Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood
Page 25
To my really lovely pen pal who lives in the ether with me, in space, where no-one can hear us scream – Mandy Beaumont. You amaze me with your glorious writing.
With a special, deeply heartfelt shout-out to Sam Barker, Lynette and Ross Stagg, and Rhoni and Andrew Stokes for being my best friends when I’ve needed them most. I love you all. A whole big lot! Like huge. You were the ones who said or did something that made a world of difference to me in my darkest times.
Gemma Ward, I miss your laughter and nuttiness. I can’t even remember which one of us was flat and which one was saggy! I promise I’ll come and see you very soon! You are the best!
To Pamela Trueman, my former English teacher. So nice to reconnect with you.
And to my book team – the most wonderful, wonderful, Alexandra Payne for her vision and belief that my story could become a book; Kate O’Donnell for her keen eye, razor-sharp literary intuition and support; Vanessa Pellatt for her fine-tuning and ability to decipher my illegible scribblings; Kristina Schulz because I love her to pieces; Kirby Armstrong for her book cover and nailing the little blue portrait of me; Kylie Rathborne for flogging my book in the marketplace; and my agent, Jo Butler, for being my champion in the scary forbidden forest that is the publishing world. Thanks also to Wendy Harmer, Benjamin Law, Jenny Valentish and Kayte Murphy for being my first readers and saying nice things about my book. I love your hearts and brains and words. All of you really inspire me.
But most of all, I want to mention one special little fellow because he is my everything. To Xavier, for being the moonlight over my horizon and my slice of heaven, oh yeah …
Because there’s only one thing better than being a mama and that’s being a grandmama!
First published 2018 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
uqp.com.au
uqp@uqp.uq.edu.au
Copyright © Nikki McWatters 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
The names of the people in this memoir have been changed and some characters are composites of a number of people. This has been done to protect their privacy.
Cover design by Kirby Armstrong
Cover images: Child’s drawing by Diane Gonzales/Shutterstock images; Wine stain by Picsfive/Shutterstock images; Crumpled paper by Paladin12/Shutterstock images
Author photograph by Zeus Eugenius
Typeset in 12/16 pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
ISBN 978 0 7022 6018 6 (pbk)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6148 0 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6149 7 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7022 6150 3 (kindle)