Rebecca Among the Stars

Why I Write With Māori Culture Woven Through My Stories People sometimes ask, or maybe wonder quietly, why Māori culture appears in my writing. The simple answer is this: because it has been part of the land beneath my feet. I was not raised as an expert. I would never pretend to be one. I learnt to speak te reo Māori a little — he iti , just a small amount — and I spent time on marae, listening, watching, learning where I could. Not rushing in with both boots on, but trying to understand that some things are not just words. They carry history. They carry people. They carry respect. There is something about Māori culture that sits deep in Aotearoa. You can feel it in the names of places, in the shape of the stories, in the way land is never just land. A river is not just water moving downhill. A mountain is not just a lump of rock with weather on top. There is memory there. There is ancestry there. There is a heartbeat if you are quiet enough to hear it. That is what draw...

Ideas do not come only from beautiful places, or quiet walks, or poetic moments where the light falls nicely and everything behaves itself.  Sometimes they come from life being inconveniently life-like. They come from death. From humour. From the strange things people say when they are tired, frightened, grieving, or trying very hard not to be any of those things. They come from family stories, old memories, half-heard conversations, news headlines, hospital corridors, kitchen tables, and the sort of laughter that turns up at completely inappropriate moments and saves everyone from falling apart. I have found that almost everything becomes material eventually. That sounds slightly ruthless, but writers are magpies with notebooks. We collect shiny things, broken things, odd things, painful things, and things nobody else thought were worth keeping. Then one day, years later, something we barely noticed at the time becomes the hinge of a story. Even my husband’s work in the fi...

I thought it might be useful to gather the main places where you can follow my writing, book news, and ongoing projects in one place.  Because let’s be honest, the internet is a wonderful thing, but it can also feel like someone tipped a filing cabinet into a wind tunnel.    If you're reading this, you've already found Rebecca Among the Stars , where I share thoughts on storytelling, the writing process, the ideas behind the books, and the occasional glimpse behind the curtain of whatever I am working on next.  I also have a Facebook page where I post updates, story news, images, videos, blog posts, and other writing-related adventures.    And, of course, my books and author page can be found on Amazon, where you'll find published titles, new releases, and available editions.    I'll keep adding and updating links as new books, pages, and projects appear.  Thank you for following along, reading, commenting, sharing, and generally encouragin...

Writing is turning thought into marks that someone else can carry away. That sounds simple, doesn’t it? Almost too simple. A sentence, a note, a shopping list, a warning, a confession, a story. Words arranged in such a way that one mind can reach across the gap and touch another. At its plainest, writing is communication. It is how we pass along an idea, a memory, an instruction, a joke, a grief, a hope, or a small piece of ourselves that refuses to stay quiet. But really, writing is thinking with a trail behind it. For me, that thinking trail is not always walked alone. I use AI as a collaborative partner, not to replace the strange, stubborn human heart of writing, but to help organise the storm of thoughts and ideas that arrive in no sensible order whatsoever. It is a sounding board, a sorting table, a place to gather scraps, test directions, untangle knots, and ask, “Is there a story hiding in this?” The imagination remains mine, with all its ghosts, tea stains, bad weather, ...