. Not metaphorically — the firelight is literally on her face and she looks like a Renaissance painting of a cat who has made every correct decision.

The Pusheen sits nearby, empty, watching.

Mumma does not care. Mumma has the fire. 🖤