About
With a passion for literature that began in childhood, Lorraine Cobcroft seeks to pen stories that 'nudge the world a little'. Delving deep into the hearts and minds of people who live, love and grow in challenging worlds, Lorraine strives to create unforgettable characters with intriguing pasts; to cheer unsung heroes; to shine lights in dark corners; to applaud the strength of the human spirit and to expose the amazing power of family love.
Following a career as a business and instructional writer, Lorraine's first fiction work was a children's story, Melanie's Easter Gift, written to support her younger daughter's efforts to raise money for Leukaemia research and treatment. Deciding writing for children wasn't her strength, Lorraine joined a writers' group and began penning short stories. When her husband, Peter, requested she write his story to expose an unspoken truth about Australia's Stolen Generation, she entered the world of novel writing. The Pencil Case is minimally fictionalised, a work of biographical historical fiction.
Encouraged by the response to The Pencil Case, Lorraine penned Mortgaged Goods, a fictional story based loosely on two separate personal experiences and focused on exposing failures of the legal system and the pain such failures cause.
Lorraine's most recent work, A Will of Deceit, was inspired by her own experience defending a challenged Will. A frame novel, the story is fiction, though the inner story is loosely based on Lorraine's mother's true and astonishing story.
A self-published author, Lorraine has also mentored several novice authors to produce and publish memoirs, collections of short stories and novels. She is proud to have helped bring over thirty excellent works to the market and, in the process, made friends with delightful, talented authors who have fascinating stories to tell.
Now aged 75, Lorraine lives with her husband of 55 years in a semi-rural area in the far northern part of Brisbane. Together, they grow fruit trees and vegetables, take short trips in their camper van, and enjoy spending time with three wonderful adult children and five delightful and adored grandchildren. Apart from reading, writing, travel and gardening, Lorraine loves to sing in the local choir. She also enjoys sewing and making jams and preserves (mostly to gift or swap for eggs, as she and hubby could never hope to eat all she makes.)
Lorraine is currently working on a memoir and a sequel to "A Will of Deceit".
'Nudging the World a Little" - Lorraine Cobcroft
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What inspired you to start writing?
I have wanted to write for as long as I can remember. I think my mother drove my desire, though oddly she discouraged me from ever embarking on a writing career. Though uneducated, she had an amazing innate talent for teaching creative writing. One of my earliest memories is of her coaching my cousin to write a story about a rabbit. She went down on all fours and hopped about the room, urging him to use more creative words to describe how she was moving. Accepting my mother's advice that there was no way for a writer of fiction to make money, I moved into business and instructional writing after several years of stumbling about searching for work I could enjoy. I finally switched to fiction writing in retirement, and I now fervently wish I had started sooner, though I enjoyed a deeply satisfying career as a copywriter.
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Can you tell us a little about your latest book?
"Will disputes are games of lies, but the dead sometimes tell tales", is the tagline of 'A Will of Deceit', a work of legal, family and psychological fiction likely to be enjoyed by readers who loved 'Big Little Lies' by Liane Moriarty, 'Sharp Objects' by Gillian Flynn, 'The Family Upstairs' by Lisa Jewell, or legal dramas like 'The Lincoln Laywer' by Michael Connelly. A frame novel, 'A Will of Deceit' is narrated by an ambitious young female lawyer who takes on a client to contest a will, believing she can achieve an easy win. But the client proves to be a narcissistic manipulator who threatens the lawyer and her family, leading to exposure of truths that challenge everything the lawyer believed about herself and the justice system. The inner story of this frame novel is loosely based on my mother's experiences, but heavily fictionalised. Variously described as "a gripping, emotionally layered novel" and a "suspenseful exploration of inheritance, deception, and the moral complexities within the legal system", this work was reviewed by Alison Mackay, who remarked, "immediately struck by its psychological tension and moral depth. You’ve crafted more than a legal drama; it's a haunting reflection on ambition, justice, and human fallibility. Brittany’s descent into the tangled world of deception and inheritance law feels both thrilling and deeply human, reminiscent of 'Presumed Innocent' and 'Little Fires Everywhere', but with a sharper critique of moral corruption within power structures." TRIGGER WARNING: This story might challenge everything you believed about the legal and justice system and those who serve it.
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