Emily Paull

Writing a novel is really hard.  There are probably thousands of people attempting to do it as you read this, and I would hazard a guess that many of them won't finish.  Of those who do, some will never revise their work, and some will never revise it enough times to get it to the point of being ready to submit to agents and publishers.  (Some will self publish but that's a totally different subject.)  This is where the real paradox of being a writer comes in.  To get your work to this point, you have to be hard-working and second guess nearly every decision that you make.  (Or, okay, I guess you don't have to be, but I have always found that a lot of writers experience higher than usual self doubt while they are working.)  THEN when it comes time to submit your work, suddenly you have to feel as if you are the greatest writer ever to have put words on a page and you have to convince a handful of industry professionals that this is the case too.  ...

In Love and War Liz Byrski Fremantle Press, 2015 (I own a copy courtesy of the publisher) Liz Byrski grew up in a small English town known as East Grinstead, which you may or may not know of as being near the place that AA Milne based the Hundred Acre Wood on for the Winne the Pooh  stories.  During the Second World War, East Grinstead was the home of celebrated and pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald MacIndoe and his 'Guinea Pigs', mean who had been badly injured in RAF missions such as the Battle of Britain.  Thanks to MacIndoe's revolutionary approach to reconstructive surgery, these men were given back functional (if not beautiful) faces and hands, and they were given a semblance of dignity befitting their sacrifice.  The men of the 'Guinea Pigs' club still meet to this day (though their numbers are dwindling), getting together to reminisce on the mateship and the hijinks that got them through their recovery periods. It is these men, this surgeon, and thi...

The Bird's Child Sandra Leigh Price Fourth Estate (I own a copy) Hello hello! Long time no speak, but don't assume it's because I haven't been reading because that would not be true!  No, in fact my prolonged silence was due to an unfortunate incident involving our home internet which left me using smoke signals and flags to communicate for almost a week.  Most frustrating, especially for someone who is trying to complete a university course in another state.  It does make you think though, and realise how dependent we have become on the internet.  One thing I DID get done while I was experiencing cyber-displacement was a heck of a lot of reading, and I didn't even have to shirk my studies.  I got a chance to read a book I had been lusting after since it was published, and that book was The Bird's Child  by Sandra Leigh Price. It's set in a boarding house in Sydney, during the year 1929, and stars a cast of oddly matched waifs and strays.  Firs...

April was a slow reading month for me, not just because I finally finished Middlemarch  by George Eliot.  I also managed to get a nasty cold, and while in theory this would have made for lots of reading in bed, in reality it made for lots of sleeping and watching Criminal Minds . When I say a slow month, I still managed to dispense with six books, which isn't a number to sniff at.  But it's still the farthest off my ten books a month target that I've been so far this year, and so hopefully next month will prove more fruitful.  (I would, however, be happy to read no books at all in May, if only I was writing!) The Painted Sky by Alice Campion I reviewed this book early in the month, thanks to Random House who sent me a copy for review.  I don't usually read rural romance, despite it being one of the fastest growing genres in Australian fiction, but I was pleasantly surprised by this compelling book.  You can read my review here.   Middlemarc...