
You know the best thing about writing? It’s this. Unlike with your kids, your spouse, driving a car, or doing a normal job, you are totally in control. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are rules you have to follow. Grammar stuff and erh....grammar stuff. But the creative stuff? You get to choose.
You want to write a mermaid? Go for it.You want her to be less the lullaby-singing, land-man-loving good girl and more the heat-packing, arse-kicking, potty-mouthed kinda gal? Knock yourself out.

And you find the whole big, green tail thing just too tricky, weird and plain icky? Ditch it. Voila. Leggy mermaid is yours.
So I guess what writing teaches you, really, is that it’s okay to be you. That all the hottest, wildest, most extreme imaginings of your beautiful brain are AOK.
What’s that thing Dr Seuss says? “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
Even if you is a mermaid-human hybrid, living on the land, working as a cop in a town with no water and counting down the days til your doom.
And my mermaid taught me quite a few other groovy things along the way:
Like sometimes you need to kiss first, ask questions later.
And when you only have three weeks to live, every last brownie counts.
And most of all, hug your mother. Every day.
And keep writing. No matter what the muse whispers to you...
(Image courtesy of Victor Habbick and freedigitalphotos.net)

“It’s Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum meets Splash in a sexy, smart-talking debut about a mermaid in a desert, a city under water, and the secret that no-one is supposed to uncover.”
Fish out of Water
Dirtwater's straight-talking Deputy Sheriff has a lot on her plate: a nicotine addiction that's a serious liability for a mermaid, a solider-of-fortune ex who's hooked on her Mom's brownies, a gorgeous, naked stranger in her shower, and a mysterious dead blonde with a fish tattoo on Main Street.
Oh, and one other thing.
She's scheduled to die on her thirtieth birthday - in three weeks - unless she can 'change the course of destiny and save the world entire'. Throw in a Mom who's the local Mayor and a Dad who's been locked in the county jail for twelve years, and that's all the trouble she needs without her mermaid roots coming back to haunt her.
Rania's heading home to Aegira for a family wedding but she's starting to have a sinking feeling that's got nothing to do with hydroporting seven miles under the sea and everything to do with some weird connections that seem to be emerging between her, the dead blonde, her Mom's shady past and a ten thousand year old prophesy. Now if she can just steal a corpse, get a crazy Aegirian priest off her case, work out who the hell's trying to kill her and stop sleeping with the fishes, she might be able to unravel the prophesy, the mystery of the missing choirgirls and the secrets hidden in her Mom's past. And maybe even save her own ass while she's at it.
Ros started writing again in earnest three years ago. In that time, Ros has secured a two-book deal with Harper Collins Australia, published Sister Pact (a romantic comedy co-written with her sister Ali) and Fish Out of Water (Escape Publishing on 1 April), been a contributing author to the e-anthology URL Love, and finaled in the STALI competition.
Ros writes fresh, funny, genre-busting fiction. She digs feisty heroines, good friends, quirky families, heroes to make you sigh and tingle, and a dash of fantasy from time to time.
Ros also runs a successful business consulting to government and the private sector. She teaches professional writing skills and recently authored a writing guide, Clarity.
Ros lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her husband Blair, four small but very opinionated children, a neurotic dog and nine billion germs.
Buy Fish Out of Water at itunes. OR Buy Fish Out of Water at Amazon.
Find out more at www.rosbaxterink.com
You can email Ros at rosbaxterink@gmail.com or find her at www.facebook.com/RosBaxterInk, on twitter @RosBaxter, or www.rosbaxterink.com.