Hello, everyone. Welcome to and thank you for joining us today.
Welcome to our WriteFest 2020. As you might know,
my name is Kimberlee and I am a library officer here at the Gympie Regional
Libraries. Before we start,
I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which we are
hosting this event today. And I pay my respect to our art, to their elders,
both past present and emerging. Okay.
As part of right first 2020, uh, sponsored,
sponsored by the Bendigo Bank of Gympie.
We are incredibly lucky to have Josephine moon here with us.
Josephine was born and raised in Brisbane and had a false start in
environmental science before completing a bachelor of arts in communication,
and then a postgrad in, education,
12 years and 10 manuscripts later, she published her first novel,
the tea chest and was picked up for that was picked up for publication and then
shortlisted for an ABI award. Her bestselling contemporary fiction is, uh,
published internationally. Her books include the teachers,
the chocolate promise,
the beekeeper's secret three gold coins and the gift of life in 2018
Josephine organised the authors for farmers appeal,
raising money to assist drought effected communities.
She's passionate about literacy and is a proud sponsor of story dogs and the
Smith family.
And she now lives in the beautiful Noosa hinterland with her husband and dog.
I mean, her son, you have a dog.
Josephine is somewhere along those tribe of animals you have,
and her number of animals increase every year and she wouldn't have it any other
way. So welcome Josephine. And thank you for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me. Those are the be here. Alright.
Would you like me to stop talking now? Or are you going to start with questions?
No, no, you start, you start your yep. Lovely. Okay. Well,
thank you everyone for joining me on a Saturday,
I was just saying Saturdays are always very busy for people.
I know there's always school sport and all sorts of stuff going on.
So thank you for taking time out to come and be here today.
So the book that I have just released this year is called the cake makers wish
it is my, uh, sixth novel,
I think at a quick count.
And it is set mostly in the cult tools actually,
and follows the story of Olivia Kent,
who is a young single mom and her son, Darcy who's seven years old.
You decide to up and leave their home in Tasmania and go and join an
experimental village revival project in the Cotswolds in England.
So basically in that village, they decided that their,
um, well,
things have changed a lot over decades and people have moved out of the village
and the village was dying. There's a.
Big population drain.
And so what they've done is invited people to come back.
So people around the world to come back to come to the village, uh,
who have perhaps genetic family ancestral links to that area.
And if they've got preferred a profession and a perfectly children as well to
come back and re sort of start repopulating that village and
bringing it back to life.
So the reason she's done that is because when we opened the book,
her grandma who, uh, she refers to his mom,
because she's really the only mother she's knowing has died
recently. And her young son does,
he had had a bad accident and had a lot of trouble at school.
And so things have been not easy for them for the past little while.
And she's sort of at a crosswords where she wants to do something big and
different with her life. And so this opportunity comes up and she thinks, well,
maybe that's a great thing to do.
So what I thought I might do is just really one of the opening scenes of the
book,
which will start to sort of just orient you into the story and let you
see what it's like for Olivia.
When she first lands in the Cotswolds,
sorry, here we go. This way, I take that five minutes.
When the three shot reps sounded on the front door of the cottage Olivia's and
Darcy's fingers were coated with butter and flour.
It was 24 hours since that arrived in Stoneman and the jet lag was knocking them
around,
but they were keen to get the Apple crumble into the oven so they could head out
for allegedly stroll and explore the villages, winding streets,
the visitor already, Olivia grinned at Darcy and watched her hands on a T tail.
She hurried along the narrow hallway from the small kitchen to open the front
door.
It was barely a job before an angry voice signalled that this might not be the
churning English. Welcome to the neighbourhood.
After all the elderly woman accused her,
pointing the finger pointing directly at Olivia's chest Livia,
recoiled in surprise. What I saw you from my window,
the woman just powdered makeup. Linting away from her frown lines.
Her head wraps tightly in a Paisley pattern scarf.
So what does play innocent with me? I watched you in that boy,
you're stealing my apples cleaned up the whole lot. You did.
Libby is jetlagged. Mine took a moment to process this,
but those apples were rocking on the ground.
It's my right to let my apples rush by juice. The woman said,
but they were on our side of the headroom. Olympia was genuinely confused.
What sort of excuses that the woman tapped the toe, her boot on a stone step.
I planted them. I bring them they're mine. I balls.
Olivia took a breath and smiled. Could we start this conversation again?
She held out her hand. I'm Olivia Kent. My son I've seen mute here.
And the woman ignored her outstretched hand. I know who you are.
You're one of the imports brought here by that devil dealing renascence
committee. She made a disgusted noise in her throat.
They'd be sold you a good story,
but you should know that half the village is livid about this.
And we don't want you here. Livia turned cause information over in her mind.
That's interesting. She said, feeling him, nose Twitch, with concern.
I'd like to hear more about that.
That's we can have a coffee and talk it through sometime in the next few days,
if you last that long, Olivia was rented momentarily,
speechless by the woman's or Udacity, but rallied.
Maybe we could just resolve the Apple each for now, the apples you stop.
Well, forgive me. But in Australia, if the fruit is on your side of the fence,
it's considered yours.
Precisely what I would expect a convict to say her neighbour retorted to
her dismay, Olivia burst into slightly hysterical. Laughter give me back.
My apples, the woman demand demanded. I'd gladly do that,
except that Darcy and I are making Apple crumble.
Your apples are all chopped up. You are however,
welcome to join us for afternoon tea and help us eat them.
The woman's chin liquid and her eyes narrowed.
This is not the end of this matter.
She spun on her heel and straight away down the drive boots crunching over
pebbles.
So as you can see from that little introduction there,
Olivia has gone to the other side of the world,
uprooted her whole life and has a ride in a town that
perhaps isn't quite as welcoming as she expected it to be.
And so we do find this through the story that is, you know,
a good percentage of the population who isn't particularly happy about people,
new people coming into the village.
And one of the reasons they're not really happy about that is because,
because there's been this great population and professional drain in the
village, the committee has managed to stop people,
selling their houses just temporarily to try and stabilise that population.
So people are not understandably,
naturally not super happy about that.
So that's where a lot of that conflict comes from.
This story started for me back in 20.
Let's try to think what we're in now, 20, 2015. So five years ago,
I took a trip to the Cotswolds as a research trip,
deliberately looking for a story.
And I managed to convince my dad and my sister
to come along with me. And my sister also brought her 11 month old,
a 14 month old baby at the time, uh,
who screamed the entire way over there on the plane,
which was not so great for her. She didn't pray all the way over.
It's a lot better once we got there. Um, and then,
so what we did was we based ourselves in one village in the Cotswolds.
And that turned out to be a really great thing because it meant that sort of,
when we went out every day on our walk or what to buy something down at the
local store, we would run into the same people.
And we sort of start to get to know faces and people and the woman who was in
the cottage next to us, uh, found out what I did for a living.
And she said, Oh, you should speak to Terry.
And Brian they've lived here whole life. They grew up here in the fifties.
And I said, absolutely, I jumped on that because as a writer,
the best research sources you will ever find are actual human
beings who can sit and talk to you and tell you, you know, their experience.
So I went and had a cup of tea with, with these gentlemen and I was hilarious.
They regaled me with fabulous story.
Is that what it was like growing up in the fifties.
And basically they described this, uh, a childhood that was quite utopian,
you know, and they had this, uh, very, um, tight knit community.
So you had a Lord and lady of the Manor and everybody rented their houses off
the Lord and Lord and manner. And uh,
everybody knew everybody else. And so it was a self suspicion,
basically it was a self-sufficient village, um, and a sustainable relationship.
And so they produced a lot of their own food.
They all had their own trades and they helped each other and all of that sort of
stuff. And so then what happened after a certain amount? The,
um, you know,
there was death and there were death taxes from the Lord of the manners and
there were death at death taxes and then it was divorced. And then there was,
and there was this, that, and the other,
and eventually everything started to be,
so when it was a total community owned by one person,
then it got sold off all over the place.
And what that meant was that people who lived perhaps in London,
came and bought up cottages as weekenders or holiday rentals,
but didn't actually live in the village. So in effect,
what happened was that for most of the week properties were actually
sitting empty.
So the point actually enough people living and working in the village to keep it
going the way it did before. And we certainly noticed that when we were there,
you know, the tourist buses come through every week or every day because it's
unbelievably beautiful. I mean, it's absolute quintessential,
you know,
stone cottages of the capsules that you see on TV and it's stunning
and cinematographers love it, and everybody loves it.
So they're taking photos of it.
There's not really sort of enough life in there to keep it going.
So they were really sad about that. And that really touched me to me.
And I really wanted to, I said, we're back to my cottage. And I thought,
I really would like to bring that village back to life,
even if it was only on the page. Um, interestingly,
since then I have seen that there are projects around the world who are doing
this. So there's an Island called Aaron Moore off the coast of Ireland,
who they've been asking for people from Australia and the U S to go over there
and who can go back to the Island, help repopulate it work from the Island.
Italy has done a lot of similar projects as well,
where they've asked people to come in and take over abandoned castles and
monasteries and big places like that,
with the idea that they will rebuild them and turn them into a tourist
destination. So,
and Spain is also there's somewhere else to find has done a similar thing.
So these things have, have been actually doing that in real life as well,
which has been great to see that I didn't just have a totally, you know,
fantastical idea that it's actually sort of coming through a real life as well.
I was gonna show you this photo. This was a.
Me and my dad and my sister who went, yeah.
We went out on a walk through the village and we turned, you know,
going down all these streets of you,
just kilometres of stone fences pairing with the amount of starring in the place
is just phenomenal and must be massive hole in the ground somewhere where it all
came from. Um, and we turned a corner and our.
The background there that's there that's actually the.
And when we turned the corner and saw that this was sort of at the height of
Downton, Abbey were massive Downton Abbey fans.
And we were just over the moon. We were like,
we've basically just walked into dance and Abby, who's so very exciting for us.
Um, and then I also wanted to show you this photo,
which is just a photo of apples, these apples,
uh, where does the inspiration for that opening scene in the book?
So, uh, when we got there, we settled down,
I went to the little backyard and there was this little row of apples,
sort of only shoulder high,
but I had absolutely bursting with apples all over them and they're on the
ground. And they were very much in our yard,
but of the place that we were renting.
And so they're on the ground that scares them a lot to come inside.
And we started making Apple crumbles because I just love Apple crumbles.
And, um, we, uh, we ate them with cream. We,
when we ran out of cream with Bailey's Irish cream,
we just kept eating them and kept making them. It was absolutely fabulous.
And so that same woman who had said, Oh, you should come and meet Terry.
And Brian, I said to her, Oh,
I've been loving the apples to apples magnetic crumbles every day,
we're having a bowl. And, um, and she was like, Oh no, no, no,
you can't take them. I said, but they're on the ground. Like they're rotting,
literally, just like it was a real thing.
And I just thought that was such an interesting,
and this is why more location research is so important because your sister,
things like this that you would never expect. I think that, that,
that small sort of slight cultural difference between it's totally cool
here to pick up the apples that have fallen onto your lawn,
eat them versus they're not your apples.
You can't touch them because such a great source of conflict.
So that was my bowl of apples. I was really proud of, but later on,
and I was like, Hmm, I think I can use that to, uh,
introduce the sort of vibe of the village there.
So, yeah, so that was back in 2015.
Work on that. I wrote about half a novel, which is about 50,000 words or so,
um, but I could, I could tell it wasn't working at the,
at the time and I couldn't really work out why.
And I sort of made what at the time,
it was a really heartbreaking decision to let it go.
I just thought it's not working.
And I did what any good sensible author would do.
And I jumped on a plane and went to Italy to go and writing retreat in Italy.
And while I was there, I discovered a new story.
And that story, depending if you've read any of my books,
you may have read three gold coins. That story turned into three gold coins.
But what I actually did was take out the main characters that I'd had in that
first 50,000 words. Um,
Laura and Sonny Foxley who were sisters and the two kids,
and I parachuted them out of there and put them in the Italian book,
which is where they belonged. And then, so a couple of years later,
a few years later, I came back to what I had built and I had no main characters,
but I had still had the whole, the whole village was there,
all the supporting characters were there or still really in touch with that
village project.
And what I needed to do was then parachute in a new main character into the
story. So yeah,
it was sort of a long road to coming out in the world that way. But I,
I really,
I always believe that books somehow white come out into the
world at the right time.
And I think that what really waited to come out this year,
because it's just such a, it's a book so full,
so full of sort of joy and hope and comfort and fun and great food and
friendship, and it's gonna make you feel really good,
which was exactly kind of right. Sort of in the middle of Cove and stuff.
And it was just perfect timing for people wanting to escape the world and to
sink into something, a world that was really lovely. So, yeah,
that's the sort of story of the book up to this point.
So maybe I'll cross that to you, Kimberly for some questions.
Oh, that sounds so great. Or wish I wish I was with,
I went to the Cotswold with you. It sounds like an amazing trip.
Um, beautiful. Um, okay,
so we've got a few questions for you today and, um, hopefully, yeah. And then,
um, if we have enough time,
we can open up and see if anyone else has any questions to add.
But our first one is, um, how,
and when did you know that you wanted to be a writer? I.
So like most writers, I was a, an avid reader.
So most writers become writers because they're diehard readers.
And so certainly, you know, my really young years are a member. You know,
one of the best things for me to ever do was to go to the library,
either the school library or my local library in rhino Hills in Brisbane.
And, uh, I credit the libraries for turning me into a radar. Absolutely.
And so I was like Mars again,
like most writers addicted to all the Anaplan stories.
So all the faraway trees and naughty and, uh, you know,
naughtiest girls school. I loved those, all of those.
And I also was a huge fan of Elaine Mitchell's the silver Brumby series.
I was, um, cause I'm a massive horse fan and I still am still have horses. Uh,
and so yeah, I w I would just be back, there was more, I want more of,
or more of the silver Brumby. So when I was nine, I wrote my first story,
uh, and it was unsurprisingly called Starlight,
the Brumby and, uh, heavily,
heavily influenced super probably. But I remember the acting,
the whole thing out, sort of in the backyard. And, uh,
and I wrote it out and then my dad took to work and had his secretary at the
time type it all up. And, um, I didn't realise he actually kept that story.
And after the teachers was published,
he pulled it out of some archive somewhere and gave it to me.
And it was really lovely. And I read it and thought, wow, it's actually not bad.
I do have a call, but I put it somewhere. I'm not sure where it is now,
but I should dig it out. So I'd say age nine, page nine
of your dad to do that. That's so sweet, such an,
you know, supporting your way back then. Yeah. And it,
you know what it means a lot.
And a lot of authors have one of these stories with someone it's a parent or a
teacher or someone somewhere has taken this story and put it into like a
book format, printed it out. We've just made it real somehow.
And it's here. It's really meant a lot to them. So yeah,
if you've got a young writer in your, in your life,
I highly recommend supporting them in that way. It's a beautiful thing to do.
Hopefully our next question is where do you find your inspiration for your
books? Obviously? I mean, the answer to that, it's basically life.
Um, I'm incredibly curious, so I always,
always want to know kind of everything. Um, but for me,
stories start with research, start with maybe a question or an idea,
and then they start with research. So I can research really is my happy place.
I could spend a lot of time in research and research is sort of location
research it's because I write what I call foodie lit.
I have food things going through all my books,
and I also always have quite a bit of food research to do as well. And,
um, so yeah,
there's always a lot of that sort of research.
I'm very much what I considered to be a method writer, like a method actor.
So if my character is doing something, then I want to know how to do it too.
So for example, that's photo of me learning how to make chocolate,
because in the chocolate promise I had my main character was a chocolate maker.
And so I thought, well, I have to know how to make chocolate.
So I went into the course on making chocolate. So yeah. So research sort of,
and then just along the way,
I just follow these kind of little trails of interest and I think, well,
what about that? And what about that? And what happens if that happens,
but it very much evolves. Yeah.
So it starts with like something I'm passionate about and then it goes,
goes from there. Yeah. I know that in, we've had a.
Little question from Cheryl, um, she's this asked with the gift of life, um,
she's about to start chapter 16 and she was wondering, had, um,
did you have a real life experience with, um, that one with that book?
Okay. So the gift of life, uh,
centres around somebody who had a heart transplant,
so it's an organ donation theme that, you know,
so that book rude for a really long time as well. So many, many, many,
many years ago, or at least 20 years ago, probably more.
I was watching the Phil Donahue show. Remember that,
um, I don't know what I was doing at the time, but anyway, I was watching,
watching Phil Donahue and there was a woman on there who had had a heart
transplant. And she was talking about these,
this incredibly strong connection that she'd had with her, uh,
her donor. So the donor heart that she had. And so for example,
she had, she described as experience when she woke up from surgery,
she had this incredible craving for beer and chicken nuggets,
which is not just not food that she ate or drank.
And it was just really outside of her experience. It was really weird. Anyway,
a whole bunch. She wrote a whole memoir, which I read, uh,
what I was writing that book. And, uh, she,
she managed to track down the family of the deceased person who heart
she had. And when she met them, they said that he'd been a young man.
He'd been riding his motorbike. And he, when he died,
he'd just been through the drive through of a takeaway.
And he had chicken nuggets stuffed down the front of his jacket.
And that just,
I just gave me whole body like tills chills,
tingles. And it just really stuck with me.
And that stuck with me for all those years as being so such an extraordinary
thing. And then one day I was watching the very first episode,
there was an ABC drama, medical drama called posts,
but only do one season of it. The very first episode, a woman, um, got sick.
She caught a virus, the virus went to a heart, she needed a heart transplant.
And the second that happened,
I just that memory from foods on who came back and I just went that right there.
I want to write about that. So that's where that happened.
That's where that came from. And then yes,
there was loads and loads of research into, um, organ transplants and,
and cellular memory, which is what it's known as,
and I interviewed a couple of people. Who'd had heart transplants and yeah,
I did a lot of re that was a really research heavy book. That one. Yeah.
Thank you for that question.
Yeah. Great question, Cheryl. Um, so our next question that we have, um, um,
is, was there anything that you had to edit out of your books that you wish?
Um, so the short answer to that is no.
Once a book goes to print, it's gone like,
and what is in there is what should be in there.
The long answer to that is that I'm an incredibly, uh,
I was going to say messy writer. I am a moderate, messy road,
but very organic writer. So things evolve and evolve and evolve.
And I start here and I end up there,
which means that I need to go back and do a huge amount of editing
in second, third or fourth draughts of the book and rewire the book.
And that often means that I am stripping 20,
30,000 words easily and rewriting it all. Again,
sometimes I take out whole characters. So in this book in particular there,
I had a character called Harry in there.
Who'd been in there from page one to the last page,
and I realised he didn't belong in the book.
He actually belongs in next year's book.
So I had to go through and edit him out of the whole thing.
He's in next year's book now, which is where it should be. It was just really,
really painful. So I guess what I wished is that I was a cleaner,
more straightforward writer so that I didn't have to do so much rewriting,
but yeah, you often have to do, it's called there's a term for it,
which is called kill your darlings.
And it means you have to look at this thing that you've put all this energy and
effort and love into creating and just be really hot about it and go that
actually doesn't belong there.
It doesn't matter how much research I did for it doesn't matter how much time I
spend on it. So it doesn't serve the story.
It doesn't belong there and you have to cut it out. So yeah, it always hurts.
It always hurts a lot.
It would, it's kind of like your child, I guess you don't want to, you know,
you've really got a great idea. You don't want to, you know,
not use them or yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd have trouble. Definitely.
Um, so, um, we have, the next question we have is, um,
how long does it take you to write the book? And we, you said that, um,
you do a, quite a few edits and, um, but do you have a particular process?
Um, so I have been on a book a year contract,
which for me is quite fast cause I am a fairly slow writer and I'm slow.
I think it,
so invariably takes me about six months to write a first draught.
And if you're trying to get out a book a year, that is trust me very, very slow.
Um, so that's, that's a first draught, but then yes, obviously,
you know, I write and rewrite and it takes many, many draughts after that. So,
I mean, in theory you could say it's sort of a year long process if you've got,
and you don't have one book at one time,
so you've always got one that's sort of on your desk.
And one that might be out there editing,
or you've got this one comes back and then you go off on a research trip that
might be fruitful in two or three years time. So I do often start research,
you know, two to three years out of a new book. So yeah, it's kind of, it's a,
it's a juggling act, but you know, if I say six months for first draught,
um,
I think there's the greatest misconception in writing is that you just write and
then you press print and it just doesn't happen that way at all. So, you know,
yeah. That first six months is a big slog to get it done,
but then it just kind of gets harder in a lot of ways after that with every
railroad as well. Definitely. You know, if I didn't have a deadline,
it would just go on forever. Think he'd.
Be like working on that character. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, so did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
Well, definitely, definitely deadlines do change things. Yes,
absolutely it does. And it changes it in the sense that, um,
I, you know, I can't have as much time to do probably as,
as much as I would like. Um, and you know,
in theory also you get better every year. So hopefully you actually should,
you know, li you know, need less time to do what you want to do.
Um, yeah. But deadlines also changed.
Your relationship with running so.
12 Years without a publication deal, you know,
and that's driven by nothing but love and passion for the
stories and what I wanted to share. So, uh, deadlines on contracts, uh,
to take that kind of very beautiful autistic thing,
and Crohn's try and squash it into a commercial process and that does make
things different and it puts different tensions on it. Definitely. Yeah.
Yeah. Imagine that pressure is, you know,
sometimes that time ticking ticking of the clock and creativity.
It doesn't always turn out when, you know, when you just demand that it does,
you know, so I don't know, you just get the best book you can get in that time,
but if you'd had five years to do it, it might be a totally different book.
So yeah, it does changes. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, have you ever had a scene that's being really hard to write in one of your
books? Yeah. I know. I'm really silky about, yeah.
Writing really emotionally charged scenes because for me to,
for my character to feel pain, I have to feel it,
it has to go through me so that I can put it on the page correctly.
Do you know what I mean? Like, so to,
to express it in a way that makes sense to the radar,
I have to filter it as well. So for example, in the gift of life, um,
there is my parents,
crystal is her husband who died and she'd consented to donate his
organs.
When she's, you know, at his bedside.
ICU having to make that decision.
And I knew that that was coming and I worded it and avoided it.
I just left like essentially like a computer post it note in my manuscript
saying that Satan's going to go there.
And I just kept writing and waiting for a day where I.
We have to wait for a diaper. I know that.
Not to be disturbed because I'm just going to have to go into a different space
to do it. Um, you know, I just feel up to it basically. And I just go,
I'm just going to commit to getting that scene done this day. But yeah,
I wait until I'm feeling emotionally in the right place to do it.
Yeah. Cause I don't like feeling pain.
This is where I write happy books because I like know I just want more,
more happiness and joy out in the world. So I don't enjoy doing the pain.
No, I get that. Definitely. It would be so hard to write that. Right.
Those kinds of things, especially if the transparent. Yeah.
So our, uh, what is the most surprising things you've learned in creating books,
your books? Actually.
I think I'm always surprised in every book of where the book ends up because I
start with one idea of what it's going to be,
and it ends up being something in the ballpark, but,
but pretty different as well. And sometimes, um, you know,
I think the book is generally smarter than I am.
So the story takes on a bit of a life of its own. And, uh, I have to,
in some ways, follow the books,
the characters will never do what you want them to do.
They start doing their own thing.
And then I would say it's a bit like trying to herd chickens or cats,
you sort of trying to get them to go in one direction and they just want to go
where they want to go. And that doesn't always work for the story. Um,
I did have a really interesting experience when I was three gold coins.
When I first started writing that book, the book had said to me very strongly,
um, that
violence was going to be a theme in that book. And I just said, and I said, no,
literally out loud to the book. No, I don't do that. So no,
we're just not doing it.
And so I wrote the whole book trying to avoid that whole scenario
and got to the end and just went, it's not working.
And I know why it's not working.
It's because I avoided the pain I avoided dealing with, you know,
having to confront that pain head on. So that was a real lesson for me of,
you know, trust the book, trust the story because the story is what it's doing.
Um, so what do you think makes a good story? Well.
That is different for every reader,
which is why we have so many different genres and we have so many different
books available, but I mean the basis of a good story is always, you know,
uh, interesting characters, a compelling plot,
and you've got some written ability to convey it in a way that's entertaining
and engaging as well. So that's basically, yeah,
it's sort of those three things coming together in,
but I think you can tell too, if a story is written with hot or not. So,
you know,
I definitely write with a lot of heart and I really don't connect books that
haven't been written with heart. And I think you can feel that.
So I would put that in as a fourth quality there for me personally.
In food for a fifth.
Food. Oh yeah, of course.
[Inaudible].
For the research. If nothing else.
You get to make chocolate. Fantastic. Okay. Um,
what advice do you give to inspire aspiring writers? Do you have anything?
Yeah. So my number one is advice there is that I see far too many people jumping
straight into turn to write a novel when they've not ever even written the short
story and not just one short story, but several short stories,
but short stories are really the place where you'll hone your skills and you
will find your voice. So, um,
your unique voice as an author is one of your most powerful selling
really people when they go, Oh,
I love addressing moonwalk or a lovely on mariachi or whatever it is.
It's really the voice that they're attracted to. That. It's a really,
it's a hard thing to define, but it's a really strong kind of brand. And,
um,
you find that through writing a lot and you'll find it in short stories or short
stories, and it's not a mask,
it's not a mental commitment to write a short story that you can write a
thousand words, short story, even a 3000 word in a day,
if you really want to certainly in a week.
And that gives you a lot of opportunity to, you know, try a crime,
try realism, try magical realism, try fantasy, try all sorts of things,
to find your voice and your story, the kind of characters you like,
and whether you like writing a first person or whether you like third person or
it just gives you, you know,
it's not a huge commitment for a lot of reward back, but for me,
trying to write a novel without writing a short story,
is that trying to go to house without being able to build a cubby house or
something, you know?
Yeah. Foundation, I guess like, exactly know where you're,
where you want to be and where you want to go. Um, so we're up to, uh,
question 10 and we've got good time. So, um, what, uh,
where the carer characters in some of your books inspired by real people,
you did mention the heart transplant, um, noble. Um,
and was there any other characters that, um, you know,
you were inspired by, um, in real life and how,
how do you select the names?
Do you, was it remind you.
Someone or, um,
I guess who inspired me.
As kind of a, yeah, I mean, it's a broad term. So you could say, for example,
those two men that I spoke to in the Cotswolds, yes.
They inspired their story of themselves growing up in the class was they
inspired a whole book, but at the same time, I certainly never take like,
well, that character, so you know, that person over there, so interesting.
So whatever, I'm just going to put them in a book, but I would never do that.
Or also for example, when I was in Italy, I visited a goat farm and,
um, there was a guy on the farm there who was looking after the goats. I mean,
I met that guy for 45 minutes or something.
And then I guess, yes,
from there I'd built a whole new character that sort of stemmed from there,
but obviously I don't know that guy or anything about him. So it's sort of,
it's always a very loose jumping off. It's like, Ooh, that inspires yeah. Ideas,
but you never take that person and put them there sort of thing.
In terms of names, I struggle a lot with names are really, really do.
Um, I will always very,
very occasionally occur to tells me that I am very clearly like Christmas
Livingston in the chocolate promise I had,
I didn't have a name for her for a long time. I didn't know what her name was.
And one day I got really stroppy about it and I sat down and got a pen in my
hand, I put the pen down, I went, honestly, what is your name?
And it was just like that Christmas Livingston. And I was like,
well, let's put a name. Is that like, that's, what is that?
I just thought that was so good because it was so clear. I just went, okay,
we'll just take that. And interestingly, a lot of people were like,
why would you call a character Christmas? But when I went down to Tasmania,
because that book set in Tasmania and I was doing an event down there and I was
talking about this and, um, the people in Tasmania were like, Oh,
and actually that's a name in this area. There's a,
there's a Christmas raspberry, something like that. But there is,
that is actually an actual sale. I am in the area.
So it actually was completely appropriate for Tasmania. So they go this weird.
Um, but often I will. So if I have an older character, for example,
so I generally write multigenerational characters or often have somebody who's
in their seventies or eighties. And so I will, uh,
whatever year I think they're born in, I will Google, like,
what are the top names in that year?
So that I know that I've got something in a ballpark that's appropriate for that
year and they're not called, I don't know, something, something,
something really modernise that's coming from the 1930s or something, you know?
So you sort of have that. Yeah.
But now I struggle with them a lot and I actually changed names a lot too.
So often we'll change the name partway through a first draught or after it.
And I also have trouble with,
I've just realised the book I've got going out next year. I've got a of it.
And I just realised the other day that I have a rabbit in the gift of life as
well. So now it's kind of like, Oh no,
do I need to go and change Rupert's name?
And I don't really want to change his name cause I really liked his name. So,
so that does happen as well. And authors, certainly not just me.
I know a lot of authors say this often will end up in the first draught with a
bunch of characters who all have the same first letter.
So I had a lot of ELLs in one of them and I had to go through and change
people's names so that they weren't so many ill names. And so it's a real thing.
It's, it's um, it's challenging. And when I,
and I honestly can't remember all the names I've used now,
either I know my dogs, so obviously main characters I would, but not,
I'm not supporting characters.
So sometimes I'm talking to him and I think I really have no idea if I've use
that name before or not. I sort of need somebody to coach them,
catalogue them all for me. So I know who has got, so yeah, I struggle.
I struggle with them a lot just slightly. I think Christmas is a great name.
Thank you. Wouldn't mind being called Christmas myself.
Okay. So after writing a number of books like you have, um,
how do you keep things fresh for both your readers and for you?
I know you've done a bit of nonfiction, so I guess that keeps it fresh.
I think for me, because I choose somatically,
my books is I've got different foods than I look at, you know,
different characters and, um, no, no, I guess, you know,
I changed the setting. I changed the food of transcode it and again,
the characters themselves just sort of take on a life of their own, you know,
and they just dive in really tight the story in places I'd never really expected
to go.
And so it's always fresh for me because I'm always sort of keeping up with what
the character is doing as well. But yeah, I guess it's just that research thing.
Just always looking for those stories, not told, I'm always trying to find, uh,
the untold story. So the beekeepers secret is, uh, you know,
the main character and that is Maria Livingston.
He's in his seventies and she's a former Catholic nun and she,
uh,
her story is really one of the sort of untold stories of
Catholicism. And then in the gift of life as well,
I was really interested in writing from Crystal's perspective.
She's the one who donated her husband's organs because in my research,
I found that there was so much testimony from people who had
received organs, who are obviously very excited, very grateful,
and they really want to talk about it and get out.
And they often really want to find the family who donated,
but there's an awful lot of silences. There's very,
very little out there you can find from families who have actually donated
organs. And for me that as a writer,
that's really interesting that space of like, where is this story?
And can I give a voice to one of those stories? So that's always a,
yeah, that's always a fresh and interesting thing for me to look at. Definitely.
Uh, do you think you'd revisit Maria in the beekeepers
companion? I have plans in my head,
all of those characters and every one of my books I'll have to do sequels for
all of them.
So if I live long enough and people buy enough books and I get enough contracts,
then eventually I'll get around to doing the mall. Yeah.
It'd be hard to let them go. I think I can imagine. Yeah, it is.
Although mind you, after, um, you know, four or five draughts of them,
I'm usually like, okay, you can go now we need a break.
We're on a break. Now we can come back, light up. We're on a break right now.
I feel like, especially you spending a year, you know, living in, you know,
writing about someone for a whole year, you'd be over them. Exactly.
Do you have any unusual writing or reading habits? Thanks.
So I know, I don't think so at the moment,
I'm I think I'm having some kind of middle aged eye problem where I just,
I can't read actual physical books very well at the moment I've got, you know,
I've got glasses,
shortness and the word glasses for long distance glasses with computers and that
little line with the shop. And I just think, I just, yeah, I can't read.
So I do. I read all my exquisitely on audio at the moment, which I love,
I really, really love it, but yeah, no, I wouldn't say it's unusual,
but that's just where I am right now. I love it. Audio book to
get a great, uh, the writer and you stayed on.
You.
Definitely. Yeah. Some of them are just so fabulous. Yeah.
Um, so what do you hope readers will discover in, in your latest book?
I honestly.
This book just is such a specific cause it's just such a warm and
uplifting book. Well, if I backtrack,
when I first got a book publishing deal,
I write myself a writing mission and the writing mission number one says
to bring joy, hope, comfort,
inspiration to my rate is so that's where I always start.
That's what I'm trying to do in a book. And so yeah,
every book is literally that's, that's my gift to the world is because I just,
for me, I'm very sensitive readout.
I really struggle with the amount of violence, darkness,
suppressing things out there in the world.
And I just need to know that there are good people doing good things and the
world's going to be okay. So that's yeah.
That's generally what I want people to take away is hope. Yeah.
I'd say I see escapism at its best. That's.
For sure. I think the 2020. Yeah.
So what is the biggest challenge you have ever faced in your writing journey?
Well, probably getting published. I'd say I am,
is that our right for a good 12 years? And I wrote all sorts of things.
I wrote short stories and I wrote fiction and nonfiction.
I wrote why I ever all over the place.
And it really took me a really long time to find my voice and find what sort of
book I wanted to put out in the world. So, um, at one point I,
I kept a spreadsheet, you know,
of the amount of aware I'd sent everything on submission and when I've been
rejected by every publisher and I didn't in the country, at least once.
And I had, when I hit a hundred on that spreadsheet, I just went, Oh,
that's really depressing. And I just laid in the whole thing. And, um, anyway,
it wasn't long after that, that I go to, um, I go to deal, but yeah,
it's a hot Jenny. It's hard to commit that amount of time,
that amount of energy and that amount of faith and to get knocked down again and
again and again and again, and keep getting up is, um, is hard. So yeah,
probably just that journey was the hardest bit.
Really you would be putting your heart and soul into something and just getting
that rejection. Yeah.
And that's going back to when we used to have to print out whole manuscripts and
post-call manuscripts and pay the return postage as well for them to send it
back and then you'd go down to the post office and there'd be these like big
bundles and you'd be like,
it's another manuscript come back and you have to Dan it'll shred it or
whatever. And this is really, yeah,
it's nicer to just send off an email and not have to deal with all of that. So,
you know, that's how long I've been writing before social media,
before email submissions, before everything.
Fantastic, but you know, persevere and you sell, you know, get there in the end.
I think it's a good find.
Your way, you know, not everyone's cut out to be a novelist, you know,
there's loads of other ways you can write and there's loads of other
opportunities and avenues to write rather than just novels.
You'll find your way. Fantastic advice. Um,
so this one's a really interesting one for me. Uh,
does writing energise you or exhaust you? You said that, you know,
you've mentioned that sometimes, you know,
you're just can't deal with a certain part of your book. So you've, you know,
you don't deal with it and move on. But, so how does that,
I think like any job,
some days are great and some days are awful and some days you wouldn't want to
do anything else in the world. Other days you're ready to quit.
And it it's just the same,
possibly slightly more emotional because you've got no real outside
support either that's not and problems.
Aren't things that you can solve quite quickly. Generally I take a lot of time.
Um, but yeah, look, writers live for,
certainly I live for those days where you're, you know,
in that writing zone where one hour feels like four
hours,
everything's just flowing and the characters are talking and it's all just,
you know, it's a high, it's like a runner's high,
but it's a rider's high and yeah, that's what you just,
every day you hoping for that day, it doesn't,
it doesn't happen every day.
It's few and far between most of the time it was drudgery, but you know,
when you hit those days, it's just like, it's the best. Yeah. Yeah.
That's what you live for those riding highs. Yeah.
Um, so what is the most difficult part of your artistic process?
Like do you find the beginning or, you know,
that kind of starting off phase or the ending tying it all up and
in a boat? Yeah,
so generally when I first starts my
beginning circle, roughly speaking,
there are three stages in a normal is the beginning,
which is a core of the book. There's the middle, which is about 50% of the book.
And then there's the end, which is about 25, the last 25 cents. Um,
for me, my beginnings are,
or there's a lot of things you've got to do in the beginning to set up,
you know, the book, my beginnings,
cause I don't know what I'm doing in the beginning or the Giddings always sort
of born out because I'm still working it out and then my endings or
if I'm sick of it and I just want that to end. And so then my second drop,
I have to go back and really,
really tighten up that first quarter and get it hitting the
beats it's supposed to hit and then taking my time to actually sort everything
out at the end, which I've just done on the next draught of next years,
but we're going to just, I was like, Oh, surely I'm finished now.
And I was like, no, you know, I still haven't tied up that slow.
I finished that. And there's a lot that that end quarter is actually, I mean,
in some ways it's, it's easy because you know where you're going,
but it's also tricky to slow it down enough so that you've really
hit everything and made it a satisfactory tying off of all the
problems. Yeah. Well I would just,
I obviously thought it was just, and that was it,
but obviously you've got to tie stuff up and make sure things are, you know?
Yeah, well, well, yeah, yeah, well, no, it's, it's,
you know,
it's 25,000 words at least today to tie everything else.
It's a lot just on that. Do you have, like, do you, um,
do you work within like a nine to five or do you, if the motion strikes you,
you know, at 11 o'clock on a Saturday night, do you write or then, or do you,
how do you before I had a child, I could write whenever I wanted to.
And that was great. That was fantastic.
As moments to come together where you're like, Oh, I've got energy,
I've got time, I've got inspiration and fabulous.
I'm just going to sit here all day for three days and I'm just going to do
whatever I like it doesn't work anymore. So now it's very much, yeah.
Now that he's at school, it's well, it's my school.
So I generally try and keep nine til two
every day free to for my work. Um, you know,
laughing what it is you need the washing machine guy or the plumber or the
[inaudible] or whatever, you know, it always gets, it always gets interrupted.
But, um, that's my general plan at the moment is not to do,
unless I'm on deadline to finish like an editing round or something like that.
In which case I'm watching more on weekends,
I'm not good at not working anymore. My brand's checked out by 7:00 PM,
so that doesn't work for me anymore. Um, yeah.
So that's basically what I'm doing now. Interesting. Um,
so do you have a favourite literary, chronic quote at all?
Do you have one that you play in the background? No, not really.
Other than not even know if this is a specific quote or if it's just a thing
that goes around it just read rate rate. Right, right, right. That's that's it,
that's the basis of being a writer.
Yeah. Excellent.
Do you have any favourite authors and why are they your favourite? Yeah,
so I might kind of stock favourites and you know,
it'd be Rachel Joyce, uh,
Leanne Mariotti [inaudible] Marianne keys,
those kind of writers, I guess they were sort of the giants that were there.
Uh, as, as I was striving to be a writer,
they're the ones that inspired me or just as I was sort of hitting the same,
I already was just sort of just, um, really finding, you know,
bigger audiences as, just as I was hitting. And I just, I just love it. I mean,
I just think they great, the techniques great. The craft is great. You know,
they, their voices again, they've got really, really strong voices, you know,
I'm pretty sure I could pick up writing a book and, you know,
an unlabeled book or any one of those road writers and I would know who it was
cause you know, their voice is just that strong. Yeah. Fantastic.
What about last question?
Because we got a couple of questions from Cheryl and if anyone else wants to
have a, um, ask any questions, um, have we,
we know you've been to the Cotswolds and to Italy,
have you been anywhere else for some inspiration?
You said Tasmania on a book tour before anywhere else that, you know,
inspiration wise where you're
trying to think if most of my books I go and do location research for.
And so for the gift of life, I went down to Melbourne. Uh,
not that Melbourne's a major deal, but you know, just to get that sort of vibe,
I mean the track, most of my major goal is to work out how to catch a train.
Couldn't do it two days still couldn't do it. So,
um, but I also went out to a coffee farm, so new, some black coffee, uh,
out at Kingian, they invited me over and we launched to morality fields,
which was great for, to get to use any of that research. Um, uh,
it may turn up again in a future book,
which is always great as well as always collecting. That's.
One of the nother thing I love about research is while you're doing research,
you tend to collect more ideas for future books as well.
And you just put them aside for the future, um,
became a secret. So Gail who's the head beekeeper at the ginger factory.
She was great and vital me over to, she showed me her bees.
And uh, yeah, I learned a lot about actual beekeeping from her.
The different styles are very different styles of beekeeping. Um, but yeah,
certainly the Cotswolds and Emily were my two big overseas
trips. Um.
Yeah.
Yeah. Can't really think of any real specifically. Yeah.
Did you hit anywhere else in, in,
in the UK or Italy to do with writing any, um,
like pilgrimages, like to, you know, um, um,
rollout or anything like that,
but don't also sounds like actually I don't know what to do list.
Yes, exactly. Fantastic.
It just strikes me as past and um, Oh,
what's the name of that town. If someone knows that you can type it into,
uh, anyway, Shakespeare's town I got there. That sounds great.
That Shakespeare's town. Um, so we do have a couple of questions. Um,
so Cheryl is keen to know what is your next year's book and do you have any,
some, uh, any sneak, peeks and snippets for us?
Uh, it's look, it's currently cold.
My title's changed a lot and they often change quite late in the piece,
like, you know, really light as it sort of heading to print.
So the it's called the jam queen fixes everything and it's
centred around a family or competitive jam Queens in the Barossa Valley,
but I'm also sending them on the game.
So this was another great research trip I did last year and I made sure,
I generally managed to convince my sister to come with me everywhere,
which was fun.
And so she came with me on again and we did again from Darwin down to Adelaide.
And so, yeah, so I've sort of, I've got these rasa,
Jan Dan family who have a fair bit of sort of
family history.
They're sort of working on sorting out and then I'm putting them on the train.
So that's always a nice little compressing situation to pressure cooker
to bring out their issues. And, um, yeah,
that's sort all I can say on that one at the moment, because it's still,
you know, it's still developing and I may yet strip out heaps of it rewrite. It.
I'll be like Jamie family into close quarters, you know?
Yeah. I mean, look what you did there, Jeremy.
And Cheryl was also asking, um, how, how do you play,
um, obviously like playing out where you books are going, like,
do you have any plain, um, ways of writing or you just,
as it goes as it flows?
Um, so you know, the,
the sort of outages that writers readers, potters or pants, so you,
you plot everything out meticulously or you just sit down and write by the seat
of your pants. I mean,
the reality is that nobody's a hundred percent either of those things you need,
you you're somewhere on the spectrum in there. I am at the pants year,
end of the spectrum. I'm very strong on structure.
So I know at what point, like literally at what word count, I should be heating,
hitting certain beats in the book.
So I always have a kind of big macro structure that I'm heading towards,
but what happens in between there is very pantsy.
So I know that by 25,000 words or whatever,
I should be doing X, Y, Z,
but how I get there is very often the air.
Yeah. Okay.
So that's the end of Cheryl's questions. Did anyone else have anything else?
Cheryl? Did you have anything else you wanted to add? No,
she's second to head now. Um, all right. Okay.
So when is the next book coming out? Josephine?
Well, I imagine it's beginning of July next year.
I don't have a pub date on that, but that's when this book,
this year book came out and then normally, you know.
Yeah. Fantastic. Um, and how,
what else can we talk about? We've got a couple of minutes left,
so no one else has any questions just putting them out there. Okay.
So when, when you, um, do you, uh,
write on a computer or are you a, um,
paper to pen pencil? Absolutely.
Hi, the amount of words I write would just be impossible.
I do not know how people used to write books, you know,
hundreds of years ago without real computers, because I just,
I just can't understand how they do the editing when you typing. It's just,
you know, I just bought, could delete and rewrite and, and shift things,
you know, and I'll just take that out of that chapter,
put it over in that chapter. I just have no idea people do that about computers.
I will write by hand if I'm feeling stuck in particular. Um,
so I'll take my notebook to a cafe, for example,
just to get out of my room here and change the space.
Uh, and that generally always works me if I'm feeling stuck writing by hand,
we'll break that pattern, which is great. And, you know,
I'll do a lot of planning and sort of brainstorming things by hand as well.
But as for actual type words in the document,
most of them almost all gonna type straight in for sure.
And people always ask, wanna know if I could dictate as well. I just can't.
I mean, it just doesn't work that way from my brand to my mouth at all,
bring to the keyboard goes quite well, but not verbally.
Cheryl does. Um, Cheryl does have another question. You're thank you, Cheryl.
Um, she said she loves your covers and you can spot your covers from any, um,
from a million other covers.
Yes, it's a great question.
Everyone always asks that question and it's a good one.
The short answer is no authors don't have input into covers.
They have, uh, in the sense of the design. So there's a whole mapping.
They have big, uh, covers meetings,
which apparently can get very fraught and very,
very hated because the cover is the number one selling tool you've got on a
book. And so, yeah, they really want to make sure that they get that right.
And they will do lots of versions of them and yeah,
quite different ones and put them up for a whole bunch of people to discuss and
debate over, you know, what would be the best one. So in theory, no,
we have no input. So, but however, for this book, um,
my publisher sent me a cover. So here's your cover? What do you think?
And I said, Oh, I love it. I think it's great. Um,
and then just,
it was something niggling at me for weeks about it at least a month.
And I just thought it needs food. There was no food on the cover. I said,
I really think it needs cake. So I got back to her and I said, I really,
I know I said, I love it. And I do,
but can we have a whole newcomer because I kind of think that I really think it
needs some food. And luckily she was like, well,
we did have one that had a cake on it and we did discuss it.
I'll pull it out and see what we can do with it.
And they pulled it out and redid it and it was great. I just love it. And yeah,
people just love it.
People say they actually want to lick the cover off of this book that it's just
makes them drill. They love it. Yeah. This is beautiful, beautiful cover.
It's probably my favourite cover of all my covers so far.
It's actually.
A beautiful cover.
I love the colours very striking and we've hit our time.
Um, so I think that is every, um, all our questions for today.
And I'm glad we've had some questions from, um, from participants,
um, for, um, for, um, making the time, um, today to see us,
um, talk to us potentially on the weekends, especially when you've got,
you know, a child and, you know,
a farm animals to look after and all that kind of stuff. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you everyone else for logging on and, um, and joining in today.
So if anyone would like to
borrow out a copy of Josephine's latest novels, um, or, um, reconnect with,
um, one of her previous ones, um,
you can hop online to the campy regional libraries website and put them on hold.
So we have them all. And if, um, or you could give us a call from Monday,
cause we're not open at the moment until Monday, um, and reserve a copy.
Um,
if you're not member it's free to join and we have a wide range of access to
online and, uh, physical content. But once again,
thank you everyone for joining in today. Um, I'll be popping up a poll, um,
for participants, um, at the end to, for you to fill in, uh,
it takes a couple of seconds, but, um, thank you very much again, Josephine.
and this event has been sponsored by the Bendigo bank of skimpy as part of their
WriteFest 2020.
We've got some more authors happening this weekend and feel free to have a look
on our website and booking if you're interested. Thank you.
