by Allison Tait | Sep 1, 2026 | Blog, Books, My books, Writing
It’s publication day for my new middle-grade cold-case crime thriller THE GARDEN OF LOST GIRLS, which is, as always, creates an exquisite emotional blend of excitement and anxiety.
The response to DANGER ROAD has been so incredible that the idea of writing another gritty tween mystery was both amazing fun and an overwhelming challenge.
But 18-year-old Jessica Martin, who disappeared thirty years ago from the opening night of her own play, provided the (fictional) catalyst and her 14-year old nephew Sam and his cousins Gracie and Archie became an engaging and persistent group of teenage sleuths.
So where did they all come from?
The starting point for The Garden of Lost Girls
As always, the foundation of the story bubbled up out of headlines and preoccupations. It actually began with an old house – longtime blog readers and podcast listeners will recognise the old weatherboard house (known as The Old Girl) that we lived in until a few years ago – and a title: The Garden of Lost Girls, inspired by the magical garden out the back.
It’s unusual for me to have a title before I write the story – usually it comes out of the text and is often the last thing that goes on the manuscript – and that is perhaps why it took me a long time to find the right story to go with it…
When we moved out of this house, I knew that it would feature in a story one day, because its big rooms with their fireplaces and their dark floorboards felt ready-made for an historical novel. Plus, I knew that I wanted to capture it on the page and keep it with me always.
I started and discarded several ideas, character notes and snippets over the years, and when I came up with the title ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’, I wrapped the whole lot up into a word document on my computer – where it sat for several years while I wrote ‘Willow Bright’s Secret Plot‘ and then ‘Danger Road‘.
But when the time came for me to think about writing a second middle-grade cold-case crime novel, I opened up that file because this house and that title felt ready-made for this genre. So I tossed out all of those character notes, and most of the history, and started again with a whole new idea…
Finding the new story
Now that I knew I was writing a middle-grade cold-case crime thriller, I needed a whole new world and a whole new protagonist. Cold cases require a contemporary character to be the sleuth – someone invested enough to keep going even when things get tough (and dangerous) – and an historical character that we get to know as the story unfolds.
Given I already had such an evocative title in place – The Garden of Lost Girls – I knew that somewhere in this mix I had a missing girl, a garden, and a story that would need to be told realistically, and carefully, for a middle-grade audience.
Enter Jessica Martin, 18 years old, and missing for thirty years.
All I knew about Jessica when I first met her – and it really does feel like ‘meeting’ characters rather than ‘creating’ them – was that she had written a play called ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’ for her final year 12 exams.
I also knew that, minutes before the curtain rose on the opening night production of that play, Jessica turned towards a group of people entering the theatre, gasped, and walked out the side door of the theatre, leaving her family sitting in their seats.
She was never seen again.
When I thought about who would be motivated to find out exactly what happened to Jessica that night – why she left, where she went, and why she never came home – I landed on her 14-year-old nephew Sam, who has never met his Aunt Jessica, but feels as though he knows her because, in her absence, she somehow takes up more space in his life than he feels she would if she was living around the corner, like his other aunt Kat.
So this is the story of the second generation of a family residing in that liminal space left after a family member goes missing. The space of ‘not knowing’. And I was fortunate to be able to interview Dr Sarah Wayland, Professor of Social Work and missing persons expert, before I began writing.
Dr Wayland is the author of ‘Living In The Liminal Space‘, based on her research into unresolved and ambiguous loss, and her insights gave me the courage to explore Sam’s story and write it for a middle-grade audience.
Building the world of ‘The Garden of Lost Girls’
Of course, a novel is never about just one thing, and to build the world of Clifton Heads, the small coastal town in which the story is set, I drew on the landscapes of the south coast of NSW (this time Kiama) and then moved them around at will, putting a big park at the top of the headland, and an amateur theatre right near the beach.
I created Long Beach, where Sam loves to surf and where his family used to live, and I created Flat Rock, at the bottom of the cliffs that drop down from the headland. But I drew on the surf culture that permeates so much of life in the towns that dot the coast near me, and I drew on my own memories of participating in amateur plays as a teenager myself (that’s me, aged about 11, as Alice In Wonderland in the photo above).
Sam is a surfer, not a Theatre Kid, and he is horrified when his Mum asks him to be in the 30th anniversary production of The Garden Of Lost Girls. But when she tells him that they’re hoping the production will jog someone’s memory enough that they finally find out what happened to Jessica, he agrees for two reasons – one, he really wants to help his Mum find out where her sister went all those years ago, and two, his cousins Gracie and Archie are already on board for the play for the same reason.
But all three cousins soon admit to having misgivings.
Because while they don’t know where Jessica is, the family still has hope she’ll come home. What happens when they discover the truth?
And then there’s the fact that someone really doesn’t want the play to go ahead at all…
As I said at the start of this post, writing this story was both amazingly fun and an incredible challenge.
I hope you’ll have a read and let me know what you think!
Buy your copy of ‘The Garden Of Lost Girls’ here.
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog!
I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of 13 middle-grade novels, including adventure fantasy series such as The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries, and contemporary stories including THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE, WILLOW BRIGHT’S SECRET PLOT, DANGER ROAD and THE LAST WORD.
You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.
If you’re looking for book recommendations for young readers, join the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community, tune in to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and sign up for the Your Kid’s Next Read newsletter.
by Allison Tait | Jun 16, 2025 | Blog, My books, Reading, Writing, Your Kid's Next Read
I’m in the middle of preparing author talks and workshops for ‘Danger Road‘, my cold-case crime thriller for middle-grade readers, launching on 1 July.
It’s always so interesting to sit down and consider exactly where ideas for stories come from and how they go from a glimmer of curiosity into a full-blown world, peopled by three-dimensional characters living their lives and getting themselves into various situations and scrapes. Trying to explain HOW that happens is not an easy task and it’s often only in looking back and preparing to talk about it with young readers that I’m able to clarify it for myself.
I’m not a person who creates ‘mood boards’ or uses Pinterest for visual prompts for stories. It’s just not how my subconscious operates. So it’s only when I’m creating a slide presentation for my author talks that I’m confronted by the reality that today’s students really like visuals. They’re a screen generation.
And so I find myself scratching around trying to find images that evoke the feeling of the book and the incidents or moments that inspired it.
These are some of the photos* I came up with for ‘Danger Road’.
None of these photos on their own shows up in the book. But all of them feed into the lives of Alex and Leo Hawkins and their friends in Grayton, the regional town in which they live. Creating a great mystery story is not just about the puzzle at the heart of the novel, but about the world in which that puzzle is set. And, for me, big worlds – be they fantasy or contemporary – are built on tiny details.
Alex and Leo set out to solve a 25-year-old hit-and-run cold case, and the details of that puzzle unfold along with the story. But the details of their daily lives and the lives of those around them are there from the opening sentence, building a picture word by word, of a place and the people who live there.
It’s a world of teenagers – then and now – in a place that’s not quite the city, not quite the coast, not quite the deep country. It’s about friendships and relationships – first love, family, the people around us – and about the difference between who we are and who the world thinks we are.
And it’s about the ripple effects of tragedy within a community.
Creating characters – and a crime
When I think back to the very early days of writing the novel – and the first glimmers began three or four years ago – I was thinking mostly of the characters of Alex and Leo – I wanted to write a detective story about two brothers.
I had written a junior fiction novel about two very different brothers – a book that will become one of my contributions to the Your Next Read series in 2027. But the kind of story I had in mind this time around was older, and definitely grittier.
So I started jotting down ideas, just in the usual way – opening a doc on my computer and throwing in half-considered sentences, links to articles or images. I knew I wanted two boys, close in age, but world’s apart in interest and personality.
In early 2023, author Adrian Beck and I had a brainstorming session about a book we thought we might write together – he was interested in writing a detective story as well. But he was working on something else, as was I, and we didn’t get much further than the brainstorm and talking about how much fun it would be to write something together.
Then in 2024, after I finished writing ‘Willow Bright’s Secret Plot’, I got in touch with Adrian and said, ‘I’m writing my own.’ He told me to ‘go for it’, and off I went.
Crime in a middle-grade novel can be difficult, so finding the right puzzle for the boys to solve took time to come into focus. But hit-and-run incidents are reported with horrifying regularity in Australian newspapers – there have been four in Sydney just in the past fortnight. These days they are mostly solved quickly, thanks to CCTV and other technology, but that hasn’t always been the case.
As someone who lives outside the major cities, I know that regional roads can be dark, lonely places, and the idea that a car, something we take for granted in everyday life, can also be a weapon is something that I did my best to make my own kids aware of as I was teaching them to drive.
That the decisions we make have consequences.
It’s an important reminder in a world where games like Grand Theft Auto have ‘mission’ called ‘Hit and Run’ and you can find clips on YouTube devoted to players ‘running over’ pedestrians.
Mostly, though, I wrote, in ‘Danger Road’, the kind of novel I love to read and have always loved to read. A pacy, plot-driven story with a thorny puzzle at its centre.
The first review in Books + Publishing (6 May) by Karys McEwen described ‘Danger Road’ as “… a compelling standalone mystery about a cold case, small-town secrets, and the difficulties surrounding sibling dynamics”, with “an emotional depth that always feels grounded and accessible.”
Reviewer Paul McDonald said, “I loved ‘Danger Road’ … [it] is compelling, the characters completely believable, the tone is dark and moody and the pace is thrilling. The novel is perfectly pitched for readers 10 plus, gritty but absolutely right for those readers transitioning towards teen fiction. Tait knows how to write for her young readers- and upper primary and lower secondary readers will fall so easily into the pages of ‘Danger Road’. … We need to be offering stories like this one that hook the reader from chapter 1. 
“
Fingers crossed that young readers will love it too!
Find out more about ‘Danger Road’ and buy it here.
*With thanks to B. Thomas-McKnight for the river shots
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog!
I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of 11 middle-grade novels, including adventure fantasy series such as The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries, and contemporary stories including THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE, WILLOW BRIGHT’S SECRET PLOT and DANGER ROAD (July 25).
You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.
If you’re looking for book recommendations for young readers, join the Your Kid’s Next Read Facebook community, tune in to the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast and sign up for the Your Kid’s Next Read newsletter.
by Allison Tait | Oct 8, 2024 | Industry Insider, Writing
It’s been a year of beginnings and endings for me.
I’ve started and completed one full middle-grade novel, picked up one I started last year and completed it, and started and put down another that I hope to pick up again soon and complete early next year.
For me, the key is to always be writing something. Projects swing in and out of focus, depending on relevance (and publishers, let’s face it), but there’s always something bubbling away in the background.
I was talking to a dear friend about the last week, as I completed my latest first draft (aka Project B).
“But now you’ll have to start again with something new,” she said.
“I’ll just pick up Project C,” I replied. “I’m looking forward to stepping back into that world.”
“Congratulations on cheating the blank page,” she said, with a laugh.
It’s true. If you’re always writing, with multiple projects at different stages, you somehow manage to skip that moment when the previous project is complete and there’s just the blank page and the blinking cursor awaiting your next move.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. It’s been a while since I visited Project C. There’s every chance I allowed Project B to take up the focus for good reason. Who knows what awaits me when I return to the page?
If it all gets too hard, I can hear Project D singing its siren song…
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait and you can find out more about me here and more about my online writing courses here.
If you’d like to know more about my writing process (and how I can help with yours), join Write With Allison Tait, my online writing community offering Inspiration, Motivation, Information and Connection, here.
by Allison Tait | Dec 20, 2023 | Advice for Writers, The Business of Writing, Writing
It’s that time of year when our thoughts turn to words like GOALS, CHANGE and DREAMS.
If your dream is to write – ‘write more’, ‘write that novel’, ‘write something’, ‘get serious about writing’ or words to that effect – I’ve got the kickstart you need.
Join my Write With Allison Tait group now to participate in the #Fresh5000 31-day writing and creativity challenge throughout January.
Every day there’ll be a new prompt to kickstart your writing word count for the year or a challenge to expand your creative thinking.
By the end of January, if you stick with me, you’ll have added at least 5000 words to your work in progress, and have filled your creative well in new ways, too!
Join Write With Allison Tait here.
What is Write With Allison Tait?
Write With Allison Tait is an online writing group, facilitated through a Facebook group, and featuring two live Zooms each month:
• The Access Al Areas, which is an ‘Ask Me Anything’, offering an opportunity to talk about your writing progress with me and other group members, and ask any burning questions you may have about writing, editing, publishing, book publicity, podcasting, building an author platform and anything else you can think of.
• The Industry Insider, which is an intimate Q&A with an industry expert. Previous guests have included
– authors, such as Dervla McTiernan, Kate Forsyth, Natasha Lester, Graeme Simsion, Anna Spargo Ryan, Rachael Johns, Ashleigh Barton, Meredith Jaffe, Pamela Cook, Angela Slatter
– publishers, editors and agents, including Laura Sieveking (Scholastic Australia), Sophie Hamley (Hachette), Nicola O’Shea (freelance editor), Annabel Barker (literary agent),
– industry professionals, such as Michelle Barraclough (author websites), Rah Gardiner (author’s assistant and tech), Anna Featherstone (indie publishing expert)
All Zoom sessions are recorded and remain accessible for members of the group to watch at any time.
The program for 2024 is shaping up with a bestselling children’s author, award-winning screenwriter, literary agent, publisher, and more in the mix.
On top of our Zooms, I also run at least two Creative Challenges each year to help you make progress with your manuscript. In 2023, we did the #Fresh5000 (January), the #Spark7000 (July) and #HaveAGoMo (November).
Who is the group for?
The group is for writers of all kinds, carrying on my philosophy from my years with the So You Want To Be A Writer podcast that we learn something from every writer we hear from, and I bring my own broad-ranging expertise (children’s author, non-fiction author, freelance writer, podcaster and interviewer) to the table.
In 2023, members of the group have been published in picture books, middle-grade and YA fiction, as well as historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction, romance, and more.
Whether you’re writing your first novel and trying to get to The End, you’ve written a manuscript and you’re wondering what to do next, you’ve published a book (indie or traditional) and you want to know how to spread the word about it, you’re trying to write novel #2, you want to know more about what publishers want or how the industry works, or you need the encouragement and motivation of being part of a group of like-minded people, this group is for you.
If you’ve ever wanted to pick my brains or sit down for a coffee with me, it’s also for you.
Membership is $29.95 a month.
Find out all the details and join here.
Testimonials
Checking in with Write with Allison Tait is an essential part of my writing routine.
“I love being a member of Al’s online writing group (Write with Allison Tait).
“In addition to chatting with like minded people who encourage and lift each other up, Al is a constant and vibrant source of insider writing and publishing tips. Al’s abundance of knowledge and enthusiasm for the writing craft means that she can answer any queries thrown her way – and if she doesn’t know, will make it her priority to find out.
“I love the engaging zoom meetings where we discuss individual triumphs and difficulties; as well as the informative sessions with specialist guests including well known authors, publishers, editors and more. Checking in with Write with Allison Tait is an essential part of my writing routine.” – Lisa Heidke
A generous mentor who has a lot to offer
“I have been a member of Write with Allison Tait online writing group since May 2022. WWAT is an inclusive and encouraging writing community offering a range of benefits to members. This includes engagement with industry experts from whom I have gained invaluable insights into the writing process.
“Accountability is another key feature. Regular check-ins, writing challenges, and goal-setting exercises have motivated me and provided a sense of camaraderie.
“Allison is a generous mentor who has a lot to offer given her extensive experience as a author, writing teacher and blogger.” – Pauline Wilson
Join us!
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait and you can find out more about me here and more about my online writing courses here.
For full details about Write With Allison Tait, my online writing community offering Inspiration, Motivation, Information and Connection, go here.
by Allison Tait | Sep 26, 2023 | Advice for Writers, Writing
I’ve been out and about talking about writing, teaching writing, writing about writing… what I haven’t been doing is blogging about writing here, on my actual blog.
So, to make up for it, here’s a list of blog posts, full of writing tips and advice, you may have missed, plus some recent interviews where I chatted about writing The First Summer of Callie McGee, and even a chance to spend a day with me learning the ins and outs of being a children’s author (I’d love to see you there!)
16 writing posts you may have missed
The creative magic of the mundane
How to pitch yourself to a podcast: an author’s guide
5 short stories to read right now to make you a better writer
Want to be a children’s author? Here’s why you need to learn to present to kids
How to maintain tension in a romance novel when you know there is a happy ending
5 ways to keep your reader guessing in a crime novel
Are you a teenager who loves writing? Here are seven ways to become a better writer
How to build your author platform before your book is published
How to write your book’s acknowledgements page
Simple steps to blog your way to success as an author
10 Australian authors on Substack
How to create a book series bible
4 writing books you need
Six simple tips for proofreading
The write-changing joy of tidying your office
“It’s never too late” and other great writing tips
Recent podcast interviews
Reading With A Chance of Tacos
Ken and I cover a lot of territory about the choices you make when you’re writing for a middle-grade audience, why Callie McGee is set in a contemporary world and not my signature ‘almost history’ and a whole lot more.
Spoiler: we did not eat tacos, so there will be no chewing in your ear.
Find it here.
Healthyish
Host Felicity Harley and I take a dive into how to tap into creativity (and it’s probably not the way you think).
If you’d like to harness more creativity – and write more – within your busy daily life, this one is for you.
Listen here.
Your Kid’s Next Read
I always forget to mention my own podcast, but in this episode my co-host Megan Daley asks the questions educators want to know about The First Summer of Callie McGee.
We also have a chat about the importance of ‘escape reads’ for kids.
Listen here.
So you want to be a children’s author?
Have you been thinking about writing a children’s book? Or maybe you’ve started and don’t know what to do next?
Join me at the South Coast Writers’ Centre, Coledale, NSW, on Saturday 7 October, 10.30am-3pm, and let’s talk about ALL THE THINGS!
In the first part of this half-day workshop, I’ll share my insider secrets and practical tips on writing for children. All the things I’ve learnt through hard-won experience.
I’ll look at the top 10 questions you need to ask yourself in order to write a great book for kids – as well as answering any burning questions you might have.
In part two, we’ll dive into how to build a successful longterm career as a children’s author. From promoting your work to writing the next book, get the inside track to save you time and heartache.
Come along and say hello!
Find out more and get tickets here.
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait and you can find out more about me here and more about my online writing courses here.
Subscribe to my newsletter for updates, insights and more amazing writing advice.
Or check out So You Want To Be A Writer (the book), where my co-author Valerie Khoo and I have distilled the best tips from hundreds of author and industry expert interviews. Find out more and buy it here.
