About the author

Tony Shillitoe

As a child, I read everything I could find across many different genre and I became an avid writer of poems and stories and creator of comics. I dreamed of publication and had stories, poems and articles printed in magazines.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My first brief professional publishing success was a solitary short poem published in a BHP/Fellowship of Australian Writers anthology. However, a chance encounter with a friend in the book industry led to my first real success with Pan Macmillan Australia who published the Andrakis fantasy trilogy in 1992/3 – Guardians, Kingmaker and Dragonlords.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since 1992, I have had fantasy novels published with HarperCollins Australia – the Ashuak Chronicles and the Dreaming in Amber series – and young adult novels published with HarperCollins, Wakefield Press and online self-publications, and short stories published in various magazines.<br>The Last Wizard (1995) and Blood (2002) were finalists in the Aurealis Best Fantasy Novel award and the teenage novel, Caught in the Headlights, was a Notable Book for Older Readers in the 2003 Children’s Book Council awards and listed on several Premier’s Reading Lists.<br>I co-wrote and delivered courses for the Professional Writing Unit at Adelaide Institute of TAFE, offered a variety of writing workshops through Writers SA, Flinders University and various schools, and ghost-edited several works for other authors. I was a guest author at the South Australian Writers’ Week in 2000, Guest of Honour at SwanCon 2003, and a regular guest speaking about books on ABC radio’s Peter Goer’s Evenings and Matt and Dave’s Mornings.<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In 2023, I left the education field to pursue full time writing and currently have multiple new projects in development. I also mentor writers with Spectrum Writing Inc, Writers SA and Millswood Books.