After a heavy lunch, I crawled lazily into an Italian cafe to order a usual cup of latte. It took me quite a while to start writing, and my pen spilled 10 pages magically. I gave a sigh of relief as I had found an ideal place to do my writings without paying $6 per day to travel on the train.

The cafe owner was rather friendly, and noticing my feverish attempt to scrawl pages on my notebook, he curiously asked,

“Are you writing a book?”

“Yes I am, I have been falling asleep every time I do so at home.”

“What kind of novel are you writing?”

“Dark. Horror fiction.”

I saw his expression change a little as he probably expected a little girl to write about butterflies.

“Read this. It is by my favourite author,” he placed a book on my table. The title was One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

“Thank you!” to be honest, I was surprised that the Melburnians courtesy extended this far, I guess I must have made quite an impression.

“Keep me updated with your progress,” He winked.

I might be in some sort of writer’s heaven or something. Never did it come across my mind that I could be in a place so supportive and encouraging. Upon further inspection into the writing community, almost every university or tafe offers creative writing courses. There is Victorian Writers Center, Australian Poetry Center, numerous writing groups… and a literary culture with the highest density of writers and bookstores in Australia.

There is a program on becoming an in-house “cafe poet”. The poet alliances the cafe and does his poetry writing there in exchange for free coffee. The poet offers his services by writing about the cafe, writing for patrons in the cafe and so on. I was rather tempted to take up such an offer but I realised I have not been actively writing poetry.

AVERRAL writes under pen name Scarlet Risqué. She stars in Scarlet Queen YouTube with over a million views. She holds a degree in business. The RED HOURGLASS is ranked Top 50 Espionage Thriller on Amazon. She is currently writing the sequels to the Hourglass Series. Grab a free copy of her novel now RED HOURGLASS on Amazon