Adult Fiction – Aussie Reviews

Guest Blogger: How an architectural icon became the perfect setting for a thriller with Zoe Deleuil

Today we introduce The Night Village. When Australian expat Simone moves to London to start a career, getting pregnant is not on her agenda. But she’s excited to start a new life with her baby and determined to be a good mother, even though her boyfriend Paul’s cold and grey apartment in the Barbican Estate seems completely ill-suited for a baby. In this blog piece author Zoe Deleuil shares how brutalist architecture informed her new novel. Over to you, Zoe

A landmark of brutalist architecture, The Baribcan estate is an estate of some 2,000 apartments, in the heart of the London’s financial district, with three looming tower blocks and a famed cultural centre at its heart. The landscaping is pared back to symmetrical ponds and vast expanses of brick paving, the balconies have curved balustrades of rain-stained concrete deep enough to sit on, and the apartments are warm and sealed and quiet, and sell for millions to architects and magazine editors and well-heeled London creatives. It was home to Australian writer Clive James and is rumoured to be the inspiration for J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel, High-Rise.

Designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon architects and completed in 1976 on a World War Two bombsite, it’s also famously difficult to navigate. Anyone who has tried to see a movie or performance at the Barbican Centre will know the rising panic of careening down deserted walkways and dead-ending in locked stairwells with Residents Only signs, before bursting into the buzzing foyer of the arts centre, sweaty and bewildered. I’ve even heard of a man stumbling onto the stage of a Shakespeare performance in a failed bid to find his seat. On a grey afternoon in mid-winter the place can feel downright post-apocalyptic. As a setting for a novel about a sleep-deprived and isolated new mother, it was filled with dramatic potential.

The Night Village opens with my main character, Simone, bringing her newborn son home to the Barbican apartment owned by her boyfriend, Paul, an urbane Londoner she’s known for one year. A few weeks later, Paul’s cousin Rachel turns up.

I have a clear memory of Rachel appearing at the door, eyes averted, walking into the apartment and simply staying. I didn’t know what she wanted from Simone and her baby, and it took many drafts until I found out.

As Simone fights rising unease and sleep deprivation, the apartment walls start to close in. Far from her Australian family, the bleak winter setting, the lack of community and the isolation of early motherhood all heighten her isolation.

When writing The Night Village I wanted to explore how architecture can favour the able-bodied and unencumbered, and how landscapes – both interior and exterior – can feel threatening when you have to navigate them with a tiny baby. You get the impression that the architects who designed the Barbican didn’t spend much time looking after small children. It may be a lofty masterpiece of brutalism, but it’s not a place that embraces its inhabitants, least of all its more vulnerable ones. The brick courtyards are unsuited to ball games, the walkways are deserted and spooky, and a toddler could tumble silently into one of those Instagram-able green pools and drown in minutes. Simone doesn’t meet, or even hear, her neighbours through the soundproofed walls, and the men who guard the front desk of her tower block never acknowledge her as she passes them.

If I were writing an architectural history of the Barbican I would be more reverent and detached, but a novel is not about the architectural merits of a place, it’s about how that place makes its characters feel. The beauty of writing a novel is that you can follow your intuition, home in atmosphere and the smallest details to hopefully bring a building or street or city to life for your readers. As I tackled my first draft on sweltering summer afternoons in Perth, Australia, it was wonderful to escape to the northern hemisphere in my imagination – to summon up sealed, overheated rooms, bare winter landscapes and milky London light. With the help of real estate websites, Google Maps and YouTube I retraced my steps, identified street names and bus routes, and even wandered through apartment interiors for inspiration.

Making a building a character is a hallmark of gothic novels – look at Manderley, Hill House, Wuthering Heights and even Foxworth Hall. It’s not a new trick, but by finding the right building it’s one you can make your own. I had a lot of fun wandering around the Barbican when geography and two young kids meant a real-life visit was out of the question – and when you are working on something as long as a novel, it’s worth making it fun however you can.

In a strange way, setting a novel in the Barbican has made me fonder of the place. Sometimes a place captures your imagination not because it’s beautiful, but because it’s intriguing. The Barbican is a unique development, worshipped by design fans worldwide. But it’s also a little sinister and disorienting and weird. It’s easy to imagine people hiding from the world there, or hiding from themselves.

Thanks for visiting, Zoe. The Night Village (Fremantle Press) is available in all good bookstores and online https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/the-night-village

Guest blogger: David Allan-Petale and the harvest that inspired the writing of Locust Summer

Locust Summer, which was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel’s Literary Award, is the story of a young man called back to the family farm for one final harvest. Readers get a ‘harvest of suspense’ according to Carmel Bird and, according to Toni Jordan, ‘insights into pasts and futures, nostalgia and grief.’ In this guest post, David talks us through his very first harvest and how it spawned a novel.

‘A sandgroper, eh? You can teach us all how to grow wheat then!’

That’s the greeting I was given on my first day of working with the harvest crew on my mate’s farm in New South Wales.

Lucky they didn’t look too closely. They’d have seen the creases still ironed in to my brand-new KingGee shorts and shirt. The lack of callouses on my office hands. And the look in my eyes that said I had no idea what I was doing.

‘Righto, boys,’ the boss cocky said. ‘Let’s get stuck in.’

Like the best of adventures, this one began over a drink. I was working as a journalist for the ABC’s Kalgoorlie office in the WA Goldfields, and after a tough day of gathering news from around the region, I’d host a gathering on the verandah of my place on Dugan Street to have a yarn with a few other journos.

One night my mate started talking about the harvest at his family farm. How he would return there every year and bring in an enormous crop of wheat. It sounded like an adventure to me, and he said I should come. The next day I booked time off work and a ticket east.

I’d worked as a journo in the Mid West region of WA where wheat farming dominates, and had covered harvests with the spare remove of an observer. But actually doing it? It was so far beyond my ken as a city boy from the suburbs. Then again, I loved to travel and give new things a go, and wasn’t afraid of hard work. Or so I thought …

The weeks I spent working on the farm were backbreaking, hot and fast. We worked from sun-up to sun-down and often deep into the night with a full moon haloed by wheat dust. I carted fuel, fetched lunches, fixed broken header harvester teeth, drove chaser bins to catch the grain and helped keep the grain bunker organised. I even got to drive a harvester for a few spells.

It was busy. It was tough. But it was glorious. There were lightning storms and crop fires, wild dogs to chase off and stranded sheep to rescue. Sunrises and sunsets that were like Hans Heysen paintings come to life. And the good humour of the workers chatting on the CB, drinking cold pints after a hard day while reciting bush poems. It was a bumper harvest my mate often says was the best he’s ever seen, as if a highlights package of everything that could go right or wrong had been prepared just for him to share with me.

The experience stayed with me long after I left to catch a train and a plane back to the big smoke. After that, no job was too hard, no conditions too rough. I knew I could back myself and stand up to a big task. And it gave me a far deeper appreciation of rural life and country people than I had ever grasped as a dispassionate observer. Over many of the following years I spent as a regional journalist, I found I could relate far better to the people whose lives I was seeking to reflect and explore.

And damn, if it didn’t give me some good stories to draw upon as a writer. The first book I attempted was set in the forests of South West WA, and was infused with my experiences on the land – the language, feeling and nuance that can’t be found solely through research.

Yet something deeper was calling. When the time came to begin another book, I knew it had to be set on a farm. Had to be about a harvest. Had to connect to the magnetised feeling I had while working in the blazing sun as an outsider looking in. And so, slowly, inexorably, Locust Summer’s raw elements began to take shape.

Back to the farm, back to the harvest, back to a place where ‘the earth spins steady, the moon rises, and all crops grow: wheat, sheep, dementia.’

Thanks for visiting, David. Locust Summer is available in all good bookstores and online.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/locust-summer

Guest blogger: Mel Hall on making up a religion to deal with pain

Making up a religion to cope with chronic pain led to Mel Hall’s debut novel, The Little Boat on Trusting Lane. Today she has dropped in to share her story. Welcome Mel.

The Little Boat on Trusting Lane by Mel Hall is a feel-good novel about a small spiritual community that hangs out on a boat in a scrapyard in Fremantle. An affectionate satire, the novel provides a funny yet critical commentary on belief, self-help, magical thinking and the mind/body connection. In this guest post, Mel describes how the novel, which was longlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award, came into being out of extreme adversity and the need give form and shape to her chronic pain.

Making up religions in the night

Back in 2016, I was awake at four a.m., reading the Conscious Living Expo guide. I couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t any mention of aliens or Jesus. This got me thinking: aliens and Jesus have a lot in common. People believe they are real, or don’t believe in them at all. People build their lives around them, or don’t pay them a second thought. But how often do we hear about aliens and Jesus together?

So, on that early morning in 2016, I decided to make up a religion that would feature aliens and Jesus. Perhaps it might one day be mentioned in the Conscious Living Expo guide.

I began writing ideas for this religion before work each day. The results were … weird and boring. (Some people don’t realise it’s possible to be weird and boring, but these are the two best words to describe me.) It seemed like this religion might not get off the ground. But in the process of writing, three characters began wandering around in my mind. I started to write a book.

Is this true?

Is anything I just wrote true? Maybe there is something that’s more true. Maybe I’ve spent many sleepless nights in pain. Maybe, in my tiredness, on that particular morning, I was reading whatever I could get my hands on. And maybe I wasn’t making up a religion, but wanting to create some kind of mythology: a place to plant this pain, in hope that some kind of meaning or sense might grow.

Mystery illness

I began experiencing mystery pain when I was eighteen years old. Abdominal pain, back pain, pain that shot down my legs. When I was twenty-two, I was diagnosed with sciatica. Then I ended up with RSI in both my arms: I had been studying jazz music and practising bass quite obsessively, for sometimes ten hours a day. The RSI forced me to quit my degree.

Soon, pain and tension were across my whole body. For a couple of years, I didn’t have full use of my hands. A physio told me I had huge muscle wastage across my back, and that many problems I experienced were those of an old woman. This was when I was twenty-four.

I was looking into getting a cane, going on disability payments, and sleeping a lot of the time. I was sent to a rheumatologist, and in some notes I received afterwards, I was described as a high-achieving young woman, and other words used were anxiety and fibromyalgia.

Getting better

But then, I read some books that helped me. I saw a psychotherapist. My pain got a lot better, and even nearly went away. I began to think it was all psychological after all. By 2010, when I was twenty-eight, I was pretty healthy, and even lived my dream of backpacking around Europe.

Getting sick again

Then, in 2016, the pain came back with a vengeance. I was almost blacking out at work, leaving the room to vomit, then coming back in to pretend nothing had happened. Sometimes if I told a person about the pain, they’d ask if I was pregnant. My lowest point was when I vomited on myself while driving, and had to stop in at a friend’s to shower, change and admit my desperation.

So, as well as the intellectual pursuit of wishing to marry aliens and Jesus, one of the first things that got me writing this book was an imagined therapy. In this therapy, a character tries to find the right image to give shape to their pain. I needed this for myself too.

Towards the end of 2016, I was sent back to a rheumatologist and diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a form of inflammatory spinal arthritis that affects many parts of the body. Getting a diagnosis and medication really changed my life, as my rheumie said the last time I saw her, in November 2020. But writing changed my life too.

Writing a book to cope with chronic pain

Writing this book gave the pain somewhere to go. I think of the book as a creation story, where I can let the pain unfold amongst other things, beings, events, places.

Creation stories are about beginnings rather than endings. Part of me would like to focus on endings, as I would like to know that this pain, or this disease, will never return. (I can never be sure of that.) But being able to place this pain in a big creaking boat on Trusting Lane was something like a transformation for me. I found new life in the daily act of writing – writing which became a book.

The Little Boat on Trusting Lane is available in all good bookstores and online.

Guest Blog – Michael Burrows author of Where the Line Breaks

Ryan O’Neill calls Michael Burrows’ debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Fogarty Literary Award, ‘an engrossing war story and a captivating tale of love and obsesssion’. In this post Michael shares where his inspiration came from.

The idea to write Where the Line Breaks came to me at 4 or 5 am, Anzac Day 2013, sitting in Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli coast in Turkey after a long night of readings, stories, music, remembrance and moving testimony.

The moment came when someone approached the microphone and recited a few lines of war poetry. I can’t remember which poem exactly, but it was one I was familiar with – Owen or Brooke, maybe? There’s something special about war poetry; the juxtaposition between beauty and barbarity. So it was that night in Gallipoli – the poetry cut through the chill air and you could almost feel the crowd glowing with appreciation. I loved it. My only question was, why weren’t they reading Aussie or Kiwi poetry?

And then I thought, but who would they read?

Where the Line Breaks concerns the discovery of an anonymous Australian war poet, our very own Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, called the Unknown Digger. At one point during writing, my novel was titled The Sky Where Red Stars Move, a line from the Leon Gellert poem ‘Red’. I hadn’t heard of Leon Gellert before researching my novel, strange as that seems. How was it that I knew of Brooke and Owen from school, but hadn’t even heard of ‘Anzac Cove’ or ‘The Last to Leave’?

Leon Gellert was born in Adelaide in 1892. He landed on Gallipoli on that first Anzac Day, was injured three months later and though he attempted to re-join the fight, he was repatriated as ‘medically unfit’ in June 1916. Maybe that’s why he isn’t better known – he didn’t have the tragic death of a Brooke or an Owen to push his poetry into the national consciousness. Unlike Graves or Sassoon, he stopped writing poetry after a few years and turned to journalism. He died in 1977 at 85 years old. But his poetry is wonderful, and in Gallipoli to Gaza, Jill Hamilton recognises him as ‘the only Australian poet whose work can be compared with that of the leading soldier-poets of the World War’. My personal favourite Gellert poem is ‘Anzac Cove’, with its devastating closing:

There are lines of buried bones:
There’s an unpaid waiting debt:
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.

Reading this poem for the first time, I really felt the gut punch of the Australian war experience, different to anything I’d experienced reading Brookes’ ‘The Soldier’ or Owen’s Latin homework.

Likewise, with the works of Clarence Michael James Dennis – or C. J. Dennis as he became known. Born in 1876, unlike Gellert, he never fought for his country, but his works, particularly The Moods of Ginger Mick, capture the sound of Australia like no-one else. Dennis was known as Australia’s version of Robbie Burns and the ‘laureate of the larrikin’. After his death in 1938, then Prime Minister Joseph Lyons said, ‘he captured the true Australian spirit.’ Read these lines out-loud in your finest Steve-Irwin-esque voice and tell me you don’t love it:

On the day we ‘it the transport there wus cheerin’ on the pier,

An’ the girls wus wavin’ hankies as they dropped a partin’ tear,

An’ we felt like little ‘eroes as we watched the crowd recede,

Fer we sailed to prove Australia, an’ our boastin’ uv the breed.

I love the dropped endings of words, the slurred ‘uv’ and ‘wus’. That’s why I opened my novel with an excerpt from The Moods of Ginger Mick.

Those two poets are my personal favourites, but there are plenty of Australians who deserve to be better known, like Private William M. McDonald (read ‘Camps in the Sand’), Archibald Nigel Guy Irving (read ‘The Dead’) or Oliver ‘Trooper Bluegum’ Hogue (read ‘The Horses Stay Behind’).

The Unknown Digger is a fictional creation, but he is inspired by the works of countless Australian soldier poets. I hope Where the Line Breaks encourages us to take a closer look at our own homegrown poets. Who knows, maybe this Anzac Day we can read a few lines of Gellert or Trooper Bluegum – something written by the original Anzacs themselves.

Where the Line Breaks is available in all good bookstores and online.

https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/products/where-the-line-breaks

You can visit Michael online at:

Twitter: @mperegrineb

Facebook: facebook.com/mperegrineburrows

Instagram: @mperegrineburrows_artist

Website/blog: www.mperegrineburrows.com

Guest Blogger: Emma Young, author of The Last Bookshop

It is lovely to welcome Emma Young, author of The Last Bookshop, to Aussiereviews, to speak on her favourite bookish books. Over to you, Emma.

I was once a bookseller. At various shops across Perth, Western Australia, I covered and stickered and flyleaf-labelled titles destined for libraries, I bought and sold second-hand volumes, and I special-ordered non-fiction and technical books. Across the years I saw the challenges: the tight profit margins; the hard physical work; the need to be knowledgeable, continuously upbeat and helpful; the commercial headwinds forcing shops to pack up and move, or reinvent themselves repeatedly. I saw how at the heart of a bookshop’s success is the strength and sincerity of its connection to bookish people. I met so many such people, who asked me so many weird questions, and had such astonishingly varied interests, that of course it was not long before I began to think to myself, ‘This stuff would fill a book.’

I have finally written that ode to bookshop life: the difficulties and absurdities, but above all the joys of a business that’s about more than money. It’s called The Last Bookshop and it’s just been published by Fremantle Press.

Fun fact: my book mentions a grand total of 78 specific books by name. I know this because my editor, Armelle, made a list of them, for no doubt excellent editor-y reasons best known to herself.

But it’s not just my book that celebrates books, bookshops and writing. I come from a grand tradition of such stories. And since compiling this shortlist of my favourites, I see the influences they have had on my story, so I’m pleased to share my top five.

84 Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff

This gentle, charming story is a collection of real letters between outspoken New York writer Helene Hanff and antiquarian book dealer Frank Doel from Messrs Marks and Co, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London, beginning in the 1940s. What begins as a simple back-and-forth to fulfil Ms Hanff’s insatiable need for rare books blossoms into an epistolary friendship that spans decades. I can’t overstate how sweet, funny and touching this book is.

The 1987 movie adaptation is also good, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins: lovely escapism with a cup of tea on a wintry afternoon.

2. Underfoot in Show Business, Helene Hanff

Helene Hanff’s account of her early days trying to make it as a writer in New York, employed as an apprentice playwright by the New York Theatre Guild, is equally enjoyable. It’s side-splittingly funny and utterly absorbing, a fascinating account that transports you effortlessly into her world.

If you loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls, this is very like it – but the real thing. It’s most likely out of print, but I urge you to find a second-hand copy.

3. The Diary of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell

Wigtown, Galloway, Scotland: officially designated Scotland’s National Book Town. The largest of the second-hand bookshops is The Bookshop, run by Shaun Bythell. His published diaries are caustic and bad-tempered. He is Black Books’ Bernard in the flesh, though a big heart is just visible beneath the misanthropy. A hilarious book – the sort you constantly read bits aloud from to your partner, though they wish you would shut up, because strangely they don’t love books about books as much as you. It’s cruel Bythell wrote this; he essentially stole the book I wanted to write.

If you need more when you’re done, he’s also written three more books in this vein.

4. The Red Notebook, Antoine Laurain

Bookseller Laurent Letellier finds a handbag on a Paris street and commences a journey to find its owner. The best clue he has: a notebook inside, filled with scribbled notes that drive him mad with curiosity to locate the writer. A beguiling tale of a meeting of hearts and minds, this is a light and cosy read written with a delicate touch. It’s incredibly French.

Now that I think of it, this would be a nice Mother’s Day gift

5. My Salinger Year, Joanna Rakoff

A New York literary memoir, a coming-of-age tale and a fitting accompaniment to Underfoot in Show Business. Rakoff is another penniless wannabe writer new to the city, this time 1990s NYC. She takes a job as assistant to the literary agent of the reclusive J.D. Salinger, tasked with answering his fan mail. She’s supposed to send form letters, but – partly bored, partly touched – she begins writing back …

This is a nostalgic evocation of a pre-digital New York. I read it after a month’s stay there, which I highly recommend, but since that’s impossible right now, reading this is an excellent substitute. A big-screen adaptation has just been released starring Sigourney Weaver (though I just happened upon two scathing lines of review by the Guardian that I can’t unsee, so we’ll view at our own risk, shall we?).

Thanks for sharing Emma – I am off to add some titles to be wish list. The Last Bookshop by Emma Young is available in all good bookstores and online.

Connect with Emma here:

Guest Blogger: Susan Midalia – My Writing Life

On the cusp of releasing her new novel, Everyday Madness Susan Midalia shares how loss compelled her to become a writer.

I’ve been an enthusiastic reader for decades, but one particular event in my adult life impelled me to become a writer. A few days after my father died, I found myself scribbling words onto a page without understanding why. The writing initially resembled a series of diary entries – spontaneous, private jottings – about my difficult relationship with my father. But soon I began to see patterns, a shape, a sense of purpose in those muddled beginnings. The story became, in short, a therapeutic exercise: a way of trying to understand what it might mean to be a daughter who didn’t love her father, who indeed had no respect for him. Then, by a series of coincidences and without any planning on my part, my story ended up being published in a literary journal. What happened next was both unexpected and immensely gratifying: I had responses from readers telling me that my story had encouraged them to reflect on their own fathers, on the process of dying, on the nature of grief, or the inability to feel grief. I realised that my story had moved from self-expression to communication: that my words had made some kind of difference to people I didn’t even know. I realised, too, that I wanted to keep doing this wonderful thing: turning black marks on a screen into something for people to believe in. So, in 2006, and with the blessing and crucial financial support of my husband, I quit my teaching job and embarked on a full-time writing life.

Since then, I’ve published three short story collections: A History of the Beanbag, An Unknown Sky and Feet to the Stars, all shortlisted for major Australian literary awards. I have also published two well-received novels: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Everyday Madness (2021). I’m keenly aware that my writing life is a highly privileged one; most writers I know need a day job to pay the bills, but I have the luxury of spending unlimited, unpressured time doing what I love. It also helps that our children have left the parental nest, both of them leading happy and productive lives. One of those children told me I had to stop writing about sex (definitely an exaggeration). My husband told me I had to stop killing off husbands in my fiction (I tell him it’s simply a device to move the plot along).

What do I love most about writing? I love the challenge of creating characters who are not like me. I love encountering the unexpected: characters who refuse to do what I want; a plot that changes tack; a new character who didn’t feature in my original intentions; reaching a conclusion that surprised me. I also love the process of self-editing. Rethinking, changing words or the structure, making sure that every word in a sentence is necessary, or tossing 20,000 words in the bin and starting all over again. It’s both a lot of hard work and a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t write if it wasn’t fun.

My subjects are typically ‘domestic’ – marriage, family, relationships in general, and the daily world of work. While ‘domestic’ writing, especially by women, is often dismissed as a trivial or predictable depiction of ‘ordinary’ life, I believe that no-one and nothing is ordinary. A good writer can make putting out the rubbish an interesting, even an extraordinary, experience; it’s only a matter of finding the right words.

My new novel, Everyday Madness, is darker than my previous fiction, but I’ve injected some humour into the narrative. I think humour not only alleviates the gloom; it can also encourage us to think about human motivation and actions, about social problems and the necessity for hope. As the great comic writer Oscar Wilde observed: ‘Humour is the most serious form of literature.’ Even something as crude as a fart joke can make people think. As small children, my sons loved playing with a toy called a whoopee cushion, which made a loud, farting noise whenever someone sat on it. They did it so many times, and every time they would collapse with laughter (as did their parents, I have to confess). Now why do some people find that joke hilarious? I’ll leave you to think about that!

Thank you f or visiting, Susan.

Everyday Madness is in all good bookstores and online.

You can find Susan on Twitter or at her website

Guest Blogger: Josephine Taylor author of Eye of a Rook

Guest blogger Josephine Taylor hopes her historical novel will shine a light on a condition many women have but most don’t discuss

I’m always reassured when I hear other writers advise, write what you feel passionate about, because that’s why I wrote Eye of a Rook.

I was angry. Angry that so few people knew about a condition that was so debilitating and that affected so many women, including me: vulvodynia. And I felt frustrated and helpless – at least at the beginning, way back in 2000. Then, in 2003, I started writing about my experiences, and I began to feel more in control, more an agent in my own life. I researched and wrote and eventually began a PhD, which turned into a memoir – a kind of embedded sociological detective story that delved into the history of vulvar pain and hysteria, and that explored more recent understandings of pain that won’t leave, from psychoanalysis, psychiatry, neurophysiology, feminist studies… The resulting investigative memoir, Vulvodynia and Autoethnography, won several awards, but it was an unwieldy beast from a publisher’s perspective. So, while I continue to draw material from it for my personal essays, with many published, I’ve left a full-length memoir to one side – for the moment at least!

After I finished my PhD in 2011 the pressure inside me remained. I knew that somewhere between 10% and 28% of all women would experience vulvodynia in their lifetime, so how could I contribute to beneficial change for them? What was I to do about the BIG story I wanted to get out into the world? I had no conscious idea. Fortunately, my creative life had its own plans, and at a writing workshop in 2013, two Victorian men came to life in response to a writing prompt. One was a man called Arthur, with fine brown hair and dressed in a frockcoat, and the other was a real-life surgeon I’d been researching, Isaac Baker Brown. It seemed that Arthur was consulting Brown about his wife, Emily, and contemplating the surgeon’s radical ‘solution’ to hysteria. This initial scenario turned into a short story which now also included a scene with a contemporary Perth couple driving tensely to an appointment. It seemed that the modern-day Alice had the same pain as Emily – the same pain as me – and both women needed answers. The short story, published in an anthology as ‘That Hand’, became the first chapter of Eye of a Rook.

I wrote my novel in timelines separated by almost 150 years because I wanted to show how little has changed since 1866. In fact, my research had shown that the understanding of chronic pelvic pain and specific pain states like vulvodynia has stayed largely stuck for many centuries. It’s men who have, until very recently, studied, written about and treated mystifying female complaints across recorded history, and medical understanding has been based on a male model. Knowledge skewed even further in the twentieth century, as the theories of Sigmund Freud were taken up by psychiatry then gynaecology, especially in the US. Under this influence, vulvar pain was interpreted as psychosomatic, a woman’s way of acting out unresolved unconscious conflict, a ‘defense mechanism’ against intercourse. The onus was placed upon the woman, rather than the limits of medical knowledge, with women generally told or made to feel that the pain was ‘all in her head’.

Both Alice and Emily come up against this kind of ignorance and dismissiveness, enduring harmful treatments and worse. Both reach out for help, with Alice finding community in a support group and Emily relying on her husband at a critical moment. I hope that readers will be able to relate to or empathise with Alice and Emily’s pain and the decisions all the characters make, for themselves and their futures.

My biggest hope is that my book will be read by women with vulvodynia and that it helps them in tangible ways. More, I hope that the people these women depend on read it: family, friends, GPs, physiotherapists, gynaecologists, dermatologists, urologists and psychologists. I hope that those who live with chronic pain, who may have been made to feel that they could be doing more for themselves or that they are exaggerating their symptoms, read it. I hope that Eye of a Rook will shine a light where one is so desperately needed and bring this conversation into the public domain.

Eye of a Rook is available in all good bookstores and online.

Thanks for visiting, Josephine. You can learn more about Josephine, and connect with her

At her website here.

On Twitter.

On Facebook.

And on Instagram .

Guest Blogger: Sally Bradfield Discusses the Genesis of Not Quite 30-Love

It’s always a pleasure to meet another Sally, and today I am excited to be welcoming Sally Bradfield as a guest blogger at Aussiereviews. Over to you Sally.

The Genesis

Hi, My name is Sally Bradfield and I spent many years (try twenty) travelling the globe working in marketing and communications on the professional tennis circuit. Yes, I met and worked with all the household names you can think of: Serena and Venus Williams, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, Novak Djokovic…

My first real tennis job was a WTA Communications Manager. The WTA stands for Women’s Tennis Association. Watch the movie on Billie Jean King (who I am also proud to know), called ‘Battle of the Sexes’ to understand how the women’s tennis tour began. I remember starting this job and being blown away by being paid to travel around the world, staying at five star hotels, eating room service and watching tennis. I said to a few long term employees – how could you ever get sick of this? Then the real work began. As the meat in the sandwich between getting players, sponsors, fans and tournaments together, the communications team are always fighting an uphill battle. You work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week and get yelled at a lot. But you do meet amazing people, see unbelievable places and watch astonishing athletes at play.

About ten years ago, I gave it all up to settle back in Sydney. I am married to a former professional player, now coach – Nicole Arendt (who is American, but moved here so we could live in the greatest country in the world). I missed tennis and some of the travel. A bit like Hotel California, they kept calling me back. Each year when the tennis came ‘down under,’ I worked at the Sydney tournament, visited my friends at the Australian Open. Every couple of years, we went to Wimbledon. Nicole often played the legends event and we are given special access forever as Nicole’s a member of the Last 8 club (having reached the Wimbledon Doubles Final). We feel very lucky and blessed to be able to keep in contact with the old and new crews, without having to travel full time.

A few years ago, I talked about writing a book about my life on the tennis circuit. I enrolled in and completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Sydney’s UTS. There I started my fictional novel. The first title was ‘Balls in my Face.’ My UTS lecturers hated the title, but I thought it was brilliant. The first draft took my several years and it was way too close to a thinly veiled autobiography. Fun for me and interesting to others, but likely to end up in litigation. At some point, I will write my autobiography, but it will be truthful, rather than hiding under the fiction tag.

As the drafts evolved, the protagonist, Katie Cook, became less Sally Bradfield and more her own person. An amazing thing happened, she started to speak to me. She was her own woman (twenty-eight and full of opinions). She was certain of the way her story should be told. I was not always in agreement. She mostly won!

The tennis characters in the book are all fictional, but the world they live in, is very real. It was important to me that those in the know, felt the book was an accurate depiction of life on the Tour. So far the feedback from those people has been extremely positive, which was really fulfilling. They said it was like ‘reading about my life.’

There have been books about life on the Tour before, but they always felt like they were written by outsiders and they mostly were. I’m proud to have my book stand on its own feet and hopefully entreat people to want to know more about the tennis world. It’s a great place to visit…

You can purchase the Ebook via this link; https://books2read.com/u/bzvzx

My website www.notquite30love.com has more information and links how to buy.

My author Facebook page: https://bit.ly/357v5bs

Instagram: NQ30love

Twitter @sallybradfield

Below is a little more about the book and about me.

Twenty-eight year old Katie Cook lands her dream job in the world of professional tennis.

It was like being invited to the Academy Awards, except they were all wearing branded tracksuits.

Katie finds life in Sydney to be not quite measuring up and makes the move to follow her childhood obsession with professional tennis, running away to join this circus of a world and finding work as a publicist.
Racing around the globe faster than a Contiki tour, creating internet scandals wherever she goes, Katie is seduced by the appearance of glamour and her weakness for bad boys.

She falls for one of the troubled champions and starts a trending relationship.
With an archenemy placing social media bombs in her way and hashtags haunting Katie in her sleep, she navigates her way through a series of social media and love crises.

Katie has some decisions to make. Does she want a hero or a career? Will she end up happily ever after? What does that even mean?

One thing is for sure, she will never schedule an Instagram post again! #Girlscanbeheroestoo.

The story is written by a tennis insider and has been described as The Devil Wears Prada meets the exciting world of professional tennis.

Author Bio

For almost twenty years Sally Bradfield has worked with the who’s who of professional tennis.

She has travelled the globe working as a Communications Manager/publicist for the WTA Tour. She worked alongside Venus and Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Martina Hingis, Monica Seles, Anna Kournikova and hundreds more.

Subsequently she joined the men’s tour as Brand Manager for the ATP. She ran major events with Roger Federer, Andy Murray, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and many other household names.

Wanting to leave the suitcases and hotels behind, Sally settled back in Australia with her retired tennis champion partner, Nicole Arendt. Together they live in the Blue Mountains in NSW running tennis and fitness businesses.

To find out more visit www.notquite30love.com

Sally also has a Podcast series called No Challenges Remaining.

Guest Blogger: Ingrid Fry Talks About Time and Motivation to Write

It’s my pleasure to welcome guest blogger Ingrid Fry, debut author of four new books, released in March. Over to you, Ingrid.

Don’t Let Time Steal Your Book

How the hell did you manage to write four, eighty-thousand-word books in the space of eighteen months, and, get them published?

As a published author, that’s the question I’m most often asked, and, often ask myself!

I thought a short blog on the topic would be helpful to anyone who feels they have a book inside them but are struggling with how to get started and keep going.

If you love to write, and plan to write a book one day, not having enough time is often the excuse we use to justify our inaction.

In these days of Corona Virus, all the ‘not having time’ memes indicate that lack of time is not the real reason behind why we don’t start all those things we want to do.

My four-book series would never have seen the light of day if I hadn’t ‘made time’ and set achievable goals. As Charles Buxton so rightly said, “You will never find time for anything. You must make it.”

I started a blog on my website to document my writing journey and road to publication. By doing so, I hoped to inspire, motivate and make it easier for other aspiring writers to achieve their dream. The blog didn’t get very far, because I soon realised, I had to narrow my focus if I wanted to achieve my dream of writing a book.

Tapping into something that motivates you and drives you forward on a daily basis is a crucial component to writing that book. You really do have to “start with the end in mind” and identify your “why”. Whatever your aspiration is, whether it’s achieving fitness goals, losing weight, learning the guitar; your “Why” has to be identified and kept in mind if you want to accomplish your dream.

Write down:

(1) all the reasons you want to achieve that goal

(2) all the ways your life will be better for achieving it

(3) how you will feel when you have succeeded, and most importantly

(4) how you will feel if you don’t achieve it.

It’s important to put this in writing, refer to it regularly and update it as new things come to mind.

Having daily achievable goals was the other key to my success. You can learn more about what that looks like from my blog post How to Get Started and Write That Book

Here’s a little about me and one of my motivating forces; my “Why”.

Mum and Dad were writers. Good ones too. Dad died at 87 and Mum at 93. They both lived extraordinary lives, the content of which would fill many books.

They both swore that one day they would write a book about their amazing adventures.

It never happened.

Time. Time and not enough of it was the excuse that stole their dreams.

I’ve always wanted to write stories like the ones I loved to read. I grew up on a diet of Sci-Fi, Horror, Fantasy and Metaphysics.

They were the books that fired my imagination, excited, enthralled and transported me to distant worlds.

I wanted to write a book. But like Mum and Dad, I kept putting it off. It seemed too huge a task. My life was littered with a trail of short stories, poems, illustrated children’s books, notebooks, ideas, creative journals, but ‘the book’ loomed like a mountain above me, impossible to climb.

The motivation – the “Why”– to take that first step came from my parents.

I didn’t want to lie on my deathbed with a precious dream unfulfilled.

So, I wrote that book.

And then another. And another. And another!

And I’m halfway through one more.

I’ve done it! I’ve written that book, and some. But I still have one regret.

Mum and Dad aren’t here to read them.

Is your soul aching to write a book?

Then don’t be like my parents or many other would be writers and get to the end of your journey filled with regrets.

Do it now. Your soul will sing.

‘There is no greater joy than expressing the song in your heart.’ ~ Ingrid Fry

Resources

Bird by Bird (Some Instructions on Writing and Life) by Anne Lamott

This book is a great place to start for guidance and inspiration, especially if the road ahead seems overwhelming.

Word by Word, an audio workshop by Anne Lamott

This audio workshop provides you with the opportunity to hear Anne in action. It is laugh out loud, poignant, informative and will provide you with the encouragement and ideas you need to get started and most importantly, keep going.

About the Crystal Sphere Series

Following an encounter with a mysterious crystal sphere, Maggie is compelled to lead her partner Jason, an eclectic entourage of humans, and a telepathic beagle into battle against a dark force and a very nasty villain intent on destroying humanity.

Maggie, the reluctant protagonist, is a psychic, computer programmer and corporate couch potato.

For her, things don’t get much more strenuous than walking the dog. Unfortunately, walking the dog is where it all begins, and now the fate of the world rests in her hands.

As a keyboard warrior and intuitive, Maggie feels ill equipped for the battle she has to fight. Music assists in keeping her sane, helping to muffle the psychic barrage that bombards her mind.

Each chapter in the series is linked to a tune that readers can follow via Maggie’s playlist on Spotify.

Set in current day Melbourne, Australia, this urban comic fantasy takes the reader on an action-packed journey across regional areas of Victoria and interstate. The story combines adventure and edge of your seat suspense, with a good dose of humour and a sprinkling of romance and spice.

Even readers who normally wouldn’t consider books with a slightly otherworldly element, have fallen in love with the story, describing it as “a sexy, funny, action packed story with characters you will fall in love with.”

Buy links:

Paperbacks

eBooks

Descent into Darkness

Journey to Hell

Quest for Light

Search for Truth

Limited Edition Box Sets

Maggie’s Playlist

Brief Bio:

Ingrid was born and raised in Berkhamstead in the UK but spent much of her childhood commuting between England and Austria. Emigrating with her parents many years ago, she has called Australia home ever since.

A writer, business development consultant and minder of a husband and a beagle with superpowers, she lives in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Lakes Entrance is her second home and it was from there, much of her first four novels were developed. In her spare time, she enjoys pistol shooting at the local gun club, dancing at The Caravan Music Club and as a passionate karate nerd, well on her way to a black belt in karate. Her fifth book in the series, Battle for Blood is due in 2021.

You can visit Ingrid’s website here. Ingrid is represented by Tale Publishing

The Geography of Friendship, by Sally Piper

They haven’t seen each other for years, but here they are, falling onto the same old pattern as though there’s no other worth considering. Maybe it’s more to do with the place they’re walking through. Maybe the land has designs on them – maybe it always had – robbing them of the power to choose alternatives.

It’s been twenty years since they first walked the rail as teens, and twenty years since their friendship fell apart. Now, Samantha, Lisa and Nicole are walking the same trail, in an attempt to salvage something, even though it is clear to at least two of them what its they are trying to salvage.
That first hike was meant to be an adventure, a kind of coming of age in the wilderness, but what happened in those five days changed all of them, and severed their friendship. Will revisiting the scene of those terrible five days really mend their friendship, and will it help each woman to heal the wounds which continue to effect their lives?

The Geography of Friendship is a finely woven story. the use of three perspectives, and the shift bewteen the events of the past, the present and those in the intervening years, could become complicated, but rather makes for a pleasing complexity as the reader gets to know each woman and gradually piece together what has happened.

Absorbing and satisfying.

The Geography of Friendship, by Sally Piper
UQP, 2018
ISBN 9780702259975