JB Rowley's Blog
May 7, 2025
Team Dusty Gazette May 2025
Are strawberries really strawberries? Or is strawberry simply a ‘barry’?
Discover the answer to this question in the latest issue of the Gazette.
And lots more.
Such as:
What is the real meaning of Barry?
And:
Why do we say 'foot' when we mean 'feet'?
Also:
I'll tell you what I've been up to.
link: Team Dusty Gazette
Discover the answer to this question in the latest issue of the Gazette.
And lots more.
Such as:
What is the real meaning of Barry?
And:
Why do we say 'foot' when we mean 'feet'?
Also:
I'll tell you what I've been up to.
link: Team Dusty Gazette
November 8, 2024
Team Dusty Gazette November 2024
Read about Melbourne's Melancholy Day, the venomous platypus, free books on Amazon, JB's latest news and more. The Word of the Day in this edition is envenomate meaning 'to poison by venom'.
Follow the link to read the latest issue of the Gazette.
https://mailchi.mp/05d85358e212/break...
Follow this link to subscribe to the Team Dusty Gazette:
https://brigidgeorge.us5.list-manage....
Follow the link to read the latest issue of the Gazette.
https://mailchi.mp/05d85358e212/break...
Follow this link to subscribe to the Team Dusty Gazette:
https://brigidgeorge.us5.list-manage....
May 5, 2023
Reviewers Please!
Death in The Dandenongs (Dusty Kent Mystery #7) is due for release on May 15.
If you would like an ARC of the eBook in return for an honest review on Amazon, please let me know in the comments.
(You must meet Amazon's reviewer requirements i,e, '...you need to have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com.au using a valid credit or debit card in the past 12 months...'
Death in The Dandenongs:
In April 2022, Queenie Forsyth died suddenly in a village in Melbourne’s picturesque Dandenong Ranges.
A local resident suggests Queenie was murdered because she stumbled on the truth about the disappearance fifty years previously of Australia’s first celebrity chef. Dusty wonders if the killer is closer to home. Is it Queenie’s son? A neighbour? A friend?
Unexpected secrets, like monsters from the deep, loom to the surface of the small community in the hills as Dusty follows one lead after another.
Eventually Dusty is sure she knows who murdered Queenie. But how can she find the evidence needed to bring the killer to justice?
If you would like an ARC of the eBook in return for an honest review on Amazon, please let me know in the comments.
(You must meet Amazon's reviewer requirements i,e, '...you need to have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com.au using a valid credit or debit card in the past 12 months...'
Death in The Dandenongs:
In April 2022, Queenie Forsyth died suddenly in a village in Melbourne’s picturesque Dandenong Ranges.
A local resident suggests Queenie was murdered because she stumbled on the truth about the disappearance fifty years previously of Australia’s first celebrity chef. Dusty wonders if the killer is closer to home. Is it Queenie’s son? A neighbour? A friend?
Unexpected secrets, like monsters from the deep, loom to the surface of the small community in the hills as Dusty follows one lead after another.
Eventually Dusty is sure she knows who murdered Queenie. But how can she find the evidence needed to bring the killer to justice?
March 11, 2022
Murder on a Melbourne Tram
Murder on a Melbourne Tram will be launched on 15 April 2022!
A celebrity chef with an acerbic tongue is dead. Was he murdered by the young woman who suffered his verbal abuse every day? Dusty Kent is determined to hunt down the killer whoever it is.
An Australian murder mystery Agatha Christie style.
Twenty-nine-year-old Gracie Chamberlain claimed she didn’t know her boss’s dead body was decomposing in the upstairs bedroom while she went to work every day in the downstairs office. That is one reason the police arrested her.
It is the hot autumn of 2019 in Melbourne when Dusty Kent starts to investigate the strangulation of celebrity chef Rafe Mason. Four suspects have been identified by Gracie’s wealthy father who believes his daughter is innocent of the murder.
Dusty must decide if one of them is the killer. Her task is made difficult when it is established that each of the suspects has an alibi for the night of the murder. Dusty’s assistant suggests the police got it right in arresting Gracie Chamberlain. However, Dusty is not so sure.
Secrets unravel, tempers flare and suspects attempt to flee.
Murder on a Melbourne Tram is book #6 in the Dusty Kent murder mystery series written by JB Rowley under the pen name Brigid George. Each book can be read as a stand-alone story.
Preview copies of the eBook are available for preview and review on NetGalley.
A celebrity chef with an acerbic tongue is dead. Was he murdered by the young woman who suffered his verbal abuse every day? Dusty Kent is determined to hunt down the killer whoever it is.
An Australian murder mystery Agatha Christie style.
Twenty-nine-year-old Gracie Chamberlain claimed she didn’t know her boss’s dead body was decomposing in the upstairs bedroom while she went to work every day in the downstairs office. That is one reason the police arrested her.
It is the hot autumn of 2019 in Melbourne when Dusty Kent starts to investigate the strangulation of celebrity chef Rafe Mason. Four suspects have been identified by Gracie’s wealthy father who believes his daughter is innocent of the murder.
Dusty must decide if one of them is the killer. Her task is made difficult when it is established that each of the suspects has an alibi for the night of the murder. Dusty’s assistant suggests the police got it right in arresting Gracie Chamberlain. However, Dusty is not so sure.
Secrets unravel, tempers flare and suspects attempt to flee.
Murder on a Melbourne Tram is book #6 in the Dusty Kent murder mystery series written by JB Rowley under the pen name Brigid George. Each book can be read as a stand-alone story.
Preview copies of the eBook are available for preview and review on NetGalley.
March 9, 2021
FREE Murder Mystery
Murder of a Circus Act is a locked room mystery of just over 8,000 words written exclusively for my email subscribers. Just released!
If you like murder mysteries, perhaps you'd like to subscribe now and receive your copy. https://www.brigidgeorge.com/free-boo...
An eighty-four-year-old circus magician is stabbed through the heart with a stiletto blade while locked in his ‘magic room’ at his mansion on an isolated island off the coast of Victoria. When police are unable to solve the case, Dusty Kent is called in to hunt down the murderer. The main suspects are relatives of the victim, who were also at the villa. However, they all have alibis for the time of the murder. And how did the killer among them get into the locked room and out again without being detected?
If you like murder mysteries, perhaps you'd like to subscribe now and receive your copy. https://www.brigidgeorge.com/free-boo...
December 2, 2020
#1 New Release!
Thank you to everyone who downloaded Tooting Moon during the launch. You took the book to #1 New Release on Amazon in the 'Australian and Oceanian Literature' category in under two weeks. That is so cool! Although Whisper My Secret and Mother of Ten (written under my own name) have been Amazon bestsellers many times over in several different categories, this is the first time a Dusty Kent Mystery has earned that beautiful #1 orange ribbon from Amazon.
Update July 2021: I'm thrilled to announce Tooting Moon has been longlisted for the 2021 Davitt Award - Crime Novel Category.
Tooting Moon
August 8, 2020
Celebrating Myrtle with Love
Do you know what connects my mother to Queen Victoria?
When Queen Victoria married her ‘dearest, dear Albert’ in 1840, she wore myrtle in her wedding wreath. Back in 1585 when Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first myrtle plant (myrtus communis) to England, he couldn’t have predicted it would become part of a headpiece that replaced a royal crown. Queen Victoria chose the love plant to represent her feelings for Albert. Her marriage was secured and sustained by a deep love, just like the marriage of my mother Myrtle.
Sir Walter Raleigh must also have been blessed by the myrtle plant because he too made a love match when he married Elizabeth Throckmorton in 1591/92. Theirs was a forbidden love and a secret marriage because his Elizabeth was a maid of honour in the court of Queen Elizabeth 1. The pair’s defiance of royal protocol saw Raleigh’s bride expelled from the court and both of them imprisoned in the tower for a time. However, their love survived. So did the many lovely myrtle trees Sir Walter Raleigh planted in his garden at his home, Myrtle Grove, in County Cork, Ireland.
Before Queen Victoria and before Sir Walter Raleigh, myrtle had long been associated with love. The myrtle tree was sacred to Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love. During the Roman festival of Veneralia, the statue of Venus (the Roman counterpart to Aphrodite) was garlanded with myrtle. Not surprisingly, fragrant sprigs of myrtle were used in wedding rituals in ancient Rome.
According to Encyclopaedia Londinensis by John Wilkes ‘...this elegant and sweetly-scented shrub has been at all times the favourite theme of poets, cherished by lovers, as the rival of the rose; and, like that flower, dedicated to the goddess of beauty. Virgil mentions it always con amore, and represents it as thriving most successfully on the sea-shores of which they were reckoned a graceful ornament...’
Myrtle is an evergreen bush with fragrant white flowers. The word is pronounced ‘mertle’ and rhymes with ‘turtle’. Whisper my Secret is Myrtle’s story – my mother Myrtle, that is.
Each of my Dusty Kent Murder Mysteries (written under the pen name Brigid George) mentions ‘myrtle’ in some way. See if you can spot it!
When Queen Victoria married her ‘dearest, dear Albert’ in 1840, she wore myrtle in her wedding wreath. Back in 1585 when Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first myrtle plant (myrtus communis) to England, he couldn’t have predicted it would become part of a headpiece that replaced a royal crown. Queen Victoria chose the love plant to represent her feelings for Albert. Her marriage was secured and sustained by a deep love, just like the marriage of my mother Myrtle.
Sir Walter Raleigh must also have been blessed by the myrtle plant because he too made a love match when he married Elizabeth Throckmorton in 1591/92. Theirs was a forbidden love and a secret marriage because his Elizabeth was a maid of honour in the court of Queen Elizabeth 1. The pair’s defiance of royal protocol saw Raleigh’s bride expelled from the court and both of them imprisoned in the tower for a time. However, their love survived. So did the many lovely myrtle trees Sir Walter Raleigh planted in his garden at his home, Myrtle Grove, in County Cork, Ireland.
Before Queen Victoria and before Sir Walter Raleigh, myrtle had long been associated with love. The myrtle tree was sacred to Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of love. During the Roman festival of Veneralia, the statue of Venus (the Roman counterpart to Aphrodite) was garlanded with myrtle. Not surprisingly, fragrant sprigs of myrtle were used in wedding rituals in ancient Rome.
According to Encyclopaedia Londinensis by John Wilkes ‘...this elegant and sweetly-scented shrub has been at all times the favourite theme of poets, cherished by lovers, as the rival of the rose; and, like that flower, dedicated to the goddess of beauty. Virgil mentions it always con amore, and represents it as thriving most successfully on the sea-shores of which they were reckoned a graceful ornament...’
Myrtle is an evergreen bush with fragrant white flowers. The word is pronounced ‘mertle’ and rhymes with ‘turtle’. Whisper my Secret is Myrtle’s story – my mother Myrtle, that is.
Each of my Dusty Kent Murder Mysteries (written under the pen name Brigid George) mentions ‘myrtle’ in some way. See if you can spot it!
October 21, 2018
Disguising Demons
Dusty Kent Mystery #4 has hit the shelves. Exciting days!
Disguising Demons has a special connection for me. The story takes place in Port Douglas, an idyllic setting visited by the rich and famous from around the world including Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Kylie Minogue and other celebrities, as well as two people who were part of my life since my teenage years. I’ll tell you about them in a minute.
In July 2018, 'Team Dusty' visited Port Douglas a second time to research the setting for the book. Not a difficult assignment, escaping Melbourne’s winter to the warmth of Queensland where we enjoyed sunrise walks along the beach, snorkelling among tropical fish on the Great Barrier Reef, early morning swimming in the pool and sailing in a catamaran on the Coral Sea.
In Disguising Demons, investigative journalist Dusty Kent visits this tropical paradise on a quest to find the truth behind the murder of a gentle Buddhist monk. What she discovers shocks and saddens her and has her Irish assistant questioning whether they should continue with the case.
The launching of the book on October 19 was specifically chosen to coincide with a poignant ceremony honouring the two people I mentioned above. You see, Port Douglas was the favourite place in the world for my in-laws, Sylvia and Eric Barnes. They were right chuffed when I decided on ‘Port’ for the setting of the fourth Dusty Kent Mystery.
Mr and Mrs Barnes migrated to Australia from Reading, England in October 1969 following their eldest son, Dennis. I’d already snapped up their son by the time they arrived but they welcomed me with open arms and much affection. With my own family far away in the country, the Barnes clan became my second family. That continued even after Dennis and I divorced and my in-laws became my out-laws. :)
Sadly, Sylvia passed away at age 90 in 2016 and Eric at age 92 in 2018. October 19th was their wedding anniversary and, as was their wish, their ashes were scattered at Four Mile Beach on that day. Launching Disguising Demons on the same day and dedicating the book to them is my way of honouring their memory.
No wonder Disguising Demons occupies a warm place in my heart.
Disguising Demons
Disguising Demons has a special connection for me. The story takes place in Port Douglas, an idyllic setting visited by the rich and famous from around the world including Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Kylie Minogue and other celebrities, as well as two people who were part of my life since my teenage years. I’ll tell you about them in a minute.
In July 2018, 'Team Dusty' visited Port Douglas a second time to research the setting for the book. Not a difficult assignment, escaping Melbourne’s winter to the warmth of Queensland where we enjoyed sunrise walks along the beach, snorkelling among tropical fish on the Great Barrier Reef, early morning swimming in the pool and sailing in a catamaran on the Coral Sea.
In Disguising Demons, investigative journalist Dusty Kent visits this tropical paradise on a quest to find the truth behind the murder of a gentle Buddhist monk. What she discovers shocks and saddens her and has her Irish assistant questioning whether they should continue with the case.
The launching of the book on October 19 was specifically chosen to coincide with a poignant ceremony honouring the two people I mentioned above. You see, Port Douglas was the favourite place in the world for my in-laws, Sylvia and Eric Barnes. They were right chuffed when I decided on ‘Port’ for the setting of the fourth Dusty Kent Mystery.
Mr and Mrs Barnes migrated to Australia from Reading, England in October 1969 following their eldest son, Dennis. I’d already snapped up their son by the time they arrived but they welcomed me with open arms and much affection. With my own family far away in the country, the Barnes clan became my second family. That continued even after Dennis and I divorced and my in-laws became my out-laws. :)
Sadly, Sylvia passed away at age 90 in 2016 and Eric at age 92 in 2018. October 19th was their wedding anniversary and, as was their wish, their ashes were scattered at Four Mile Beach on that day. Launching Disguising Demons on the same day and dedicating the book to them is my way of honouring their memory.
No wonder Disguising Demons occupies a warm place in my heart.
Disguising Demons
August 3, 2018
Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge
I was fascinated to discover the origins of the famous Selfridges store and surprised to learn that its creator was not an Englishman but an American who dazzled London ‘after twenty-five years working at the celebrated store Marshall Field & Co. in Chicago.’
Mr Selfridge’s understanding that women liked to be seduced into buying rather than badgered was significant to his success. He was enthusiastic, innovative, passionate about the retail business and a bold entrepreneur fertile with brilliant ideas. A man not afraid to take risks, a trait that put him ahead of the competition but which also had a tragic downside.
To my disappointment, the book was not an intimate reading of Harry Gordon Selfridge’s life and personality. Although we learn about
Mr Selfridge, the world around him seems to dominate. I was intrigued by some of the historical background but found it a little dry at times and the meandering, into what was for me unnecessary detail, was irritating.
However, other readers may relish the depth of background and not mind the ‘unnecessary’ detail. The book certainly provides excellent knowledge of retail history in Britain and in general as well as the social context of the time (early 1900s).
Mr Selfridge’s understanding that women liked to be seduced into buying rather than badgered was significant to his success. He was enthusiastic, innovative, passionate about the retail business and a bold entrepreneur fertile with brilliant ideas. A man not afraid to take risks, a trait that put him ahead of the competition but which also had a tragic downside.
To my disappointment, the book was not an intimate reading of Harry Gordon Selfridge’s life and personality. Although we learn about
Mr Selfridge, the world around him seems to dominate. I was intrigued by some of the historical background but found it a little dry at times and the meandering, into what was for me unnecessary detail, was irritating.
However, other readers may relish the depth of background and not mind the ‘unnecessary’ detail. The book certainly provides excellent knowledge of retail history in Britain and in general as well as the social context of the time (early 1900s).
September 24, 2017
Having Fun with Haiku
September 1st
Trees are green no more
Spring is throwing confetti
Splash! Golden wattle.
Haiku, a form of poetry made popular in Japan, traditionally paints a picture of nature and is constructed with a limited number of syllables, e.g. 17 syllables in three phrases of 5 7 5. However, there are variations to the form and content.
The haiku in this post are all about spring. In my haiku I have not always honoured the traditional use of a ‘cut’ word to signal the juxtaposition which is designed to cause the reader to reflect. I have also broken the traditional ‘without title’ structure by giving each haiku a title.
Australians are familiar with the glorious yellow of the golden wattle tree in spring (subject of my haiku above). The green of the trees’ phyllodes are barely noticeable when the trees bloom because the large fluffy golden-yellow flower heads are so profuse that the trees look predominantly yellow. Thanks to fellow writer Sara Jarrold who endorsed my use of the word ‘confetti’ as fortuitous and felicitous by pointing out that in some countries wattle (aka mimosa) and confetti are both part of wedding ceremonies.
I tried to fashion this haiku in a similar style to that of Basho Matsuo (1644-1694), considered one of the greatest haiku poets. Here’s one of his:
In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus
A lovely sunset.
Here are my other spring haiku.
September Final
Light rain is falling
Wild tribes swarm to hallowed ground
Oval ball is bounced
October Arts
Naked bodies fall
On stage, painted faces smile
Celebrating art
November Tuesday
Crowds surge at The Rails
Horses’ hooves pound the home stretch
Golden Cup held high
November Oaks
Royal roses blush
Fair fillies model vogue hats
Proud steeds leave the stalls
Why don't you have fun with haiku? JB :)
Trees are green no more
Spring is throwing confetti
Splash! Golden wattle.
Haiku, a form of poetry made popular in Japan, traditionally paints a picture of nature and is constructed with a limited number of syllables, e.g. 17 syllables in three phrases of 5 7 5. However, there are variations to the form and content.
The haiku in this post are all about spring. In my haiku I have not always honoured the traditional use of a ‘cut’ word to signal the juxtaposition which is designed to cause the reader to reflect. I have also broken the traditional ‘without title’ structure by giving each haiku a title.
Australians are familiar with the glorious yellow of the golden wattle tree in spring (subject of my haiku above). The green of the trees’ phyllodes are barely noticeable when the trees bloom because the large fluffy golden-yellow flower heads are so profuse that the trees look predominantly yellow. Thanks to fellow writer Sara Jarrold who endorsed my use of the word ‘confetti’ as fortuitous and felicitous by pointing out that in some countries wattle (aka mimosa) and confetti are both part of wedding ceremonies.
I tried to fashion this haiku in a similar style to that of Basho Matsuo (1644-1694), considered one of the greatest haiku poets. Here’s one of his:
In the twilight rain
these brilliant-hued hibiscus
A lovely sunset.
Here are my other spring haiku.
September Final
Light rain is falling
Wild tribes swarm to hallowed ground
Oval ball is bounced
October Arts
Naked bodies fall
On stage, painted faces smile
Celebrating art
November Tuesday
Crowds surge at The Rails
Horses’ hooves pound the home stretch
Golden Cup held high
November Oaks
Royal roses blush
Fair fillies model vogue hats
Proud steeds leave the stalls
Why don't you have fun with haiku? JB :)
