April love from New Voices Down Under
The weather is turning cooler down under, which is the perfect excuse to settle into the comfy chair with a great book. This month brings fabulous giveaways, reviews and writing competitions!
Well hello!
Can I start by saying a very big THANK YOU to all you lovely new subscribers and for the enthusiastic response to the first edition of New Voices Down Under. Over a thousand people read the first issue and I know, deep in my being, that it is because of you spreading the word.
With Mother’s Day just around the corner, April always brings a bumper crop of new books. There are some fantastic debut authors to introduce to you as well as this month’s Meet the Author, featuring Michelle Prak chatting about her thriller, The Rush.
And for all you budding writers out there, there are two amazing writing competitions to enter that might see you be the next debut author! Not to mention the shortlist for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards.
Warmest wishes,
Books to Love
The Heart is a Star by Megan Rogers
Published 28 April 2023 (Australia)
It’s Christmas, the traditional time of year for life to reach melting point. Like so many women, Layla Byrnes is juggling multiple roles — anaesthetists, lover, wife, mother to two young children — and, to her mind, none of them particularly well. For twenty-seven years, her mother has rung a few days before the holidays and the script has always been the same.
‘I need to know that you will come for Christmas. Say it,’ she would hiss. ‘Say it or you’ll find me in the bathtub.’
Never failing to bring old feelings of resentment, hurt and anger to the surface. Her mother’s lens on life obscured by heavy drinking and haunted by the memories of Layla’s father who went out on the ocean one night and never returned.
Except this year, the script has changed. This year, her mother says,
‘After I’m gone, look in my wardrobe, the locked drawer. I need you to know the truth about your father. I just can’t be around when you do.’
And for reasons, she can’t explain, even to herself, Layla knows this is no idle threat. Deep down, she’s always known that her mother is responsible for her father’s disappearance and she cannot bear the thought that her mother might cut her life short before Layla has a chance to get answers to these long-held questions. Gathering up her mother’s sister, Dawn, she hurries back to the wild west coast of Tasmania and the home she fled long ago.
The Heart is a Star has been receiving the kind of pre-publicity most writers can only ever dream of. Comparisons to Holly Ringland (The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding) do not end with the exquisite cover designs. Rogers’ debut novel is an unravelling of female identity, exploring the divide (the chasm?) between what is expected of us, what we expect of ourselves and who we really are. Layla is not always the most empathetic character (and that is in no way a criticism) but the evolution of her tightly held grief, her grappling with her failures as a mother, a doctor, wife and daughter is such a universal experience. The relationship between Layla and her mother is at times harrowing and none more so when the truths are finally revealed.
The Heart is a Star is ultimately about the roles we voluntarily play, the roles we feel forced to accept and the desire to be brave enough to grasp onto and not let go of who we really want to be. The emotional landscape of this novel is as wild as its physical counterpart matched by writing that is rich and vivid. Rogers has dug deep to expose the rawness of grief and betrayal. Ultimately, it is a story that explores the eternal question, who am I, and the courage it takes to accept the answer.
A little bit about the author …
Megan Rogers began her working life as an editorial assistant at Allen & Unwin, before moving to the State Library of Victoria, in Marketing. In 2014 Megan finished a PhD in Creative Writing at RMIT, which resulted in the book, Finding the Plot, A Maternal Approach to Madness in Literature published by feminist publisher Demeter Press. She also has a Bachelor of Arts/Science (Monash), a Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing (RMIT), a Graduate Diploma in Professional Communication (Deakin), and a Masters of Marketing (Monash). Megan lives in the Mornington Peninsula outside Melbourne. The Heart is a Star is her first novel.
Find Megan Rogers
Instagram @megan_rogers_writer Website https://www.meganrogerswriter.com/
Buy the book here
Where Light Meets Water by Susan Paterson
Published 3 May 2023 (Australia)
London 1847. On shore leave, merchant seaman, Tom Rutherford, is pursuing his other passion, painting en plein air, when the wind deposits a solitary lace glove at his feet. He raises it to his face and smells turpentine. The woman who claims it is Catherine Ogilvie — also a painter, although her family view it merely as a distraction suitable to a young woman before marriage. She recognises in Tom’s rendering of the landscape something extraordinary and Tom will come to find a similar freshness and intrigue in Catherine’s work.
However, a mutual interest in painting is not enough to bridge the divide between Catherine and Tom’s worlds. She is from money, he is the son of a Scottish school teacher and a merchant seaman. His talents as a painter of ships and seascapes will never be enough to bridge the social divide.
Yet, Catherine ‘had known soon after their first meeting that they both wanted more than they had been given at birth.’
It is this that Paterson teases out throughout this lyrical, expansive, tender and powerful novel. As a woman, Catherine can only ever dream of seriously studying her passion. Her destiny is to fulfil the Victorian ideal of the Angel of the House—a good wife and mother. Unlike Tom, she can never travel the world, visit famous art galleries or places of great beauty unless a man extends his permission. By contrast, Tom has been on the sea since he was fourteen, apprenticed by the man whose life his father once saved. But he is also tethered to this life because there was no alternate future. Painting is a luxury, a way to spend shore leave or in quiet moments on board but it is not a serious pursuit for a man of such lowly breeding. How then is love to flourish, let alone survive, the vast geographical and social distances?
Where Light Meets Water is both a compelling and ultimately tragic love story and a story of desires, hopes and thwarted ambitions. Susan Paterson may imbue her characters with a deep love and attention to landscape but so is her writing in response to that as she paints a literary landscape from Scotland to England, around the world to Australia and New Zealand. Love binds her characters and love for her characters makes Paterson’s writing shine. Interestingly, Paterson used her own family story of her great-great-great grandfather Captain Thomas Robertson, himself a master mariner and maritime artist, to inspire his fictional counterpart, Tom Rutherford. Where Light Meets Water is a richly rewarding read whether you love adventures on the sea or adventures of the human heart.
A little bit about the author …
Susan Paterson is a writer and editor from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her debut novel, Where Light Meets Water, was shortlisted in an earlier version for the 2019 Michael Gifkins Prize for an Unpublished Novel and written with the assistance of a Varuna Fellowship. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in various publications including Meanjin, Going Down Swinging, Etchings, Wet Ink and Poetry NZ. She lives in Naarm/Melbourne.
Find Susan Paterson
Instagram @littlecollisions Website http://susanpaterson.com.au/
Preorder/ buy the book here
The Fall Between by Darcy Tindale
Published 2 May 2023 (Australia)
Detective Rebecca Giles has returned to her home town of Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley to be close to her father as his health fails. She hasn’t lived here since she was girl, sent away to boarding school as a twelve-year-old who started asking awkward questions about her mother’s mysterious drowning in the floods many years ago.
She’s riding high after successfully solving two crimes in one day — a break and enter and a missing school girl — when she is called to the Rickard’s property to investigate a suspected drowning. But what Giles discovers there isn’t a simple drowning at all. The state of the victim, Ava Emmerson, tells a far more gruesome story. Giles is convinced there’s a link between all three crimes, the problem is, someone’s determined she never finds out.
The Fall Between had me hooked from the very first page. The writing is tight, the characters are alive on the page and the plot grips you hard and won’t let go. In Rebecca Giles, Tindale has created a detective who is, of course, flawed and fallible, but she also has a great sense of humour and real depth. Interestingly, The Fall Between earned Tindale a spot on the shortlist for the 2022 Penguin Books Literary Prize. Apparently, it is the first in a series, with the second book, The Edge Pushed, set to follow in May 2024. No less than international bestselling crime writer Candice Fox called The Fall Between ‘rural noir at its very best’ and who could possibly go past a recommendation like that?
A little bit about the author …
Darcy Tindale is an actor, author, theatresports player and director, and has appeared in television commercials, film and on stage. She has written comedy for radio, stage, media personalities, comedians, and theatre restaurants. Her short stories, plays and poems have been published in anthologies, journals, and magazines. The Fall Between is her first novel.
Find Darcy Tindale
Instagram @darcyleetindale Website https://darcyleetindale.wixsite.com
Preorder/ buy the book here
Meet the Author: Michelle Prak
Born in Perth, Western Australia to a mother from Finland and a father from the Netherlands, Michelle Prak grew up in Whyalla, South Australia after they relocated there when she was five. In primary school, her father bought her a little red typewriter and she taught herself to touch type. She wrote a weekly column for her school which was published in the local paper; wrote the school play in year 7 and wrote a serialised story which was read out by the teacher. At Uni, Michelle studied journalism but moved into corporate communications jobs, also managing to self-published three women’s contemporary novels on the side before moving back into the genre that’s her first love: thrillers.
A little bit about the book …
The first drops start to fall when Quinn spies the body. With no reception and nothing but an empty road for miles, does she stop to help or keep driving to safety? Back at the iconic country pub, The Pindarry, where Quinn works, Andrea is sandbagging the place in preparation for heavy rains. Alone with her sleeping son in the back room, she reluctantly lets a biker in to wait out the storm. Out on the wet roads, tensions arise among four backpackers on their way to Darwin. They haven’t prepared for this kind of weather and the flooding isn’t the only threat on the horizon …
Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind this story?
The Rush is partly inspired by the many roadtrips I’ve taken. I grew up in Whyalla but have lived in Adelaide for more than twenty years – they’re four hours apart, so that’s accounted for a lot of the roadtrips. Roadtrips have been part of various jobs I’ve had, too. I was chief of staff to an MP with a massive electorate (taking up 92 per cent of South Australia). I was digital content manager with the SA Tourism Commission and, with my family, was keen to explore as much as possible. So, I’ve crisscrossed SA many times and had hours behind the wheel to absorb the landscape, daydream, and let spooky scenarios bloom.
Climate change was another inspiration. When I started working on The Rush, there were stories of bushfire and devastation everywhere. Australia felt like a very bleak place, presenting little hope for nature and for young people, and I wanted to explore that thread.
A third inspiration: well, it’d be a spoiler to elaborate here.
Plotter or panster?
Definitely a plotter. That’s where the creativity begins. Sketching out the big ideas, having fun with the ‘what ifs?’, characters bursting forth, and early twists. I plan three Acts first, then break down the Acts into chapter outlines which can be anywhere between 100 and 500 words. I wouldn’t be able to write without this structure. In fact, it’s the pantsing style that made many of my previous manuscripts fail. I found the blank page daunting and dispiriting.
That’s not to say I stick to the plan. I change things over many drafts. New ideas emerge, I recognise strengths and weaknesses in the structure, I understand the characters more as time goes on. The ending changes, too!
Above all, plotting entices me to my keyboard. It’s an encouraging, hand-holding map.
I’d get more writing done if I… lived in an internet-free zone.
Best writing advice you ever received (even if you ignored it 😊 )
When I’d failed to finish a manuscript (many times over), I googled: ‘how to write a novel’. That’s when I learned of the plotting approach. That’s the best writing advice I ever received and I wish I’d bookmarked that page so I could thank the blogger or writer who shared it! Plotting/planning seems so obvious now but that approach truly hadn’t occurred to me. In all representations of writing, I’d only observed the self-loathing author staring at a blank page or backspacing over a sentence.
Find Michelle Prak
Instagram @praky Facebook @michelleprakauthor
Website https://michelleprak.com/
Preorder/ buy the book (Australia) here
(Psst! If you’re in France, keep your eye out for publication details to come!)
Freebies!
Thanks to our lovely supportive Australian publishers (who totally rock!) here is your chance to win one of the following titles.
Thanks to the wonderful folk at Simon and Schuster Australia, we have three copies of The Rush to giveaway. To win a copy all you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this oh-so-difficult question.
What is the name of the iconic Australian outback pub?
Thanks to the super people at HarperCollins Publishers Australia, we have two copies of The Heart is a Star. If you would like to win a copy, send a reply email with the answer to this question.
How did Layla Byrnes’ father die?
Also thanks to Simon and Schuster, we have three copies of Where Light Meets Water to giveaway. To be in the running, all you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this very tricky question.
Where does Tom Rutherford originally hail from?
The fine print: Giveways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on 21 May 2023. Good luck!
Newbie News
The most exciting thing in Newbie News this month has to be that not one but two fantastic unpublished manuscript prizes are now open. Unpublished manuscript prizes have launched so many great careers as well as unearthing some amazing new stories and new voices.
If you think your Work In Progress might be ready to send out into the big wide world, be brave and take your chances. Whatever you do, don’t forget to check eligibility requirements and all the nitty gritty on the websites. And remember, it’s not just the prize winners who end up with publishing contracts, many of the shortlisted manuscripts do too. What have you got to lose?
The Banjo Prize
HarperCollins Publishers Australia launched The Banjo Prize in 2018 in a quest to find Australia’s next great storyteller. Recent winners include Dinuka McKenzie with her gripping contemporary crime novel, The Torrent, published in February 2022, and Veronica Lando’s atmospheric Australian mystery, The Whispering, published in July 2022. Steph Vizard’s charming rom-com The Love Contract will be published in September 2023.
The Main Prize Winner wins a publishing contract to publish the work as a commercial publication, including an advance against royalties of AUD$15,000. Up to 4 Runner Up Prize winners each receive a written reader’s assessment by a professional editor on the manuscript.
Click on this link to take you through to the HarperCollins website where you will also find some fantastic resources from the in-house editorial staff, including, Why the first page of a manuscript is so important, the difference between a pitch and a synopsis and what it means when we say good voice.
The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers 2023
This is the ninth year of the Richell Prize. Entries are open to unpublished writers of adult fiction and adult narrative non-fiction. Writers do not need to have a full manuscript at the time of submission, though they must intend to complete one. The Prize will be judged on the first three chapters of the submitted work, along with a synopsis outlining the direction of the proposed work and detail about how the author’s writing career would benefit from winning the Prize.
The winner will receive $10,000 in prize money, donated by Hachette Australia, and a year’s mentoring with one of Hachette Australia’s publishers. Recent winners include Ruth McIver, Aisling Smith and Simone Amelia Jordan.
For more information, click on this link.
2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA)
The Australian Book Industry Awards celebrate the achievements of authors and publishers in bringing Australian books to readers. Winners are determined through a process of selection, first by the ABIA Academy of more than 200 industry professionals, then a shortlist and winners are chosen by the Judging Panels. The shortlists for the 2023 Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) have recently been announced. Interestingly, last year’s winner for the ABIA book of the year was Diana Reid’s Love & Virtue, which was her debut novel. The category and overall winners will be announced at a gala dinner on 25 May.
Here is the shortlist of books contending for the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year
Tell Me Again Amy Thunig
WAKE Shelley Burr
Dirt Town Hayley Scrivenor
The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner Grace Tame
Root & Branch: Essays on inheritance Eda Gunaydin
All That’s Left Unsaid Tracey Lien
The End
I hope you enjoyed this issue of New Voices Down Under. Please leave a comment, follow us on socials and come back again next month where there will be more bookish news, reviews, interviews and freebies. See you soon!
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