No, Mick, not Michael.
The previous two books were published under Michael McCoy BUT there are at least two other Michael McCoys you might have heard of and I’m not either of them.
I know one of them. He’s a damn fine garden designer. Has a TV show, which is pretty good, too. I met him in the late 1990s when we were both writing stories for The Age newspaper in Melbourne. This was back in the day when folks were paid by cheque (noun; an order to a bank to pay a stated sum from the drawer’s account, to the person named, written on a specially printed form). These little rectangles of paper would arrive in the mail, out at the letter box, sealed in an envelope with a small picture stuck in the top right corner (called a stamp). The paper’s pay department got us mixed up and sent us each the other Michael McCoy’s cheque. His were worth more than mine so I thought I better ‘fess-up and fix it. When we met, some remarkable parallels in our lives – beyond writing for the same section of the same newspaper at the same time – were revealed. We both:
- Had pale skin, blue eyes, and greying hair at an early age
- Had mothers called Dorothy
- Had two daughters (he had a third later)
- Enrolled at Melbourne University in the Science Faculty in the same year
His first book, Michael McCoy’s Garden was published in 2000, a few months before my second, Cutting Through Skin. Kinda spooky, hey? Anyway, I’m not him. If you want to find out more about him, go to http://thegardenist.com.au
Australians might know about another Michael McCoy, who was on TV’s Big Brother in 2006. A story about his experience, published in The Sydney Morning Herald, began this way:
Anyone who insists that fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be needs to talk to Michael McCoy. As a contestant on the 2006 series of Big Brother, McCoy has thoroughly enjoyed – correction: ”absolutely freakin’ loved” – his 15 minutes of fame, of which he is, by his own admission, down to the last 30 seconds.
”It’s been totally insane,” McCoy says. ”Everything was free – sex, drugs, alcohol. I have never drunk so much in my life. The day I came out from the Big Brother house, I went to a nightclub and was chased out by 30 women.”
I have nothing in common with him.
These are two of many reasons why in this reboot of my writing career, I’m Mick rather than Michael.
The main reason, though, is because Mick is what I call myself. It’s what my family and friends call me, most of the time. The other things they call me you wouldn’t want written on the cover of a book.
Mick McCoy 