#BlogTour #KimIzzo #SevenDaysInMay

Seven Days in May by Kim Izzo 

Seven Days in May is a captivating novel of love and resilience during the Great War, inspired by real events and the author’s family history. 

As the First World War rages, two New York heiresses, Sydney and Brooke Sinclair, are due to set sail for England. Brooke is engaged to marry impoverished aristocrat Edward Thorpe-Tracey, the future Lord Northbrook, in the wedding of the social calendar. Sydney has other adventures in mind; she is drawn to the burgeoning suffragette movement, which is a constant source of embarrassment to her proper sister. As international tempers flare, the German embassy releases a warning that any ships making the Atlantic crossing are at risk. Undaunted, Sydney and Brooke board the Lusitania for the seven-day voyage with Edward, not knowing that disaster lies ahead.

In London, Isabel Nelson, a young woman grateful to have escaped her blemished reputation in Oxford, has found employment at the British Admiralty in the mysterious Room 40. She begins as a secretary, but it isn’t long before her skills in codes and cyphers are called on, and she learns a devastating truth and the true cost of war.

As the days of the voyage pass, these four lives collide in a struggle for survival as the Lusitania meets its deadly fate.

Seven Days in May is published by Harper 360 on 15 June 2017. 

Today I am delighted to welcome Kim Izzo to my blog with a guest post about her novel. Thank you so much Kim for coming along and for allowing me to be part of the Blog Tour for you book! I am so excited to kick off the tour today with a really enjoyable piece about your research for your novel and your experience of a cruise liner! 

KIM IZZO - GUEST POST

Once I decided to research and write a novel about the sinking of the RMS Lusitania I knew there was one thing I had to do: a transatlantic crossing! I’d never been on a cruise before. My experiences with boats were scant - a high school boyfriend’s tiny two-person fishing boat on the lake and another friend’s speedboat that took water-skiers out for a joyride. The reason wasn’t only because I was an urban girl but also because I couldn’t swim – still can’t. People are always after me to learn but hey, at this stage in life it makes good cocktail patter.

But how could I accurately depict an ocean voyage without completing the trek firsthand? 

The Lusitania was built in Scotland and owned by the Cunard Line, she was launched in 1906 and sank off the Irish coast on May 7, 1915. Today Cunard owns the Queen Mary II and the company generously gave me passage on the ship in October 2013 where I sailed from New York to Southampton. The journey took eight days.

I was fortunate to be given a room in the upper part of the ship – what would have been first class in 1915. It had a small balcony and being 2013, a television set and WIFI. 

I had a private table in the Britannia Club where the dress code was black tie each night. This meant packing a selection of not only cocktail dresses, but evening gowns too! The notion of dressing for dinner has all but disappeared from our current culture but I admit it was illuminating to experience that aspect to life and imagine what my main character, Sydney Sinclair, would have had to prepare for during her crossing. Planning evening clothes for seven nights is exhausting, so much so that I cheated and had room service one night. 

And unlike in 1915, I did have the option of dining on the lower levels of the ship, which was buffet and casual and I chose that one evening as well. Besides, unlike Sydney, I’m not rich and didn’t have seven evening gowns to wear!

The service in the Britannia Club was as expected, top-notch. I got to know my waiter and he got to know my tastes as well. It was he who recommended that I eat bread to stave off seasickness, which I had, and his advice made it into my novel. Like me, Sydney gets “mal de mer” and employed the bread trick to help her own sensitive stomach.

There was dancing almost every night and for single’s ladies such as myself there are “gentlemen” dancers available on every Queen Mary 2 voyage to ensure that wallflowers get their turn. I’m not much of a waltz expert so I declined the kind men who approached me lest I end up severely wounding one of their feet with my two left ones.

As a journalist I was also invited to dine at the Captain’s Table one night. Even in this day and age it is a huge honour. In 2013 it was Captain Kevin Oprey who was in charge of the ship. An elegant man, he was also an excellent dinner companion and ensured that he spoke to every guest at the table equally. This was quite the opposite of the final captain of the Lusitania, Captain William Turner, who disliked socializing with passengers and often passed that duty down to his second in command. 

I was also allowed onto the bridge – a very rare occurrence as it is strictly off-limits to passengers for security reasons. It was fascinating to see the modern navigation equipment and yes, there was a ship’s wheel!

Each day I walked around the deck for exercise. The deck is made of wood, like the Lusitania’s were. I imagine the view – seven days of ocean spread out before you - hasn’t changed at all and I could envision quite easily what my characters would have seen standing there in 1915. And like Sydney, I didn’t venture too close to the railing to peer over very often. Maybe only once. It was just too frightening to someone who couldn’t swim. 

Traveling alone you strike up conversations with strangers quite easily and I met some incredible people. And the common theme to these chats was why they chose to sail from America to England when flying was obviously cheaper and faster. The answer was always the same: to experience the romance and glamour of an ocean voyage. The Titanic’s doomed maiden voyage and the 1997 film inspired travellers of all ages and for many the Queen Mary 2 was the bucket-list trip of a lifetime. 

While the fates of the Titanic and the Lusitania were tragic, the two ships and their passengers remain a source of enduring fascination, both with a bygone era and the mysteries and questions that still surround their final voyages. And in 2017 many of us still want to connect and be transported through fiction and film to that moment in history. 

Thanks so much Kim for a fascinating and enjoyable piece about your research and experience of a cruise liner - It sounds very romantic and glamorous! I wish you every success with your novel which has an equally glamorous and stylish front cover! 

DON'T MISS THE OTHER STOPS ON THE BLOG TOUR FOR SEVEN DAYS IN MAY! 

Kim Izzo is an author, screenwriter and journalist living in Toronto.  She is the author of The Jane Austen Marriage Manual and My Life in Black and White and the co-author of two etiquette books, The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Decorumand & The Fabulous Girl’s Guide to Grace Under Pressure. Kim’s great-grandfather sailed on the Lusitania and lived to tell the tale and inspire the novel.

You can find out more about Kim by following her on Twitter or visiting her website: 
@kimizzo

kimizzo.com


For more recommendations and reviews follow me on Twitter @KatherineSunde3 or via my website bibliomaniacuk.co.uk 

#BookRecommendations #BooksForMen

Next Sunday is Father's Day in the UK so I started to think about books that might make good gifts for this occasion. But really this is just a general round up of books that might appeal to men and some titles that they might fancy slipping in their suitcase this summer.

So father, brother, grandfather, husband, son, nephew, colleague, friend, random male you pass on the street or sit next to on the train, here's a few suggestions for good books to recommend......Hope you find something that appeals!

Dodgers is a very well written story about East, a teenage boy living in LA and working for a gang. The main bulk of the story takes East on a road trip to commit a murder. This novel is part noir, part crime and part coming of age written in stark prose and with unforgettable characters. Beverly has been nominated for numerous prizes for this debut- and rightly so. It follows in the tradition of great American Literature; his voice is fresh, original and one to watch.

Paul Hardisty is like a real life James Bond and has one of the most fascinating careers of any author I have met! His book is a complex story of espionage, crime, thrills and spills and adventure.

If you're after a new Nordic Noir crime series then meet Gunnar Staalesen, author of 21 thrillers featuring his protagonist Varg Veum. The books work as a stand alones but would also be a great series to immerse yourself in. It's gripping, pacy, shocking and gritty.

Keeping with gripping, shocking and compelling books, Block 46 deals with a dual narrative set in both the modern day and the Second World War. One storyline is about a murder and one is about the millions of murders that took place in the concentration camps. Gustawsson's novel is exceptional - it is not an easy read but it is quite an incredible one.



Quicksand by Malin Persson Giolito keeps the reader guessing all the way along about whether we can trust her main character who has just served a prison sentence for a shooting in a school. Is she guilty? What did she know? It's a fascinating novel about character, judgement and the media. Jon McGregor brings us back to the UK with yet another excellent short novel which is perhaps more reflective than the other titles here in terms of pace and action. It explores how a community deals with an unsolved crime over a long period of time. Beautifully written and as memorable as all his other novels. 

Luke McCallin takes us back to the Second World War again with a complex but well paced read about a man trying to come to terms with his place in the changing world; the challenges of politics, personal agendas, vendettas and revenge and learning whether the main character has what it takes to follow a case to the end. Staying in Germany, David Young's second novel takes us to East Berlin 1975 and another murder case. Young's novels are intriguing due to his choice of social, historical and political location but not only are they fascinating presentation of living under the Stasi, they are also very compelling murder stories. Stasi Wolf can be read as a stand alone but I would recommend you start with the first book in the series, Stasi Child. 

And my favourite recommendations would be (although they all seem to be thrillers....!!): 



GJ (Graham) Minett writes excellent crime thrillers which are multi layered and full of great, well crafted characters. Both his novels are page turners and thought provoking. In my humble opinion, unmissable! I love Liz Nugent's novels. She manages to create characters that are chilling, fascinating and hugely unsettling. This is an outstanding read - a very slim novel too so there is no excuse for not slipping this in your holiday bag this summer! T M Logan's novel is also a gripping psychological thriller which looks at that moment when you make a snap decision and your whole world spirals out of control. I enjoyed the fact that the main character is a father with his young son as often psychological novels focus on a female lead so this book will certainly appeal to all readers!

SJI Holiday and Angela Clarke write gritty and contemporary thrillers which focus on issues surrounding social media. They are very well written and very well structured and raise a lot of thought provoking questions about our use - or misuse - of social media. Anyone with a Facebook account or a twitter hashtag will love these books!

If the men want to read the hottest books on the bestseller list this summer or join in with the conversations around the water cooler, then they might like these! 



Here are a few books that I haven't read yet but I think would also make great gifts.....



Enjoy spreading some book love next weekend and I hope there are a few things here that appeal! Let me know how you get on!

For more recommendations and reviews follow me on Twitter @KatherineSunde3 or via my website bibliomaniacuk.co.uk 

#JessicaDuchen #AuthorQ&A #GhostVariations

The strangest detective story in music, inspired by a true incident.

London, 1933. Dabbling in the once-fashionable "glass game" - a Ouija board - the famous Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi is amazed to receive a message supposedly from the spirit of the great composer Robert Schumann, asking her to find and play his long-suppressed violin concerto. Jelly, formerly muse to many composers, hesitates to pursue this strange summons, eager to devote herself to charity concerts for the unemployed of the Depression. But soon her sister Adila and her friend Erik Palmstierna, both avid spiritualists, hear of the incident and the die is cast. Having lost the love of her life in World War I and now facing the death of another close friend, Jelly sets out to find not only a missing concerto, but also a form of redemption.

But news of the concerto's existence spreads to Berlin, where the manuscript is held, and the higher echelons of the Third Reich quickly conceive of a propaganda use for the work. Jelly, trapped in a race to the first performance, must confront forces that threaten her own state of mind.

Facing a world slipping into the insanity of fascism and war, a composer who suffered a terrible breakdown just after he wrote the concerto, and her own life and career sliding out of control, for Jelly saving the concerto comes to mean saving herself.

Ghost Variations was published in September in 2016 by Unbound. 

Today I am delighted to welcome Jessica Duchen to my blog for a q&a session! Thanks ever so much Jessica for answering my questions and it's lovely to meet you ahead of our panel event in July! If you would like to come along and hear more from Jessica you can book a ticket to the event at using the link beneath this interview. I'll hand straight over to Jessica now! 

Could you tell me about your novel in a couple of sentences?

In 1933 the great violinist Jelly d’Arányi appeared to receive a supernatural summons via a Ouija board to locate and perform Robert Schumann’s long-suppressed Violin Concerto – but her efforts led her into a terrifying race with Hitler’s propaganda department. It’s the most bizarre true story I’ve come across in all my years as a music journalist.

Your inspiration for your novel has come from real life news or events. What was it about this moment / event / newspaper story that captured you so much that you wanted to write about it?

One image clinched the point of this book and, to my mind anyway, made it more than just a strange incident. Our heroine, Jelly (pronounced ‘Yeli’), was at a turning point: she was in her early forties and struggling with health issues, and younger, starrier figures were taking the work she would previously have had. Her glory days were slipping away into the past. Schumann’s Violin Concerto was written just before the composer suffered the nervous breakdown that led him to spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital. The setting mirrored these tipping-point images: a world on the brink, turning from sanity to madness, from peace to war.

I tend to feel that good historical fiction and fantasy novels are not purely about other times and other worlds. They’re a way of casting new light on life now. For instance, I’ve just been reading Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy and the echoes he finds between 63BC and terrorist attacks plus government responses to them in the 21^st century are extremely pertinent. And the echoes I noted between the 1930s and today are not particularly funny.

What has been the biggest challenge about writing a piece of fiction which is either based on fact or has elements of fact within it?

Obviously you have to do your darndest to get the facts right. Instead of choosing between the research-based challenges of a biography, or the imaginative challenges of a novel, you have both, and each demands that you rise to greater heights in the other. (I’ve sometimes found myself responding, when asked why I wrote this book: ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time…’)

A key problem involves entering the mindset of people living in another era. I thoroughly admire how Hilary Mantel handled this in her Wolf Hall books: for instance, her protagonists never question the existence of God or capital punishment, notably beheading – because they wouldn’t have. We can’t project the attitudes of today into another century. Obviously the 1930s are closer to us in time, but in Ghost Variations I was faced with a heroine, and her sister, who believed totally in “spirit messages”. We don’t often accept such things; I don’t particularly accept them myself. Yet I talked to many people who knew Jelly and her sister Adila and insisted that they absolutely believed that the spirit of Schumann had been contacting them. Conveying this convincingly was a thorny prospect. I decided, finally, that instead of insisting that readers believe in the spirit messages, I had to persuade them to accept that Jelly and Adila believed them.

One more thing, though: writing a book, especially one based on fact, is so much work that it has to be worth doing. There has to be a good reason for a book to exist. It has to say something essential to its readers, and you have to find and highlight that something in those facts.

Can you tell me a little bit about your writing process and that transition from taking a ‘real event’ and to it becoming a fictional story?

I first came across this story around ten years ago, when I was researching another novel, Hungarian Dances. I’d been hunting for information about the crosscurrents between classical violin playing and the Gypsy tradition in Hungarian violinists of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries and as Jelly was the dedicatee of Ravel’s Tzigane she was a good place to start. Then I stumbled upon the Schumann Concerto story and was so astonished that I kept it on file under ‘Interesting Things I Don’t Know What To Do With’. I thought of trying to make it into narrative non-fiction – but just try persuading a modern publisher that strange stories involving classical music would have a market, even if they do contain ever-saleable Nazis! So I left it to marinate for a few years until it struck me that, really, all I had to do was tell the story and tell it well: it already had everything a strong novel might need.

Much hinged on how empathetic the characters could be. I did “tweak” a few elements here and there, but tried to make them as true to life as possible. For example, one crucial figure is Myra Hess (the great pianist who during World War II convened a series of lunchtime concerts in the National Gallery right through the Blitz). She was Jelly’s duo partner for about 20 years. In the book she is a comparatively hard-nosed, determined professional with her feet on the ground, offsetting Jelly herself, who is almost childlike in her naïvete at times. But I think I’ve managed to do this while being true to aspects of her actual personality.

Both Jelly and Myra are “older women” (what a dreadful way to describe a female over 40!), unmarried, devoted to their careers and facing difficult choices as well as the prospect of ageing alone; Adila, though married and a mother, has a close male friend with whom she shares a special pastime (spiritualism). These issues are perennial, of course, and I think make these extraordinary women easy for modern readers to identify with.

I did adjust Jelly slightly to make her into my heroine. In real life (her dates were 1893-1966) she was perhaps more of an aesthete, more other-worldly and less warm and extrovert – though her one existing biography does suggest she could be quite a flirt when she wanted to be. I have also given her a fictional younger admirer, Ulli Schultheiss, who is necessary for the book as he provides a window directly into Nazi Germany and the music publishers who play a crucial role in the concerto’s fate. I felt rather guilty about introducing a made-up younger man to Jelly’s life – but when I confessed this to a relative of hers, she smiled and said she thought there might well have been a few!

How does researching a novel based or inspired by real events differ from writing another novel?

Well, you can’t just make it up. The details have to be right and the research can take over your life. Any novel is likely to need at least some research, but this is on another level – and the frustrating thing is that only about ten per cent of it, if that, goes into the text. The most extraordinary things can hold up progress – for instance, I was stuck for weeks on whether or not they would have owned a fridge. But if you don’t do the leg-work, the book won’t feel authentic and then nobody will bother reading it.

Different writers go to different lengths to ascertain their details. I did a bookshop event recently together with Jennie Ensor, the author of the brilliant Blind Side, and she mentioned she had checked the actual weather on the days on which her story takes place. I did not check the weather for 16 February 1938, the date of my final scene: I just had to have snow. And after all, it was February, it was London, it was colder in those days, so it might well have snowed, and the falling snow adds a soupçon of beauty to the conclusion. If I need to beg forgiveness for this from someone, then so be it.

Some people like to read fiction as a way of escaping from the real world. Some people like to read fiction to help them understand the real world or make sense of something they have experienced in the real world. Can you think of any novels you have read that have either provided some escapism, some insight and some comfort for you at any point in your life?

If I’m dealing with an emotional issue I don’t look for its reflection in fiction I’m reading – I’d rather escape from it! But I do sometimes hunt down insights and information. For instance, I’m trying to make sense of something right now, or at least to learn more about it. Here’s the situation.

My parents were born in Johannesburg, but left South Africa after their marriage in the early 1950s and settled in London. My father always refused to go back until apartheid had been overthrown, but I went a few times as a child with my mum to visit her family. Those trips, in the 1970s, left me profoundly shocked. Driving past the smog-laden iron shacks of Soweto, or in one distant cousin’s household seeing black servants in the kitchen – smiley, kind people who greeted my six-year-old self so warmly – eating the leftovers off the family’s plates. Such things horrified me and I had no wish to return, ever.

My parents both died more than 20 years ago, I have few relations left in South Africa and there was little reason to go back. Recently, though, my husband discovered some long-lost family of his own in Port Elizabeth and wanted to visit them. We took a trip in April.

And this time I loved it, because while the country assuredly has desperate problems, it has come a long way indeed from my childhood memories. I’ve turned to South African novels for insights and am devouring some amazing books: Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, the works of JM Coetzee and André Brink, Barbara Trapido’s exuberant Frankie and Stankie, and more. These are filling in some blanks on how those horrors developed, how they took hold, the human stories that embroider the patterns on history’s canvas, and why not all hope need be lost, however cruel and insane a political system may be.

Do you have a favourite author or novel that has inspired you as a writer or reader or is there a book that you are excited about reading in 2017 / best book from 2016? 

I do have a favourite novel: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. I first read it when I was 15 and for years it has been my touchstone for a book that you not only read, but live. I long to write something even half as vivid! It’s about a wonderfully eccentric, artistic family in Suffolk in the 1930s and perhaps that’s one reason I was happy to find myself writing a book of my own about a wonderfully eccentric, artistic family in the 1930s, even if from a very different angle.

As for a book I’m excited about reading in 2017: I can’t wait for Fiona Melrose’s Johannesburg to come out.

Thanks so much Jessica for these fascinating responses to my questions! I can't wait to chat again in a few weeks time! 

To book a ticket for this event where you can hear more from Jessica, please click on the link below: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/real-life-real-books-tickets-34393602190

JESSICA DUCHEN



Jessica was born in London. She first tried to write a novel at the age of 12 and found much encouragement from a distinguished author and a literary agent. After studying at Cambridge, she worked as an editor in music publishing and magazines for ten years.

Her latest novel, Ghost Variations, is based on a true incident in the 1930s: the bizarre rediscovery of the long-suppressed Schumann Violin Concerto. "This is a hugely atmospheric and thought-provoking book featuring fascinating characters... It evokes a period pregnant with both promise and menace" (Music & Vision Daily).

The earlier novels focus on the tensions and cross-currents between family generations, including a painful exploration of the effects of anorexia (Rites of Spring) and the rearing of a child prodigy (Alicia's Gift) to the long-term effects of displacement and cultural clashes (Hungarian Dances and Songs of Triumphant Love). 

Jessica's journalism has appeared in The Independent, The Guardian and The Sunday Times, plus numerous music magazines. She gives pre-concert talks at venues including the Wigmore Hall, the Southbank Centre and Symphony Hall Birmingham. Having created concert versions of Alicia's Gift, Hungarian Dances and Ghost Variations, she often narrates their performances. Her play A Walk through the End of Time, introducing Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, has been performed at music festivals in the UK, France and Australia. 

Jessica lives in London with her violinist husband and two cats. She enjoys long walks, cooking, and playing the piano when nobody can hear her.

www.jessicaduchen.co.uk
@jessicaduchen

For more recommendations and reviews follow me on Twitter @KatherineSunde3 or via my website bibliomaniacuk.co.uk 

#TheWoolgrowersCompanion #JoyRhoades #Q&A #Giveaway

What's it about? 

Kate Dowd’s mother raised her to be a lady but she must put away her white gloves and pearls to help save her family’s sheep farm in New South Wales.

It is 1945, the war drags bitterly on and it feels like the rains will never come again. All the local, able-bodied young men, including the husband Kate barely knows, have enlisted and Kate’s father is struggling with his debts and his wounds from the Great War. He borrows recklessly from the bank and enlists two Italian prisoners of war to live and work on the station.

With their own scars and their defiance, the POWs Luca and Vittorio offer an apparent threat to Kate and Daisy, the family’s young Aboriginal maid. But danger comes from surprising corners and Kate finds herself more drawn to Luca than afraid of him.

Scorned bank managers, snobbish neighbours and distant husbands expect Kate to fail and give up her home but over the course of a dry, desperate year she finds within herself reserves of strength and rebellion that she could never have expected.

The Woolgrower’s Companion is the gripping story of one woman’s fight to save her home and a passionate tribute to Australia’s landscape and its people.

The Woolgrower's Companion is published on 8th June 2017 by Penguin.

To read my review of The Woolgrower's Companion click here.

I am thrilled to welcome Joy to my blog today to chat about her new novel, The Woolgrower’s Companion . Thanks so much Joy for coming along! 

What gave you the idea for the story?

Family stories were the inspiration for The Woolgrower's Companion. I grew up in the bush in Australia and I often visited my grandmother's sheep farm. She was a great storyteller and from her, I heard about life on the land, especially during WWII. While this is not her story, I did set out to capture that era and her resilience, in The Woolgrower's Companion.

What one thing would you like readers to take away from your novel?

I hope readers find The Woolgrower's Companion a cracking yarn! And an affirmation of the power of hope, and of resilience.

Which three words would you use to describe Kate?

Kate's a learner, prepared to be shown a better way of doing things. She's also stoic in her own way. And she's funny, too, on for a laugh.

Can you tell me a little bit about the research that you had to do for this novel? Was it very difficult / complicated / problematic? How long did it take to research the novel?

It was very important to me that The Woolgrower's Companion might have happened. That meant research. And I was fortunate to work with some remarkable experts: historians, sheep growers, and veterinary, medical and other advisers who helped me. As the story takes place on Kamilaroi land, I needed cultural guidance. I spoke to a number of people who were very generous with their time. Poet and activist Kerry Reed-Gilbert, a woman of the Wiradjuri Nation, was central to my understanding of the Aboriginal aspects to a story, and guided me to ensure that The Woolgrower's Companion is respectful of cultural practices. Katherine Faulkner, a woman of the Anaiwan Nation, was also an essential adviser.

The dialogue is very authentic and realistic. How did you find writing phonetically and with so much dialect?

I knew what the characters sounded like in my head -- this is the language of the bush, the language of my childhood. The real challenge was to get it down. I tried to keep in mind great writers of dialogue like Cormac McCarthy and one of my heroes, Tim Winton. And as a double-check, I had some advisers look over it for me too.

Because of the historical setting of the novel there is quite a lot of less politically correct terminology used. Obviously this is absolutely essential in writing such an authentic and realistic novel but did you have any issues  / problems / concerns with this at all?

You've identified an issue I struggled a great deal with, as a writer: should I present Kate with a kind of contemporary sensibility, or do I show her as she would have been? I felt that a contemporary Kate wouldn't have been authentic.  But that means that in The Woolgrower's Companion, some characters use hurtful terms that we would never use today. I hope I've captured the era so that, even in the text itself, readers understand that terms like 'Abos' or 'Aborigines' are offensive, and that 'the Aboriginal people' is respectful. And I address this issue in the Acknowledgements too. It's important.

There are several ‘big’ issues explored in the novel. Was that intentional? Was there one that you felt more passionately about?

I wanted two things with The Woolgrower's Companion: to write a cracking yarn and to capture this bush community at this time: the end of WWII. Shell shock, sexism, racism, and the Stolen Generations (the removal and institutionalization of Aboriginal children from their parents), are prominent in The Woolgrower's Companion, because those things were central to that time and place, and, arguably, remain critical as well. They all concern me; I think today, we just see them better.

The beginning of each chapter begins with a quote from The Woolgrowers Companion 1906 which I believe is fictional?! Why did you decide to add these quotes and how did you go about writing them?

The idea just hit me one day: I would write a fictional guide to sheep-growing from the Victorian era --or at least part of it-- and then place a relevant quote at the start of each chapter. I had learned a bit about sheep by then, and I've always loved Victorian literature so the quotes were great fun to write. I made the year of publication of this pretend guide to sheep-growing, 1906, the year of my grandmother's birth, as a kind of tribute to her.

The Woolgrower’s Companion would make a terrific film. Are there any plans for this? If you could ‘fantasy cast’ who would you like to see as the main characters?

Many readers have told me they find The Woolgrower's Companion cinematic, that they can 'see' the story. That's a great compliment. My one clear thought for a 'fantasy cast' would be Joaquin Phoenix as Luca! But there are so many talented Australian actors, it'd be a hard pick, especially for Kate and Daisy. 

Are you working on anything at the moment?

Absolutely! I'm working on a follow-on to The Woolgrower's Companion, a standalone book set in the same area and with many of the same characters. I feel there's so much more ahead of them.

What are you reading at the moment?

I'm really looking forward to Tim Winton's short story memoir The Boy Behind The Curtin. And I love to read anything that has a strong story - it has to grab me and carry me. That's how I try to write, too. 

Which book is your ‘companion’ when you need a quote or a sentence to inspire you?

I find my inspiration comes from real life, from bits of overheard conversation on a bus, and from what I see around me. I do turn to the greats for a shot of beauty, to writers like Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing,  to F.Scott Fitzgerald, Cormac McCarthy and Tim Winton. 

IF YOU WOULD LIKE THE CHANCE TO WIN 1 OF 2 SIGNED COPIES OF THE WOOLGROWERS COMPANION ENTER THE GIVEAWAY BELOW:


http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/1431bf225/?

JOY RHOADES

I grew up in a small town in the bush in Queensland, Australia. I spent my time with my head in a book, or outdoors – climbing trees, playing in dry creek beds, or fishing for yabbies in the railway dam under the big sky. Some of my favourite memories were visiting my grandmother’s sheep farm in rural New South Wales where my father had grown up. She was a fifth generation grazier, a lover of history, and a great and gentle teller of stories. My childhood gave me two passions: a love of the Australian landscape and a fascination with words and stories.

I left the bush at 13 when I went to boarding school in Brisbane. I stayed on there to study law and literature at the University of Queensland. After, my work as a lawyer took me first to Sydney and then all over the world, to London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and New York. But I always carried in my head a strong sense of my childhood: the people, the history, the light and the landscape. Those images have never left me and they would eventually become The Woolgrower’s Companion. It’s a story I’ve felt I had to tell.

I currently live in London with my husband and our two young children. But I miss the Australian sky.

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bibliomaniacuk.co.uk
@KatherineSunde3