Fiona McIntosh - Author

Desperate to write a popular novel?
Ready to commit to your manuscript?
Looking for a guide to help you bridge the gap between talking and doing?

When the student is ready, the teacher arrives…


This is five intensive days with best selling fiction writer, Fiona McIntosh.

It is designed for emerging writers of commercial fiction who have done the writing classes, read the writing books, consider themselves competent writers and yet still find themselves looking for that elusive catalyst that propels them toward publication. Experienced writers – in any genre – are welcomed and the class size will be kept to between 15-20.

Fiona will challenge you through the week so bring your arsenal of creativity, imagination, passion and above all energy. This is about preparing for success with your writing and she will show you how to overcome the traditional insecurities and inhibitions that plague new writers and hamper their power to move forward.

She will visit all the important locations on the landscape of a novel – everything from getting your facts right to creating engaging characters, to finding your story’s rhythm.

Most importantly, she will demonstrate how the world’s popular novelists breathe oxygen into their writing to lift their stories off the pages and into the hearts and imagination of their readers.

Fiona will also provide a helpful guide on vital but less tangible aspects of novel writing including preparing for a successful writing journey, knowing the invisible character and the secrets to good discipline.

And she will give you a greater understanding of what an acquisitions editor is looking for and the editorial process.

Finally she will give you her outlook/advice on the business side of writing from preparing a professional submission to earning a living from novels and how to market yourself and build the groundswell.

Course attendees will actively participate in writing tasks that demonstrate what is being learned and there will be homework each evening so please come prepared to work hard.

Do feel free to relax either side of the Masterclass but during your five days together this is a writing boot camp. You’re paying for it so get the most out of it by remaining focused.

© Copyright McIntosh Books Pty Ltd

About Fiona

Fiona comes from a sales and marketing background within the travel industry and together with her husband published a travel magazine for 16 years before she took a Masterclass with Bryce Courtenay in Year 2000. Her life was irrevocably changed as a result and the business was sold so that she could pursue her dream to be a full time novelist. Fiona’s first attempt at a manuscript was picked up by a global publishing company and she won a three book deal; she has since had 25 books published and her books are on sale worldwide in all English speaking markets and are translated into a number of languages. She is one of our country’s best-known fantasy authors with blockbuster trilogies including The Quickening and is increasingly known for her sprawling adventure-romances with last year’s success The Lavender Keeper, her best-known mainstream fiction.
She is in demand as a motivational speaker connected with following the dream and is an ambassador for Writing Australia. Fiona considers herself a protégé of Bryce Courtenay, arguably Australia’s most beloved storyteller of the last few decades, and at the announcement of his grave illness promised him she would continue his brilliant Masterclass in Popular Fiction.

In Canberra with Bryce - September 2012

To my enormous delight, Fiona McIntosh will continue to run a Masterclass Writing Course. I can think of no writer in Australia, or, for that matter elsewhere, who will do so with a more professional aptitude and sheer pizzazz! Go for it writers, it will change your life!
Bryce Courtenay…September 2012