My latest non-fiction book, DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement, is popping up in bookshops across Australia.
In Brisbane you can find it at the famous Avid Reader Bookshop, West End, and its sparkling southside sister Riverbend Books, Bulimba. It’s also in stock at Fuller’s Bookshop, Hobart, and the wonderful Petrarch’s, the go-to independent bookshop in Launceston Tasmania. If you’re quick, you can also pick up a copy at Jeffrey’s Books, Malvern, in inner Melbourne.
Or simply order though your local bookstore – Avid Reader, Brisbane, is the book’s distributor for bookseller sales.
With just 10 chapters, the book is very readable, credible and practical while being solidly based in reality. It’s about how we might connect the dots in our lives to create the quality of life we aspire to in the second part of life.
DONE WORKING will appeal to anyone thinking about retirement in full or part as well as those already there. And at just $29.95 RRP for 300 pages, it’s great value (and a great gift too).
Of course, you can also submit a purchase request to your local library: The reference is ISBN 978-1-7647649-4-0, the Publisher is Lion’s Claw Publishing, and the Distributor is Avid Reader Bookshop, Brisbane.
You can reach me through the Comments panel on this site.
Darryl Dymock
WELLBEING WORKBOOK There’s a reference in DONE WORKING to Dr John Barletta’s Wellbeing Workbook, for those who like some structure to their retirement planning beyond finances. You can access that 68-page A4-size publication as a pdf for free right here. It’s a complementary publication but quite different to DONE WORKING.
I know this is indulgent, but I couldn’t resist sharing this welcome LinkedIn posting from my elder daughter, Julie, Director, Healthy Ageing and End of Life Care, CCQ Country to Coast, QLD:
“Yesterday I watched my dad launch his new book, and I couldn’t stop smiling.
Done Working: Finding Contentment in Retirement draws on the real experiences of 101 retirees and global research to explore what actually makes retirement good — not the finances or logistics, but genuine contentment: connection, purpose, identity.
It struck a chord professionally too. I work in healthy ageing, where so much focus goes on keeping people well physically and clinically, and far less on whether they’re genuinely content. This book is a good reminder that contentment deserves as much deliberate thought as any financial plan.
Mostly though, I just felt proud — of a dad who’s always been curious, generous, and a real listener. Fittingly, he hasn’t quite stopped working either. Congratulations, Dad. This one’s a beauty.“
We had a very successful launch of my latest book, DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement at Avid Reader, West End, Brisbane, in a great conversation with my friend Dr Mark Tyler. Lots of good audience questions too. Many thanks to Eleanor from Avid Reader for organising the event and to Fiona Stager, Co-owner, and Sarah Deasy, the store’s bookbuyer, for their support.
I’m looking forward to another launch across town at Riverbend Books, Bulimba on Sunday 30 August 2026 at 4pm, this time in conversation with another good friend, Dr Ann Kelly.
If you’re in town, you’d be very welcome, whether you’re retired or just thinking about it. And if you can’t make it, you can still buy a book via either bookshop’s website. Or ask your local library to order a copy.
And, after reading DONE WORKING, you can share your ‘Afterthoughts’ if you’d like to, in the Comments section below.
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
Wellbeing Workbook: In DONE WORKING, I refer to Dr John Barletta’s stimulating publication, Wellbeing Workbook. You can download a pdf copy of the book right here.
I’m excited to announce my latest non-fiction book DONE WORKING: Finding Contentment in Retirement will be published on 15 August 2026.
To celebrate this publication of my seventh book, there will be two launches in Brisbane: at Avid Reader Bookshop, West End on that day and then across town at Riverbend Books, Bulimba on 30 August.
In DONE WORKING, I’ve woven together the real-life advice of 101 retirees, world-wide research and my own experience with humour and insight to tease out seven ways of finding contentment in retirement.
The theme was triggered by a comment from a student in a University of the Third Age (U3A) class, who said, ‘I’m retired and busy, but I’m not contented.’
The book will appeal to anyone heading towards retirement as well as those already retired, and help them negotiate their own best way to a contented life.
Clinical Psychologist and Wellbeing Specialist Dr John Barletta said: ‘Dymock speaks a language we can all understand. This book puts you in the driver’s seat to develop a good life, simple as that.’
INVITATION
If you’re in or around Brisbane, you’d be very welcome at one of the launches. Check the bookshops’ websites for details:
Avid Reader, 193 Boundary Street, West End at 2.30pm Saturday 15 August 2026
There is no charge for entry to either event – tickets are free, but please book online to register. No obligation to order a book when you register for the launch.
If you can’t get to one of the launches, you can still order the book through either bookshop if you’d like a copy.
Outside of Brisbane, you or your local bookshop can order a copy through Avid Reader. It will also shortly be available as an e-book.
With best wishes for a contented retirement, wherever you are on life’s journey,
Australian Eastern Standard time is four-and-a-quarter hours ahead of Nepalese time. I know that because I recently taught an online class at Kathmandu University that started at 5.30pm their time, which was 9.45pm Brisbane time. I finally signed off at midnight AEST.
Thankfully, coffee and the enthusiasm of the students and the course coordinator, my Nepalese colleague Dr Prakash Paudel, kept me going.
That teaching session was part of a 12-month ‘hybrid’ assignment I’ve accepted in 2024 as a Visiting Scholar with the Australian Volunteers Program, which is funded by the Australian Government. This involves 11 months working online with staff and students of the School of Education at Kathmandu University and four weeks in country.
I’ll be supporting teaching and research in the School’s Master of Technical and Vocational Education (MTVET) program, as well as helping with its Journal of Education and Research.
During my late-night session, it was encouraging to see how interactive and responsive the students were and how well they were able to contextualise theory and ideas from elsewhere to their local context. (Intriguingly, there are also a couple of Namibian students enrolled.)
And, of course, I learnt a lot about those local situations in a very short time, with lots more to come! In case you’re wondering, classes are conducted in English.
I’m looking forward to learning more about the local culture during my one-month stay, which starts mid-April this year. I won’t be doing any trekking in the Himalayas, but I know I have some learning mountains to climb. Good for my brain, and my humility.
I took on this volunteer assignment because I saw it as an opportunity to give back some of the learning and experience I’ve accumulated over the years through teaching, researching and writing about adult and workplace learning and vocational education and training.
Kathmandu University’s MTVET has much in common with Masters programs I’ve been involved in at the University of New England, Armidale, and in the past 18 years at Griffith University, Brisbane.
My wife Cheryl and I recently had a meal at a Nepalese restaurant in Brisbane, Jhigu Bhoye Chhen. Delicious food, and friendly and efficient service. I’m looking forward to trying out more of the extensive Nepalese cuisine when I arrive in the country in a couple of weeks.
Writers Group Convenor Darryl Dymock introduces writer John Brown, the founding Shed president
We had a great launch of the Oxley Men’s Shed anthology, Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, on Saturday 27 November in Brisbane. Nine men from the Shed contributed to the collection, and the first (modest) print run sold out! 70 to 80 people turned up to hear a brilliant launch by local Councillor Nicole Johnston, listen to music from the band Crossed Fingers, and enjoy a scrumptious morning tea.
Shed President Martin Rankine makes the welcome
This is no ordinary collection of stories. It draws on the varied experiences of nine men who have led very different lives, but whose paths have eventually crossed at Oxley Men’s Shed. In this book these mostly first-time writers have taken the opportunity to share some of their fascinating stories from the past with their families and with the wider community. Many of these are never-before-told tales, entertaining anecdotes that not only illuminate the writers’ earlier lives, but often trigger our own memories too.
In these stories we meet a former fitter and turner who as a boy decided to see what would happen when he packed gunpowder from leftover fireworks into a fruit tin and lit the fuse; a retired meat inspector who had to escape hand over hand down a rope off a high church roof when his ladder collapsed; an ex-plumber who starred in a Bollywood movie and dodged bombs and bullets while driving a tour bus in the Middle East; a former photographer who once had the ultimate hand in a boarding house poker game; and a retired insurance underwriter who relives his late-night dash home to dive under the bedclothes before the resident ghost appeared.
Crossed Fingers Band
Then there’s a Vietnamese veteran driving an Army forklift who literally backed himself into an embarrassing corner with his commanding officer; an ex-teacher who was driving his prized first car through South Brisbane when the back seat caught fire; a former electrician who turned jackaroo to help out his mate on a cattle drive in northern NSW; and a retired agronomist who as a young man led a hiking group down a mountain during a cyclone, with intriguing romantic results.
This is a heady mix of yarns from a group of writers keen to tell their often remarkable stories – sometimes humorous, occasionally hair-raising, but always from the heart.
Offcuts: Stories from the Shed, Armour Books, Brisbane.
Do you know that children’s song: The wheels on the bus go round and round? Well so do stories on the bus. Read on …
As Covid-19 seems to be retreating in Queensland, I’ve started to go back on campus a couple of days a week at the university where I’m an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow.
This means travelling by bus – rear door entry, touch card on and off, wave to the driver somewhere down the front. Masks optional.
It also means sharing the bus with an assortment of fellow passengers and watching the world go by. The 40-minute journey also gives me time to catch up on a bit of reading.
So over time I thought I’d share with you some of my experiences and interactions on those journeys. The theme is: The stories on the bus go round and round! This is Story No. 1.
The other day, a man with a walking stick joined the bus. The reason for the stick was that one leg was stiff at the knee.
In particular, the right leg. So in an uncrowded bus he searched for a seat on the left-hand side, so he could rest his unbending right leg in the aisle.
I was thinking he would always need to do that on buses and trains so he could stretch out his right leg. Which led me to jot down this little poem in the notebook in my phone:
Kim Wilkins smiled when I asked her what the main stumbling blocks are for aspiring writers. ‘Some writers think that if they see a lot of Marvel movies, they can write a good book,’ she said. ‘ But you have to serve your apprenticeship.’
And Kim should know. She’s the author of more than 30 novels, the first one published over 20 years ago. As Kim Wilkins she writes fantasy – epic, paranormal and urban, and as Kimberley Freeman she’s the author of historical adventure stories for women. You’ll meet her in this video clip as she talks briefly about what she likes to write about.
For fantasy, try the first book in Kim Wilkins’ recent trilogy, Daughters of the storm , and if you want a taste of her historical fiction, Kimberley Freeman’s most popular book is Wildflower Hill.
When Margaret River Press invited me to be a guest blogger, I decided that the best thing I could do for a struggling publishing and bookselling industry was to talk to people in the frontline. I’m delighted that Kim, prolific author and Associate Professor in Writing, Publishing and 21st-Century Book Culture at the University of Queensland, agreed to be the first in the series. This is an edited version of a recent Zoom interview.
Darryl: Kim, you write popular fiction and you also need to publish in journals in your academic role. Are there challenges in writing concurrently across different genres like that?
Kim:What’s been really interesting to me is how many of the techniques of creative writing I’ve been able to transfer across to academic writing. The further I go in my career and the more certain I am of my ideas, the more I like to write academic work a bit creatively. I think that if you do want to convey your message, you do have to write it well.
I would like my ideas to get out there, especially the stuff I’ve done on genre communities. Because I’m sure the genre communities themselves would like to read some of that. So I try to use techniques of levity, metaphors, etc.
You prove your intelligence in your ability to communicate your message, not in your ability to befuddle your reader. Big words that are hard to read don’t belong on the first page of a novel and they don’t belong where you want to reach your audience either.
I asked Kim where she thought publishing was heading and what changes she’d seen in publishing since her first book was published in 1997. In this video clip, she provides a succinct summary of the key changes she’s seen over that period:
Darryl: So, against those developments that you’ve just so nicely charted in that video clip, what’s your best guess about the future of publishing?
Kim:Instead of thinking about it as books and publishing, I like to think about it as storytelling. We always have told stories.
There’s heaps more room for writers to be published. There’s just not more money. The very definition of publishing has changed. You’ve got to stop thinking about getting published by a Big Five publisher. Contraction of big publishing is a story in itself that does not bode well for writers who have aspirations for a best-seller like Harry Potter.
Everything’s changed since that first Harry Potter book came out about 20 years ago. But it does mean you’ll be able to get your story out more easily. It will just look a bit different. And some people will still be best sellers.
What the publishing industry itself needs to do is recognise what its unique value proposition is, what it does better than any other industry. I’m a big believer in small regional presses. I believe that’s going to save the publishing industry.
I first met Kim Wilkins 15 years ago when she was a tutor for a Queensland Writers Centre course, ‘The year of the novel’. As a neophyte writer for a commercial market, I was in awe of her achievements and impressed by her teaching ability. Kim helped me realise how little I knew about ‘constructing’ a story, as distinct from simply telling one. Her course was also my introduction to the mysteries of the publishing industry and its quirks and expectations.
Given Kim’s long experience as a writing teacher, mentor and well-published author, it seemed appropriate to ask her what advice she had for aspiring writers.
Kim started off by telling me that Nick Cave once said that ‘all artists, writers included, are egomaniacs, with low self-esteem.’ She told me with a self-deprecatory laugh that she thinks that is one of the best descriptions ever.
In this video clip, Kim talks frankly about the sorts of attitudes and practices she thinks aspiring writers need to overcome if they are to take their writing to the next level:
Darryl: Finally, Kim, do you have a favourite author or book?
Kim:My favourite book of all time is Lord of the Rings . I love Marian Keyes – her Walsh sisters books are great. I read a lot of non-fiction – very interested in books about ideas and how people think, politics. I read omnivorously and I like to be surprised by books.
I hope you’ve enjoyed Kim Wilkin’s perspective on writing and publishing. If you’re a writer seeking publication, she has suggested that there are more opportunities than ever for writers to publish their work, but that they need to be looking outside traditional pathways. And she champions regional presses (as well as regional writers’ groups).
After many years of teaching and mentoring, Kim has also shown us a hard-nosed approach to the craft of writing – don’t expect instant success in your writing, she says. Do the hard yards, and don’t let social media distract you.
And in discussing her own writing, whether in fantasy, historical fiction or academia, Kim Wilkins makes it clear we can’t go past the old adage: good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes.
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
Coming up on this blog: Watch for interviews with an award-winning bookseller and a key figure in Australian editing.
I’m a great believer in the notion that opportunities spring from taking advantage of other opportunities – say ‘Yes’ to one and see what might happen!
Last year at the last minute I registered for a Queensland Writers Centre workshop, ‘The Spaces Between: An Introduction to Poetic Writing’, with Simon Kindt. Apart from the coincidence that ‘The space between’ is the title of my short fiction that won the Roly Sussex Short Story Award three years earlier, I was interested in the possibility of introducing more poetic language into my prose writing.
Simon turned out to be a multi-talented performer who said he’d gone from being a poet to a performance poet (and MC of slam poetry events) and was now experimenting with self-accompanied music, developed on an impressive array of mind-boggling technology. He challenged us through a series of creative exercises, one of which was to let our minds float free and come up with some lines around a particular theme.
All good and all fun for the ten or so of us at the workshop, and Simon was very supportive. Then, suddenly, towards the end: ‘Now I want you to work with the person sitting alongside you to develop a creative piece from the lines you developed earlier to present to the rest of the group’. I think we had 10 minutes, always a challenge for a brain like mine.
The person sitting alongside me happened to be Maree Reedman, whom I hadn’t met before but who told me she was a poet and songwriter. I was already impressed. Maree and I talked through what might work and discovered (i.e. Maree suggested) that we could put the lines of our two pieces together alternately and that the piece overall would make sense as a poem. Great! I thought to myself. ‘And,’ said Maree, reaching under her chair, ‘I also have my ukulele.’ I tried not to look too surprised. ‘How about I accompany us on the uke?’ she said. Hey, this was a workshop for opening the mind, especially mine, so of course I agreed.
Long story short: all the workshop participants excelled themselves with creativity, and Maree and I received an especially long burst of applause and a thumbs up from Simon for our uke-accompanied alternating poem.
As we packed up to leave, Maree casually turned to me and said, ‘There’s a café at West End (Brisbane) that does public readings once a month. It’s called Wild Readings. How about we do this again over there?’ I’d never done anything like that before but, after the slightest hesitation, I said, ‘Why not? I’m up for it.’
The Wild Readings organisers were gracious enough to give us a spot, as you can see from the pics on this page, and we not only did our joint presentation, but Maree and I each did a little piece of our own. Good fun! As I said at the beginning of this article, say ‘Yes’ to one opportunity and see what might happen!
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
What writers say:
I knew that the world around you is only uninteresting if you can’t see what is really going on. The place you come from is always the most exotic place you’ll ever encounter because it is the only place where you recognise how many secrets and mysteries there are in people’s lives. ~ David Malouf
Did you know that the more you read the less likely you are to die? That’s the claim made by a writer in a recent issue of Wellbeing magazine.
An item headed ‘Better read than dead’ reported a study of the reading habits of 3635 men and women aged 50 and older over a 12-year period. With such a large sample and a longitudinal study, the results promised to be interesting for both readers and writers.
According to the Wellbeing writer, the results showed that ‘adults who read books for up to 3.5 hours a week were 17 per cent less likely to die than those who did not read books…’.
Wow! That’s awesome. Reading books means you’re less likely to die?
Let me work out the implications of such a finding: If reading books for 3.5 hours a week, gives you a 17% chance of not dying, then reading books for around 18 hours a week should guarantee you immortality!
When people hear about this, there’ll be a rush for books. What a boost that’ll be for booksellers and libraries.
Later in the article, we discover what the Wellbeing writer meant to say: ‘In all, book readers survived almost two years longer than non-book readers [i.e within the 12-year period].’
In other words, this particular bit of research indicates that if you’re over 50, reading books is one way that may help you live a couple of years longer. But no amount of reading is going to make you ‘less likely to die’.
Of course, there may factors other than reading at play in promoting longevity. For example, book-reading and lifestyle might be linked.
By the way, the researchers also concluded that reading newspapers and magazines is also linked to longer life, but not nearly as much as book reading. Perhaps reading magazines and newspapers is linked to increased coffee intake …?
The ultimate message from the research is: if you want to live a bit longer, reading might help you do so. See you at the library.
Until next time
Darryl Dymock
What writers say:
In the best stories, the odyssey from complication to resolution changes the character profoundly. In fact, the resolution often results not directly from the action but from a growing enlightenment – often a sudden flash of inspiration – as the character finally realizes what he [or she] has to do to solve his [or her] problem. ~ Jon Franklin, Writing for story.
present to the rest of the group’. I think we had 10 minutes, always a challenge for a brain like mine.
