Tales from life’s pages

By Tania Martin
A BOOKWORM at heart, Vicki Thornton is sharing her passion for the written word as she gets ready to release her first short story collection.
Although a seasoned children’s author, Ms Thornton, of The Patch, is thrilled to be releasing her first collection of adult fiction.
Her book titled, Last Days of Summer, is a collection of short stories which has taken more than four years to write.
Last Days of Summer has been picked up by Ginninderra Press and will be launched on Saturday 17 May at the Melbourne Athenaeum Library.
This book of adult fiction is full of passion which is both powerful and poetic with stories looking at relationships, life and love.
For Ms Thornton, a love of writing has been a natural procession from her passion for reading.
“I am a great and avid reader and my love of reading led me to a course in professional writing,” she said.
“It (the course) got me concentrated on the right track and it’s grown from there.”
Ms Thornton said her inspiration for writing came from her passion to watch people and the world around her.
“I am a people watcher. I watch what peopled do, how they react to different situations and tend to write about what I see,” she said.
“I am just amazed about what people do, think and say.”
This passionate writer will release her book next month which contains 13 short stories about relationships and life.
But Ms Thornton said she doesn’t believe in sugar coating her stories and has by-passed the happy-ever-after feel that most authors adopt.
Instead, she prefers to make her short stories more lifelike, true and gritty.
Ms Thornton said it was a fantastic feeling to have her short stories published into one book.
“It’s nice to have the stories all in one place where you feel proud of them – it’s really great,” she said.
Supporting her love of reading and writing, Ms Thornton spends her days as a library technician in a local primary school while at nights she turns her hand to creating her next great masterpiece.