- Published on
We disappear for many reasons and moments: sometimes few minutes, a day, a few days or in this case two months. Not intentionally. A few unexpected things happened that disrupted life. It began with a tendinopathy issue with my achilles through sport that needed careful rehabilitation. That was followed by a bout of the caring and sharing flu and cough that seems rampant. Not to be outdone, a rather large sebaceous cyst on my shoulder went rogue, became infected and ‘exploded’, requiring minor surgery and ongoing wound packing while it heals (still happening). Between recoveries and feeling sorry for myself, some things were pushed aside – this blog being one – and others flourished. Here’s the update.
Having completed One Day in His Life, I finally quietly published it in August. It’s available on Amazon. Like my early teenage novel, Joy Ride (Wakefield Press), One Day in His life gives voice to a person in our community from whom most of us do not want to hear; a man with criminal convictions, behaviours, attitudes and habits we do and should condemn. But I do believe we should try to understand such people and why they may have become
who they are, and as a community explore possibilities of how we might be able to stop people developing anti-social needs and behaviours. And, conversely, also realise that we can’t necessarily save everyone.
To write a novel like One Day in His Life, I had to draw upon my knowledge of and relationships with a range of people, predominantly older, isolated men. Where I grew up in rural South Australia, I was in a community where several older men lived alone, or with their brothers, on their farms and I observed and wondered about how and why they were living as they did. In later life, I’ve met and know more older men who live alone in very poor conditions, some by choice, some by circumstances, some because of illness and disabilities, and so I drew upon these experiences and observations to create the central character for the novel. And I delved within for the emotional material of failure, rejection, bullying, social ostracism etc.
The novel is not meant to make judgements. Readers are free to do that. I only open a door to a single day in an individual’s life and show what does/might happen. It’s not an easy read morally or emotionally, but I was compelled to write it.
In other news, the new project – a novel mainly set in 1860s-1880s Australia – has been fully drafted and initially sits at around 80,000 words. Now I’m moving into first draft edit which entails:
- Reading to ensure a story arc or at least a story exists
- Adding new descriptive details and adjusting/adding needed scenes
- Fact-checking dates and events
- Having a beta reader provide feedback
I’m happy with how this project is developing, but there’s a long way to go yet.
