Sheree Christoffersen

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Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club

Writers Festival Book

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club

June 5, 2016 by Sheree 4 Comments

This year at Sydney Writers Festival I attended my first TeenCon.

As we filed into the room, volunteers handed each of us a calico bag containing six books. Yes, six. Not three years old, let’s-chuck-‘em-out books, but ones published within the past year, many within the past six months. The first one I read was by Alison Goodman.

Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club was already on my radar,
as I love Alison Goodman’s writing.

However, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Descriptions in some reviews, including “Jane Austen meets Cassandra Clare”, sounded to me a lot like a Regency version of Clare’s prequel novels (The Infernal Devices). Instead I found a meticulously researched story with a heroine who is gutsy but consistent in her era.

The protagonist, Lady Helen, understands and complies with the proprieties of the time, believing in the limitations women have been socialised to accept, but though she resists the call of her growing knowledge, she steps up when it counts.

The Dark Days Club is best described as an urban fantasy
in Regency era London.

27074515The Dark Days Club begins in 1812, the second year of the Regency. Lady Helen lives with her aunt and puritanical, oppressive uncle as her parents, the Earl of Hayden and Lady Catherine, died a decade before. Rumours persist that her mother betrayed England to Napoleon.

When Lady Helen attends the palace to be presented before Queen Charlotte with other young ladies of genteel families, she is introduced to Lord Carlston, who reputedly murdered his wife three years past, though it could never be proven. So begins her entrée into the world of the Dark Days Club and the hidden perils from which it protects all of Britain.

Goodman has managed to walk a fine line.

She presents Lady Helen as a product of her age rather than an anachronistic modern feminist, while still portraying her as a strong character who doesn’t shrink from the difficult role she is being called to fulfill. Her initial reticence is a common part of any hero’s or heroine’s journey, serving only to underline her later determination.

26066905The story builds gradually, layer by layer, well-paced and well-crafted, and though this is the first in a series, provides a resolution that doesn’t leave the reader hanging.

This isn’t just a story with a Regency backdrop. Neither is it a Gothic novel, though it contains some Gothic elements. It’s a story of a Regency young woman, faced with secrets and responsibilities she’d rather not have, coming to terms with who she is in a society that has little tolerance for female non-conformity.

It’s also got some kick-ass action scenes.

I had high hopes for Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club, and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll be watching out for the second instalment, The Dark Days Pact, in January 2017.

Details
Lady Helen and the Dark Days Club
Angus & Robertson
ISBN: 9780732296094)
Pub: Dec 2015

Links
Alison Goodman’s webpage

AUSSIE-AUTHOR-2016Aussie Writers Challenge

 

 

 

image-200x300Australian Women Writers Challenge

Posted in: Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Books, Fantasy, Historical fiction, Paranormal, Romance, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2016, #LoveOzYA, Alison Goodman, Book review, Books, Fantasy, Paranormal, Review, Romance, Sydney Writers Festival, urban fantasy, Young Adult

Everybody Loves YA Panel #nswwc

July 21, 2015 by Sheree 4 Comments

Speculative Fiction Festival,
NSW Writers Centre #LoveOzYA

It was quite a line up. The NSWWC Festival was a star-studded event with big names in Australian speculative fiction making up every panel. The Young Adult panel was a prime example as we were treated to the collective literary wisdom of Marianne de Pierres, Garth Nix, Richard Harland, Isobelle Carmody and Amie Kaufman.

Richard was the host and he began by introducing the panel and their impressive credentials. He posed a number of questions and each panel member responded. There was plenty to absorb, so what follows is an attempt to capture as much of the excellent advice and insight that poured forth in the session as possible. I’ve done a lot of paraphrasing and it’s not in strict chronological order, as I’ve tried to group similar topics together.

I’ve used the writers first names hereafter, for brevity and because I don’t want to sound like a British boarding school teacher by using just surnames. This isn’t the place for Harry Potter role play. Though… no, no, it’s not.

Everything that follows is gleaned from my notes and memory along with excellent tweets from numerous sources. I’ve also added links and comments, just because I can.

NSWWC YA3

Why is YA so popular, particularly with adults?

This question was thrown at Marianne first. Her response was that it allows those of us past adolescence to revisit that time in our lives, perhaps before life has become difficult or complex, to re-imagine our youth or what our lives could have been like if it had gone in a different direction. YA stories are often about identity, and so they appeal whether we’re in the process of finding our own identity or re-examining it. Young adults are also good bullshit detectors, so authenticity of voice is crucial, and that is inherently appealing in a story.

GN Story is kingYA has won the industry’s attention, said Garth, but we can overthink its popularity. He stressed that people shouldn’t get hung up on categories. Books put on YA shelves provide strong, clear stories with interesting characters, so naturally people other than teenagers are going to want to read them. “Story is king.” The best books always have multiple layers of meaning that can be appreciated at different stages, and can be revisited with a new perspective at a later age.

Richard RH Lit YCpointed out that literature has always been full of young characters going through change. (I  thought of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Tom Brown, Jane Eyre and Holden Caulfield.) “It’s an interesting time of life. Your impressions are stronger than at any other time.” The emphasis on YA in recent years is more about the way books are marketed. The writers came back to marketing a little further on.

“No wonder YA is so popular,” said Isobelle. “Who wants to be an adult when we see what adults have done to our world?” She told us of the 20 year old MP in the UK she watched on Youtube the previous night.

Mhairi Black’s maiden House of Commons speech

This young woman had made her think a lot about YA books. Adults have made such a mess of the world and those in positions of power are behaving in such juvenile ways that there is a yearning, in both young people and those older, to return to ideals that seem far from being lived out in the real world. We crave a clearer sense of values which YA provides, as its characters strive to work out who they are in the world.

Basic motivations are also something that drive Isobelle, striving to understand why people do what they do. She thinks about what famous people were like in their formative years. What was Martin Luther King, Jr. like in school? Was he different to the other kids? What about others who grow up to be shining examples or do horrific things? What formed them? YA resonates with adults because it holds the seeds of who you become.

IC Inside every ageIsobelle is drawn to adolescent POV because they are characters who are growing, changing, becoming, but the core within doesn’t leave the child’s perspective behind. “Inside you is every age you’ve ever been – they don’t die or go away!” If the writing is good enough, it will resurrect the 12 year old inside of you.

Amie reminded us that YA is the literature of transformation, “and we’re all going through transformations, all the time”. Everyone, can identify with YA stories. Good stories are about change, so YA stories are inherently appealing. She said that in her teens she was working out who she was, then in her twenties sAK tranformationhe felt like she was already supposed to have worked it out. She found YA stories still spoke strongly to her then, and perhaps the YA appeal is about exploring who we are no matter our age.

Then Amie discussed how she has found it difficult being told someone doesn’t read fiction because they “don’t read something they can’t learn from”. After the gasps and incredulous laughter died down, from panel and audience alike, Amie said what we all know; in fiction we walk in others shoes, and learn so much about other people and the world that we could never understand from non-fiction.

Can Reading Fiction Improve Empathy? (PsychCentral)
Can Reading a Fictional Story Make You More Empathetic?
(Psychology Today, n
eurobiological emphasis)

Richard pointed out that imagination in itself it incredibly valuable. Einstein, for example, developed his theories of relativity through his ability to imagine. The stimulation of imagination is one of the most important things we can cultivate in our children and young people, and society in general.

Richard found the labelling of speculative fiction as ‘escapist’ fiction, using it as ‘dirty word’, offensive.

“The Life and Times of Harry Houdini,” muttered Garth. Pardon? Oh, escapist fiction. :)

Besides, Richard insisted, what’s wrong with escapism anyway? What’s wrong with games? We learn from games and ‘escapist’ things too. Play is essential for children. Adolescents and adults need to play too.

What Neil Gaiman was told when he asked why China is encouraging science fiction in its population.

Isobel also believes the craving for idealism and clearer values is also a driving factor in the popularity of speculative fiction.

The writers had varying responses to people who liked to tell them they “don’t like fantasy”. Garth: “I don’t like you, either.” (Most popular response.) All agreed that a lot of bias still exists about ‘genre’ fiction. Isobelle thinks many other writers would create great stories if they weren’t afraid of ‘genre’. Garth again re genre bias: “I don’t breathe often but when I do I choose air.”

Being categorized as YA

Story firstAll the writers agreed that the story came first, rather than writing to a category or age group. Richard reiterated that coming-of-age stories have been around for a very long time, but now they’re being collated and called YA for marketing purposes.

YA stands for “Yes, Awesome!” according to Garth. He considers, though, that age targets or genre categories aren’t inescapable ghettos but places booksellers and librarians situate a book that will be most likely to connect with its initial target audience, from which it will, hopefully, spread out to the rest of your potential readership. He quoted Schuster of Simon & Schuster, who said, “The most dangerous disease for a publisher is a hardening of the categories.” He also advised that writers of YA should make sure potential agents and publishers GN Yes Awesomeare interested in YA and have experience and expertise in it, as opposed to only being interested in its selling potential.

Don’t let categories determine what you write or what you read. Amie advises we should all read across genres & age groups as a matter of course, as we’ll learn from other genres, whether crime, romance, thriller, literary, or whatever. There will be aspects of all of them that will improve your own writing.

Sex, Drugs and Violence in YA

Concerning sex and drug use in one of Marianne’s books, she was told by an overseas publisher that “teenagers weren’t interested” in those things. (???)

Amie noted that when she was in high school, the John Marsden books in the library would always fall open at certain well-worn pages. (That makes more sense.)

GN Adult in YA“People forget the ‘adult’ in Young Adult,” Garth said in relation to gatekeeping in YA, and many don’t discern between Children’s and YA. These aren’t books for kids. If those things are part of your story, you should use them to tell the story.

One of the writers (Amie?) had an overseas editor ask about sex scenes in a book, and was concerned that one occurred. When she explained the scene was one of violence, there was no problem. All agreed how bizarre the value system is, to accept a scene of violent sex in preference over consensual, pleasurable sex.

Garth was proud when one of his books was banned due in the U.S. It was due to coarse language, strangely citing many words that didn’t occur in the book. He advises, though, that the forces who come out to bat for challenged books are usually more powerful than those who try to ban them.

He then advised that if you’re going use swearing in your book, don’t make it on the first page, as that seemed to be the trouble with his book. Amie helpfully informed us that it won’t be a problem if you can postpone it until after the first 50 pages. It seems the automated scanning for such things stops at page 50. I’m wondering if all authors start using this information, will the scanning algorithm be changed to random pages? There has to be a librarian joke in that, but I’d better not go there …

Isobelle: “I have to admit, one of my proudest moments was having one of my books burned.” It was a European town which she later visited. Ah, fandom.

My quote award goes to Garth Nix, who provided so many succinct quotes over the day, for this:

GN Banned

Many thanks to Festival Director Cat Sparks for an excellent day, and the staff of the NSW Writers Centre for all their work. Thanks also to all the tweeters who captured so much of the wisdom of the day, especially Tehani Wessely who storified the day’s tweets, which you can find here.

If I’ve left things out or made any mistakes, please add them in the comments.

Links: Websites

Marianne de Pierres
Garth Nix
Richard Harland
Isobelle Carmody
Amie Kaufman
NSW Writers Centre

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Dystopia, Fantasy, Science fiction, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, Aussie setting, Books, Dystopia, Fantasy, Garth Nix, Myth, Paranormal, Science fiction, Young Adult

Pieces of Sky, by Trinity Doyle

July 5, 2015 by Sheree Leave a Comment

What happens when your life revolves around water, then you can’t bear to get back in the pool?

23603939Lucy had life under control. A champion backstroke swimmer, she was always either training or at school. When her older brother, Cam, drowned while he was away with his mates, her world collapsed. Now her mum has zoned out, her dad ignores her, and her well-meaning aunt is running the family.

On the first day of Year 10 it’s also her first day back to swim training. But as she prepares to dive in, she’s gripped by panic. She can’t do it. The water killed Cam. It feels like it’s killing her.

Pieces of Sky is the story of Lucy trying to make life work again. More than that, it’s also about the people left behind when a young person dies suddenly; the family, the friends, and the community, in this case a coastal town.

Narrated by Lucy, the story begins eight weeks after Cam’s death, when the initial shock has worn off and those closest to him are trying to take up normal life again, when the real effects begin to reveal themselves. Feeling distant and ignored by her parents, her relationships with her friends take centre stage, including the new boy at school, Evan.

Doyle brings in the layers of Lucy’s relationships step by step, including Cam’s friends and former girlfriend, weaving them together in a web of social ties that feels organic. The relationship between Lucy and Cam is portrayed as somewhat hero-worship, making it even more difficult for her to adjust to his loss.

The ambivalence Lucy now feels towards water – and so perhaps to Cam and his senseless drowning – is difficult to miss. The opening paragraphs of the novel set the scene beautifully:

Mum painted my brother’s coffin.
It was beautiful, if such a thing can be – the waves of the ocean, gradients of green to blue mixed with the white of sea foam. Despite the grim irony that the ocean which smothered his lungs should cover him in death, it suited him.
Cam was made with more water than most.

Gradually Lucy discovers there was more to Cam than she knew, and maybe even more to what happened on the night he drowned than anybody was saying.

Pieces of Sky is not just about loss and grief, though. It’s about Lucy rediscovering life. Her time has been so regimented – train, study, train – that now she’s unable to go into the water, she has to learn how to live outside of a strict timetable. She’s let friendships and other interests slide. Without her brother, who introduced her to new things, and swimming, that let her go through her days without having to make decisions, she has to forge a new path on her own.

With a premise that sounds somber, Pieces of Sky has plenty of lighter of moments. It’s well written, and I wanted to hurry up and get back to it when I had to do something else. That’s always a marker of a great book.

Details
Pieces of Sky by Trinity Doyle
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760112486
Published:  June 2015

Links: Trinity Doyle’s webpage

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awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge

Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Contemporary, Family, Reading, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Book review, Books, Literary, Reading, Review, Trinity Doyle, Young Adult

Why I don’t give star ratings for book reviews

July 2, 2015 by Sheree 6 Comments

I know it’s accepted. I know it’s expected. I also know a creative work with the complexity of a novel can’t possibly be reduced to a five point rating scale.

300px-Star .svgI’m not saying other people shouldn’t use them. It’s the standard convention, and it seems to be what’s expected of reviewers. I’m just saying I have a lot of trouble with assigning them, so I avoid them if I can.

What does three or four stars mean, anyway? “I liked this book, but not as much as other books I’ve read.” Maybe. It doesn’t say anything about what I liked or didn’t like about it, whether I thought the language was beautiful or verbose, if the plot was well structured, whether it was paced skillfully or if the tone was uneven and confusing. A star rating says nothing about whether the characters were rounded and believable, too perfect or too evil, inconsistent or grew with the story arc.

Giving a rating also says nothing about whether a book is within my usual reading preferences or if I’ve stepped out to try something else, which can have a huge impact on my response to it. I’ve known some people to be blown away by the ‘amazing’ concepts of a literary novel with a smattering of science fiction, which were standard tropes in sci-fi twenty years ago. The reverse is also true, that those not used to the conventions of a genre can dismiss a novel out of hand because they don’t understand what the author is getting at in the first couple of chapters.

If I review a novel, my reasons for liking or disliking aspects of it can be just as important as how I respond to it. I’m unlikely to review a slasher horror novel because I don’t like reading that material, but if I did it would be unfair for me to give it a star rating out of five. I know – before reading it – I’d be unlikely to enjoy it, so while it might be an excellent slasher horror novel, it couldn’t get an honest high star rating from me.

We all respond to stories differently, and have different preferences. When I read a review I find the most interesting things are the details of the reviewer’s response to the novel. Do they think it was well written? What did they think of the characterization? The plot? Were there particular things they liked or didn’t like? Was this a typical genre for them, or a stretch? If not typical, does it encourage them to read more like this?

A star rating tells me none of this. I look at books I’ve read, and the thought of trying to reduce them to a number out of five makes me incredibly sad. I hate the thought of reducing the countless hours of imagination, toil and angst their authors have put into those words down into a number of stars.

Imagine if we did this with visual art. You would go into a gallery, and before each work everyone was able to write a review, and give the painting, sculpture or other artwork a rating out of five stars. It would be averaged and the rating displayed alongside the details of the piece. Perhaps the Archibald Prize People’s Choice Award would be the 300px-Star .svgone with the highest average stars. Of course, we could extend it backwards and give a star rating to the masters; Monet and Van Gogh, Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci …

Okay, maybe that’s going too far, but you see the point. Novels, good novels, can’t be reduced to a five point scale any more than works of art can be. So, I’m going to stick to reviewing without stars.

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Australian Women Writers, Literary Fiction, Reading, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, Adult fiction, Book review, Books, Fantasy, Literary, Novels, Reading, Review, Science fiction, Young Adult

Lost and Found

June 12, 2015 by Sheree Leave a Comment

23350837A few months ago I snuck into a packed-out, quiet room where Brooke Davis and Favel Parrett spoke with Courtney Collins. These soft-spoken young women held the audience at the Newcastle Writers Festival spellbound as they talked about writing and life, and telling a story “through the eyes of a child”. I’ve reviewed Favel Parrett’s Past the Shallows and Courtney Collins’ The Burial, and it’s high time I completed the trio with Brooke Davis’ debut novel, Lost and Found.

Davis gives us the story of seven-year-old Millie, who discovers her dog dead on the road, then witnesses the death of a old man hit by a car. She receives rather confusing explanations from her parents about these events, and as she  notices other things dying around her, begins to record them.

She wasn’t to know that after she had recorded twenty-seven assorted creatures in her Book of Dead Things – Spider, The Bird, Grandma, next door’s cat Gertrude, among others – her dad would be a Dead Thing, too. That she’d write it next to the number twenty-eight in letters so big they took up two pages: MY DAD.

Through Millie’s eyes we see her mother falling apart, though she doesn’t fully understand what’s happening, culminating in Millie’s abandonment at a department store. Her mother tells her to stand right near the Ginormous Women’s Undies and says, I’ll be right back. It’s the last we or Millie see of her.

20823038Millie hides out in the department store and befriends eighty-seven year old Karl the Touch Typist in the store cafe, who is adrift since losing the love of his life. When store employees discover Millie’s predicament and call authorities, Karl helps her escape. Completing the main cast is Agatha Pantha, who lives across the street from Millie’s house. She’s an angry eighty-two year old who hasn’t left her house since her husband died, but is reluctantly drawn into looking after Millie. The three embark on a journey to find Millie’s mum, but discover there’s more to life than they expected.

The language of Lost and Found is beguiling. Millie’s voice is fresh with lack of self-consciousness, and an internal logic that comes from observation and limited information. Karl is more at home pretending to type words than saying them; his internal monologues reveal his longing to be more than he is. Agatha’s outbursts at everyone and everything hide a deep anxiety and pain that she keeps at bay only with her anger.

It’s a story about death and loss, how we hide from it, how we deal with it or refuse to deal with it. It’s also a story about the extremes of age, the young and the old, and how those in between can fail to treat our children and elders like real people with loves, fears, hopes and dreams as important as our own.

Though Lost and Found is written in the viewpoint of all three characters, I have to confess to a preference for the Millie sections. Perhaps that’s because, in spite of her losses and sadness, she maintains her hope. Ultimately it is her hope and naive longing to be reunited with her mother, in contrast with Karl’s almost despairing determination and Agatha’s reluctant intervention, that drives their journey, allowing them to see past their own pain and ultimately find comfort.

Lost and Found has won the General Fiction Book Of The Year, Australian Book Industry Awards 2015, and the Matt Richell New Writer Of The Year 2015. It has also been shortlisted for Debut Fiction, Indie Book Awards 2015, and the Australian Booksellers Association Neilsen BookData Booksellers Choice Award 2015

Links: Brooke Davis page at Hachette

Past the Shallows by Favel Parrett, Review

The Burial by Courtney Collins, Review

Newcastle Writers Festival

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awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Writers Festival Book Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, Book review, Child Protagonist, Literary, Novels

Deadly Novels with Bling

May 26, 2015 by Sheree 3 Comments

dead actually finalMy first encounter with Kaz Delaney was at the inaugural Newcastle Writers Festival in 2013, and she left an impression of a bubbling personality and a flair for bling. Also writing as Kerri Lane, she had over fifty children’s and YA books published, and her YA novel Dead, Actually was garnering awards. As I got to know her a little better at writing events, her warmth and generosity outshone the bling.

So, when I finally opened Dead, Actually, I wanted to like it. I was a volunteer at the National Young Writers Festival last year (though I’m many years past the target audience) and was baby-sitting a room with a computer where festival-goers could come and write a contribution to the festival website. Without a lot to keep me busy, I bought Dead, Actually.

After a few pages, I sighed with relief. The lovely lady who was so encouraging, who wanted to foster children’s and YA authors and was so gracious to beginners could also tell a great story. It might seem obvious that such a well-published writer would tell a great story, but how often do you read a book by a well-known author and find you don’t like their work? So much about what we love in books is subjective; if it wasn’t, everyone would agree on what the best books are, we’d all read the same genres, and very few writers would find an audience. In this case, though, I could tell Kaz that I loved her book – and mean it. At this year’s Newcastle Writers Festival, I bought the sequel, Almost Dead.

Bling-Bling-Shiny-Dissolved-Figure-Vector-Background

Image: http://goo.gl/gu78DW

Dead, Actually is about Willow, a teen who finds herself a magnet for the ghost of a classmate. JoJo is just as obnoxious dead as she was alive, and harasses Willow into investigating the mysterious circumstances around her death. Willow needs to convince her best friend, Macey, and Macey’s brother, Seth (who she’s crushed on for years), that she’s not crazy. She also has to deal with JoJo’s shallow and vindictive friends, who are clearly hiding something. Then the whole thing starts to get dangerous.

Almost Dead  follows Macey after Willow has gone off on a long holiday in Europe. Since the JoJo incident, Macey has become sensitized to ghosts and they’ve been turning up in her bedroom with alarming regularity. She’s worked out how to get rid of them, but when a new guy her own age turns up he doesn’t take the hint. With no one to help, Macey has to work out this by herself. Then she discovers that he’s not dead – not yet.

almost dead  index pageBoth stories are set in the world of privileged Gold Coast society. These kids are rich. They live in huge houses, have their own cars, designer clothes and anything they want, but both girls struggle with dysfunctional families. In both novels the girls’ relationships with their parents are integral to the plot, and provide a depth to the characters that the paranormal and romantic elements play against.

The romance in each story is secondary to the paranormal/mystery elements, but is handled well to give a satisfying resolution in each. It’s kept PG, erring on the G-rated side, but there’s enough emotional intensity to keep it interesting. It’s the mystery that drives each story forward, though, and keeps the pages turning when you should be doing something else.

Kaz writes in a style that’s easy to read (I finished each book in two sittings) and well paced. She’s captured the way teenagers talk and behave in a way that isn’t tied to a particular place or is likely to date quickly, and her heroines and heroes are smart, courageous and flawed. They’re the sort of people you’d like to have as friends if you’re a teenager, and it wouldn’t hurt that they’re rich, have great cars, and you could hang out at their houses.

Dead, Actually won the Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel in 2012, and the Favourite Paranormal in 2012 in the Australian Romance Writers Association Awards. It was also long listed for a Davitt Award for Best Children’s/YA.

Update: Almost Dead is long-listed for the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards – Young Adult Novel, 2015.

Details:
Dead Actually, by Kaz Delaney
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781742378183
Published: March 2012

Almost Dead, by Kaz Delaney
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781743313268
Published: January 2014

 Links:
Kaz Delaney’s publisher’s page
Kerri Lane page
National Young Writers Festival
Newcastle Writers Festival
Aussie-Author-Challenge-2015-300x264 50Aussie Author Challenge
 awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge
Posted in: Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Paranormal, Romance, Writers Festival Book, Young Adult Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, #LoveOzYA, Aussie setting, Book review, Kaz Delaney, Paranormal, Romance, Young Adult

Do you know The Lady Bushranger?

May 8, 2015 by Sheree 2 Comments

What do you know about women bushrangers?

If your answer would be, ‘Not much,’ you wouldn’t be alone. Before I picked up The Burial by Courtney Collins, my response would have been, ‘What women bushrangers?’

SHWE_24-01-2015_SHARED_04_we2401read2a_t620

From: Old Images of Rylstone District

The Burial’s central character is inspired by the life of Jessie Hickman, Australia’s ‘Lady Bushranger’ who ran with her gang in the 1920s in the area now known as the Wollemi National Park, part of the Blue Mountains range between Lithgow and Muswellbrook. While other women were consorts of male bushrangers and some carried out daring exploits, Jessie Hickman is the only one who stands out as a mover and shaker on the bushranger scene in her own right.

It’s easy to see why Collins was captivated by her story. Sold off while still a child to a bush circus, she became a skilled rider and performer, developing the skills and confidence in her own abilities which allowed her to take off into the bush, and to escape captivity multiple times. Stories of her include riding off a cliff into a river to evade police, and escaping after being locked in a toilet on a train.

While she’s reputed to have married three times and had a cattle and horse rustling career over many years, The Burial concentrates on a short period of her life at the end of her third marriage. It’s a beautifully written novel, but perhaps it’s a testament to the skill of its author that for the most part I didn’t notice that as I read it. The prose is evocative, but doesn’t get in the way of the story or characters.

BurialCollins doesn’t claim historical accuracy. A statement before the ‘Prelude’ reads, “This is a work of fiction – inspired by art, music, literature and the landscape, as much as the life and times of Jessie Hickman herself.” The narrative begins in the voice of a dead child and the burial of the novel’s title, but the story is primarily told from Jessie’s viewpoint as she heads into the mountain bushland, and that of Jack Brown, a half-Aboriginal drover/rustler and tracker. He and police sergeant Andrew Barlow are ‘inspired-by-life but mainly fictional characters’ (according to Collins), who provide the narrative of the search for Jessie and the hunter-versus-hunted tension.

This was one of those novels when I was looking out through the character’s eyes and couldn’t help contrasting my life with hers. To be sold off at a young age, essentially at the mercy of the men around you, be they kind and fair or lecherous and abusive, is it any wonder she chose to take her chances in the bush? A hundred years ago in Australia, when this novel is set, how many women suffered what she did but didn’t have the ability to survive in the bush or evade those who would come after them? I wonder how many tried – and died?

Of course, this type of scenario still happens, on large scales in countries where women are legally and socially oppressed and, closer to home, on smaller scales in secret. It’s a moot point to ask if Jessie Hickman would still have ended up on the wrong side of the law if she hadn’t been exposed to such abuse and injustice. We’ll never know. What we do know is that abuse and injustice distorts and destroys lives.

A book like The Burial helps remind us of that.

Links: Courtney Collins website
The Burial will be released in the US at the end of May under the title The Untold.
Her upcoming novel is entitled The Walkman Mix.

More about Jessie Hickman

by Di Moore

mistsA newspaper article on Di Moore and her non-fiction book
about Jessie Hickman, Out of the Mists

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Aussie Author Challenge

awwsml-2015

Australian Women Writer’s Challenge

 

I saw Courtney Collins interviewing Favel Parrett (Past the Shallows) and Brooke Davis (Lost and Found) as Newcastle Writers Festival 2015

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Aussie setting, Australian Women Writers, Folklore, Literary Fiction, Writers Festival Book Tagged: #aussieauthor, #aww2015, Aussie setting, Book review, Courtney Collins, Folklore, Literary

Trying Something New: “Challenge”

April 18, 2015 by Sheree 2 Comments

I had a dilemma. In a room about ten metres away two authors of speculative fiction were about to discuss their work. I’d planned to attend for weeks. The problem? My replacement volunteer hadn’t shown up. The next session for my current room was about to start.

I didn’t really have a choice. I stayed – and the magic that happens at writers festivals was present in abundance.

It was 2013 and I was at the inaugural Newcastle Writers Festival. The session I stayed for was Chris Uhlmann  and Steve Lewis discussing their book, The Marmalade Files, with 1233 ABC’s Paul Bevan. It helped that I was interested in hearing them, but I wasn’t a fan of political novels. I could count on one hand the number of novels in that genre I’d read in the last twenty years.

The anecdote15775297s ran thick and fast. It was obvious these two knew the political landscape like the back of their hands. The session ended with Chris Uhlmann describing what it was like to break the story on ABC news of the change of prime minister when Kevin Rudd was rolled from leadership. I was converted. I bought their book.

Although different to most other things I read, I enjoyed the difference. Lewis and Uhlmann said they knew a lot of anecdotes they could never publish, so they made up characters and attributed real deeds to fictional people. A scary thought, but it makes for good reading and more than a few laughs. The story revolves around a journalist who receives leaked information, anonymously, about the Defense Minister. But that’s only the start …

It’s well paced, with enough intrigue to drive the story forward. With obvious parallels to some real political figures, I just hope not all of the stories are true.

Lewis and Uhlmann returned to the Newcastle Writers Festival this year, its third year, with the release of their second book, The Mandarin Code. This time I made sure I attended their session, which they shared with Paul Daley and Jessica Rudd, discussing the revived popularity of political novels. Of course, I bought their new book, but what I didn’t expect to do is buy the books of the other two. This is not my genre, but they were just too interesting.

23050077I’ve saved The Mandarin Code for the moment, but have finished Paul Daley’s Challenge. It’s about Danny Slattery, the leader of the Opposition, who is facing a leadership challenge in the run up to an election in the coming twelve months against a government and prime minister whose best days are behind them. He’s toed the party line, but now has had enough. Beset by attacks on multiple fronts, he resolves to stick to his principles and refuses to cave in to the pressure. But the question is, who he can trust?

While Daley’s protagonist is the leader of a Labor Opposition, the author is equally scathing in his portrayal of the Left and Right sides of politics. Danny has his political principles, but is coming back to awareness of them after too long letting them languish in the name of pragmatism. He sees many of his own faults, excusing some as inevitable consequences of the job, but also unable in many ways to see how far he’d diverged from what he hoped to be.

Challenge is written in the first person, so we see everything through Danny’s filter. It’s not a pretty one. I found his character compelling but not likable, though readers will differ in how they respond. I wouldn’t want to be on his staff, or his friend, but his viewpoint is undeniably a window into a life I’ll never have. Perhaps Daley’s journalistic experience produced a more honest picture than any memoir of an actual member of parliament, because there is no real Danny Slattery to worry about what we’ll think of him. We get Danny, warts and every other bump, bruise, ulcer, and all.

A couple of things to note about style. If bad language bothers you, skip this book. Daley was obviously going for gritty realism, including the internal dialogue. The other thing is my personal taste. There’s a trend in a lot of writing to omit quotation marks for speech, and this novel follows that trend. I find it distracting, because I often find myself having to re-read lines as I’ve assumed they either were or weren’t direct speech, and the following lines then don’t make sense. I know some authors like it, but I find it reduces clarity, and can’t see it adds anything to the writing.

A good find, once again from a writers festival.

Links:
Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann The Marmalade Files
Paul Daley Challenge
Newcastle Writers Festival

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Only Paul Daley’s Challenge counts in my Aussie Author Challenge, as I read The Marmalade Files ages ago.

Posted in: Adult Fiction, Aussie books, Aussie setting, Political, Writers Festival Book Tagged: #aussieauthor, Aussie setting, Book review, Paul Daley, Politcal
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