Emily Paull

The Woolgrower's Companion by Joy Rhoades Bantam 2017 I borrowed a copy from the library New South Wales, 1945.  Kate Dowd goes with her father to the train station to meet two new workers coming to work on their station, Amiens.   Bought under the soldier-settler scheme, Amiens  is one of the few stations that has been profitable in the area, but with Kate's father seeming to be losing his grip on reality, signs begin to point to that no longer being the case.  Add to this the new workers themselves-- Italian Prisoners of War, Luca and Vittorio.  Kate doesn't trust these newcomers, and worries about being virtually alone with them, many kilometres from help. I expected good things from this novel.  It sounded exactly like the kind of book I love, and in many ways the premise reminded me of one of my favourite books of all time, The Paperbark Shoe by Goldie Goldbloom.  But I got more than I expected, because Joy Rhoades' debut novel is a marve...

It's back!  The Short Story Book Club was on again for August.   This month, it was all about The Love of a Bad Man by Laura Elizabeth Woollett, and I was lucky enough to be joined by two guests, Leonard and Veronica.  We tried extremely hard not to go off on too many tangents, and hey, I think we did a pretty great job, so here it is for your listening pleasure! Remember, you can join us next month (September 19) when we discuss Pulse Points  by Jennifer Down, and you have plenty of time to pick up a copy from your bookstore of choice and get reading.   Just make sure you register here.   The Love of a Bad Man was published in 2016 by Scribe. Thanks to Caroline and Claudia and all of the team at the Centre for Stories.  See you next month! Leonard and Veronica- Episode 2 Guests

So here's a piece of writing wisdom I never expected to pick up: Sometimes, you have to write it like a midday soap opera. I don't mean that your book should read like one.  I'm talking about in your early drafts, or perhaps in your middle-of-the-process revisions. Let me explain. I'm currently working on the eleventh or twelfth iteration of my historical novel, Between the Sleepers .  The last time I rewrote it, I thought it was done.  I thought it was the best that it was ever going to be.  I'd taken it to a residency at the Katharine Susannah Prichard writers centre, where I'd reworked 40000 words in ten days and gone home feeling like a superhero.  I'd had a feeling in my gut that the book was as done as it was ever going to be. And I pitched it to a few agents, some of whom even read the whole thing.  It was close.  But it wasn't getting over the line. Readers, I took a year off from that novel.  It was probably the largest ...