It’s the birthday of Australian author Colleen McCullough (1937-2015), who started writing novels to supplement her income as a neurophysiological research assistant at the Yale School of Medicine and whose second novel, The Thorn Birds (1977), landed her a $1.9 million advance and went on to sell more than 30 million copies.

So I guess that plan worked out all right.

McCullough was a larger-than-life sort of person with a large frame, in-your-face opinions, and a vast amount of self-confidence—all this after surviving a rough childhood. She was born in Wellington, New South Wales, Australia, to a brutal father later found to be a bigamist and a cold, distant, anti-intellectual mother. McCullough and her beloved younger brother, Carl, supported one another against their parents. Carl died in a drowning accident at 25 and McCullough, who came to suspect it was a suicide, grieved for him for the rest of her life.

McCullough wanted to become a doctor but developed an allergy to the soap used in hospitals and went into neurophysiology instead, getting her bachelor’s at the University of Sydney and her master’s at the University of London. After working in London, she moved to Yale, where she taught and managed a lab for about nine years. Realizing she was paid less than her male colleagues, she worried about money until the writer thing paid off. McCullough then left her lab work to write full time and finally moved to Norfolk Island, a tiny island 1,000 miles from Sydney, where she built an enormous 8,000 sqm house, saying, “Yes, I know that is big, but then so am I.” She chose this island because, while wanting to be “near” family, she refused to share a continent with her mother.

McCullough wrote more than two dozen books, including the historical novels in the epic series, Masters of Rome. She told a newspaper, “I wanted to write a true historical novel. I didn’t want to write a book about King bloody Arthur and all that codswallop.” Her novel The Ladies of Missalonghi (1987) raised controversy: some claimed it was plagiarized from the L.M. Montgomery novel, The Blue Castle (1927). McCullough denied these claims and was unfazed. The Thorn Birds was always her most successful novel, and the 1983 TV mini-series adaptation was one of the most popular mini-series ever. McCullough’s reaction to the mini-series: “I hated it. It was instant vomit.”

At age 46, McCullough married a hunky islander 13 years younger, saying, “Anybody in real life knows that a fat tart never marries anybody but a drop-dead gorgeous bloke. And that’s the truth.” She died at 77, survived by this husband and a couple of step-children and step-grandchildren.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: use the word “codswallop” in a sentence today.

Have a blissful Friday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.