It is mid morning when I call, but I catch Meg Bignell rushing to eat breakfast after being up before dawn to ready herself and her three children for the trip to school in Hobart.
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The Bignell family lives on a dairy farm at Bream Creek, at the southern end of the East Coast, making the school run an arduous one through Sorell's traffic.
But Bignell laughs it off, saying it is just another one of the "mental" things that she fits into her life.
That life has become even more crazy since Bignell's debut novel, The Sparkle Pages, was published last month.
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Set in and around Hobart, The Sparkle Pages is written as a series of funny and endearing diary entries by Susannah Parkes, a woman trying to reignite the passion in her marriage and rediscover the aspirations she had before she became a wife and mother.
As mother to almost 13-year-old twins Bess and Ed and Lucie, 9, Bignell said the idea for her first book came from "that craziness".
"I started to write when I had three children under four. That was how I found my voice as a writer," she said.
Initially starting with a blog, Megoracle, and then moving on to short stories and comic writing, Bignell decided to try a novel on for size when prompted by her friend, who is also an author.
"I only had one stupid idea - setting an erotic fiction in a real marriage with satire or a comedy of errors," she laughs.
"I wouldn't describe The Sparkle Pages as either, but it turned into something different, which seems to be really common, because novels take on their own lives."
However it came about, Bignell started writing the book that became The Sparkle Pages on September 1, 2015.
"I wrote myself a contract," she said.
"I'm quite good at procrastinating and not finishing things, so I wanted to finish this."
Bignell wrote in her spare time, admitting she thought parts of it were "utter rubbish", but before long she had hit the 10,000-word mark.
It was at this point Bignell sent those words to Nikki Christer, Group Publishing director at Penguin Random House Australia, at her friend's suggestion, and she received a promising response: "just keep going".
"That was enough to get me motivated to finish the first draft," she said.
I only had one stupid idea - setting an erotic fiction in a real marriage with satire or a comedy of errors.
- Meg Bignell
Admitting she was too frightened to send the draft back to Nikki Christer, she approached an agent, who pitched it to her instead and a contract was offered.
"That was when I learnt about structural rewrites. It's like pulling apart a puzzle with tiny pieces, throwing some away and putting it back together in a coherent manner."
That aside, the former Launceston General Hospital nurse is revelling in her new role as published author.
Now working on her second novel for Penguin Random House, which is set in rural Tasmania, Bignell she grew up on a small farm and likes to show that side of life in her work.
"It's a bit of a love letter to small town settings," she said.
The second novel is in keeping with The Sparkle Pages' "up-lit" genre, which Bignell says is like "an antidote to the current world".
"I can relate to that because I avoid anything dark. I'm sick of people doing horrible things to each other."
She combines novel writing with comedic and film writing and acting - she has an upcoming cabaret show in the Festival of Voices.
Bignell also markets the family business, Bream Creek Dairy, which involves looking after the website, social media accounts and media inquiries.
The dairy has been home for three generations of the Bignell family.
Meg's husband Richard and his brother Charles, with Charles' son Jack, started the new brand last year after deciding to do something for themselves.
"It's been going really well. This season has been bad - it's very dry here - so it's really nice to have a bit of control back," Bignell said.
The family produces most of its milk for Fonterra and keeps about 20 per cent for Bream Creek Dairy, supplying independent grocers, supermarkets, cafes and boutique cheese makers Coal River Farm, Bruny Island Cheese and Hobart Milk in Southern Tasmania.
In the meantime, Bignell has plans to finish writing the draft of her second novel when she is not marketing, performing cabaret or getting stuck in traffic.
"I think it's going to settle down in July. By then I'll be up to the structural edit."