Well, it's true, I am published. There was the letter in the Sydney Morning Herald about Obama. I've had photos published and used in websites, marketing material and album covers. But there is something daunting about getting a request for 500 words. The fear of not getting it. The fear of getting it, then having to write it. Maybe I should give in now and stick to my Project Management roots.
I enjoyed the Sydney Writer's Festival. I attended for the first time, and expected thousands of skinny, bespectacled, Emo uni students with French cigarettes and Macbooks. While there was a fair share of those, the majority were baby-boomers, at or near retirement, looking for their next reading feast. They came to meet their literary heroes; become a a part of the scene. This was my audience.
Historical fiction is not often found on the New York Times Best Seller List. But one only has to look at the overflowing venues at the SWF for writers such as David Hill and Kate Grenville to know that Sydney, and Australia loves to read detail of its own stories, true or fiction. The packed house for Kate Grenville's discussion of her novels The Lieutenant and The Secret River based on the founding of Australia as a penal colony proves that Aussies love their home-grown fiction.
But as I have often mentioned to people that I am writing a novel based on the First Fleet, many of them remark, "What does a Yank know about the settling of Australia?" The answer: probably more than most Aussies.
When we are in school the historians dig up the facts. The educators then translate the facts to palatable stories for the correct age of the children. The curriculum and the constant re-telling of this "history" water down the adult truths. I was never taught the "education" version of Australia's history. I researched the actual documents left by the people who were there, aided by some translations by popular modern historians like Tim Flannery, Robert Hughes and David Hill.
It is with this Ground Zero and Plus One focus that I have attacked my first novel. It is a tale of love, honour and duty, set in a time and place where happiness was elusive, but the dream of starting anew was truly alive.
The story is complete. I am now checking the landscape for the details that will make the story alive and give the reader that same sense of wonder about the time and place as I have. Maybe everyone will be able to picture Sydney Harbour with the eleven ships of the First Fleet firmly anchored in Sydney Cove.
In the coming months I will blog excerpts from the book Letters of Duty. I hope you will enjoy it.
