Behind Sally's Books: March 2017

Friday, 31 March 2017

Captain Sunrise

Welcome to Sally's book-a-day-for-2017 blog. If unfamiliar with the blog, scroll down.

Captain Sunrise (Post 90)

Captain Sunrise (2016) is a historical novella set in colonial Australia. As the blurb has it:

Miss Amanda Jones is furious when her carriage is held up by the bushranger calling himself Captain Sunrise, and even more so when he takes her diamonds. Meanwhile, her old swain Harry Opaldown returns expecting to marry her. Amanda has moved on to thoughts of a more advantageous match. This angers Harry, who decided to get Amanda's diamonds back.

Mary Downie is willing to help him with this enterprise. Harry hesitates to use a serving girl in this way but, as Mary observes, "Using's what folk do."

At first glance, this probably looks like a category romance plot, but it's more of a historical melodrama. It was initially written when a small publisher advertised for writers for a proposed series of short novels. It was accepted, but as the years went on the series just never happened. This is not unusual in the publishing business, and since the book had never been contracted, I eventually self-published it. Unlike other books written some years ago, this one wasn't dated by inconvenient technology. After all, it is set in the 19th Century.

Captain Sunrise is available as paperback and epub from the links shown. It is also available from iTunes.

About the Blog

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment service, post a comment and I'll get back to you.

Thursday, 30 March 2017

Night Must Always Come

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Night Must Always Come (Post 89)

If the cover of Night Must Always Come (1999) reminds you of a 1970s gothic romance, well... good. That's the effect we wanted. I wrote this long supernatural thriller/romance back when markets for paranormal were opening up as they had in the '70s. The difference was that this time instead of paperbacks, they came out as ebooks on floppy disc and/or CD. Because Night came out with an American (or was it Canadian?) publisher, the heroine is American. Her name is Susannah Ashendon and she is somewhat flummoxed when her cousin, who is also her solicitor, informs her she's inherited an old house in Australia. Suzo, partly to annoy her cousin, flies out to inspect her property before selling it off.

To her annoyance, another claimant turns up, also inspecting the property. A snowstorm maroons them both there. They decide they can manage to be civilised until the snow melts but when William "Tad" Ashendon goes up to the attic and fails to return, Suzo goes up to find out what he's up to.

What she finds takes "disturbing" to a whole new level. Tad is running a fever. He has no idea who he is, but he seems to think he knows who she is and it isn't who she knows she is. Come morning everything seems normal, but the following days teach them night must always come.

Night Must Always Come is one of my family history/family secrets stories, and I recall spending a lot of time with charts and spreadsheets working out exactly who was doing what to whom. The result was a complication I was pleased with. Night has been out of print for a long time, but I may print it as a paperback some time. The catch is, as with In Search of a Husband (Post 82) the story is set in the late 1990s. Believe me- today's technology has messed up an awful lot of plot points.

About the Blog

Wednesday, 29 March 2017

The Follow Dog

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The Follow Dog (Post 88)

The Follow Dog (1991) is much later than Her Kingdom for a Pony (1977 Post 2) but it shares the same illustrator and cover artist who also illustrated one of my very earliest published stories. Noela Young draws some of the most natural-looking animals I've ever seen.
The story of The Follow Dog is based on something that really happened. Way back in the 1980s, we had a cocker spaniel named Ace. He was a dear dog, devoted to our family. He obviously thought of my husband as Lord and Master, where I was The B*tch and our children were The Pups. Therefore, Faithful Dog, as he designated himself, obeyed Lord and Master and guarded and cared for The B*tch and The Pups. He was, as I said, a dear dog, and he didn't push his status, but he certainly didn't obey me. In fact, my experience with him has taught me a lot about how dogs think and how they interact in their hierarchy. Whenever I went for a walk, he'd inevitably follow. I could have tied him up but he looked so hangdog I usually got my husband to tell him to Stay. We used to call him "the follow dog". He lived to be seventeen, and he was devoted to the end.

The Follow Dog is the story of what might have happened if a dog like our Ace was transplanted to the city. In the book, a farming family, affected by the drought, leaves for a new life in the city, and take their dog with them. His farm life allowed for following, but the city life makes it dangerous. The family tries confining him, but the follow dog howls. In the end a solution has to be found and, believe it or not, all ends happily.

The Follow Dog came out in an English edition as well, and copies of each edition pop up second hand from time to time.

About the Blog

Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Under the Waterfall

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Under the Waterfall (Post 87)

Under the Waterfall (2003) is the story of a teenager named Corrie and a younger boy named Athen. As the blurb has it...
Someone is out to kill Corrie. Athen Bard offers to help her, but why does he look so much like her disabled brother, Ethan? Why does everybody but Athen despise her? If Corrie is to survive, she needs to solve the mysteries, fast.
Athen Bard is amazed to meet a strange girl who looks just like his dead sister, Corrayo. In the world of Sisterin, women rule and men are unimportant. How can Athen deal with a girl who says she comes from another world?

Corrie, like Eden Raven in Shadowdancers (which will turn up in a different post) is suffering survivors' guilt. She remembers feeling ill done by when she's in hospital after a car accident and her mother doesn't stay with her, but opts to be with her brother. No one tells her her brother is likely to die. Fast forward to a camping trip Corrie is reluctantly taking with the family. Ethan is disabled and Corrie can't help resenting the way her freedom is curtailed as a result. When their parents leave them in the campsite while they go for a walk, Corrie, tired of Ethan's slowness, swims into a pool under a waterfall just to have a minute to herself. When she emerges, Ethan and the campsite are gone. Corrie, wearing only her swimsuit, ventures into a world where nothing is the way it should be and then, in the distance, she sees a boy she takes for her brother.

In the land of Sisterin, Athen Bard is proud of his position in a society that doesn't value boys. He has worked hard and his mother, Mem, shows him a little more favour than is usual. Athen feels guilty because his wilful sister, Corayo, died in a carriage accident some time ago while he survived. When he meets a strange girl who looks just like his lost sister, he is puzzled and frightened.

Corrie and Athen try to discover the truth behind their apparent connection, but it seems someone, or something, is going to kill Corrie before they succeed.

Under the Waterfall is one of my alternative identity books with secrets and the past influencing the present. It asks questions about assumptions and heritage and is one of my own favourites. It's been available as an e-book since 2003 and will probably be available as a paperback in the future as the publisher is bringing much of the catalogue to print. Click here to buy.

As usual, some of my experience partly inspired this book. I once swam under a waterfall and found a haven of peace, and I too have spent time in a hospital (though I wasn't the one who was ill) and found it nearly impossible to get clear answers... or even a definitive ruling on whether a glass of water was permitted while we waited for attention.

If you're interested in the world of Sisterin and its places and language, go to this link to see the explanation I wrote several years ago before Waterfall (as it was originally called) was published.

About the Blog

Monday, 27 March 2017

Creature Cottage

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Creature Cottage (Post 86)

Creature Cottage (1999) is one of three books about a boy named Baker who has a dog named (naturally) Dozen. Baker is determined, logical and optimistic, and he always wins through in the end. In Creature Cottage, he has a school project to do on wildlife, but he ends up staying in a cottage which offers nothing in the way of lions, hyenas or even kangaroos but all too much in the way of millipedes and spiders. Baker's struggles to co-exist with the multilegged creatures while searching desperately for wildlife make up the comedy in the story. As you might guess, he finally realises the wildlife he needs has been under his nose (sharing the shower, traipsing across the ceiling, clinging to his clothes) since Day 1.

Creature Cottage is the result of my 1999 stay in a writers' cottage while working as a writer in residence in NSW. Between official engagements with school children, I spent my time at the writers' centre of a large university. This was the days before laptops were common, so I used the computer in the centre. It had dial-up internet. As other people used the computer during the day, I became nocturnal. Over the three weeks I was there (minus two days spent elsewhere where I had to buy summer clothes because it was a heatwave), I averaged 10,000 words a day of the sf project I'd nominated as my writer-in-residence major work. I would start work when the centre closed, and work through the night until about 6 a.m. when I'd drop into bed and sleep. As I'm fairly nocturnal anyway, this regime quite suited me. Unfortunately it was so cold I had to wear a cardigan and a shawl and have the heater on. (That's why the heatwave in the second venue was such a shock.)

When my hands started to swell, I assumed it was the cold. I had no idea this marathon keyboard stint, coming at the end of almost thirty years of typing, was the straw that broke the poor old camel and damaged my tendons (apparently) beyond repair. After I got home my hands continued to hurt, and within a few weeks I could barely write 500 words a day and couldn't keep a reliable grip on a teacup.

Eighteen years later, in 2017, my hands still hurt, but I've recovered enough grip and strength to be able to work pretty well. I'm now working at about 40% of the capacity my hands once had and I don't think it will ever get better than that.

Creature Cottage, though, is not to do with my hands. It's to do with the writers' cottage. On my first day there I was disconcerted to find it infested with millipedes. I had nothing against them, but there they were, in the shower, on my towel, in the bed, and crawling on the walls. I started picking them up and putting them outside, but there were so many of them I finally got desensitised. By the end of my tenure I was having at them with a straw broom every day, sweeping them off walls, down from the shower curtain and shaking them out of my towel. I'd sweep them vigorously out the door, and they'd roll up in protest, bowl along like little black balls, pick themselves up and trundle off into the garden. Mind you, they'd all be back in the morning. It was quite fun in its way, and at least I got a book out of it!

Now and then I think of that cottage and wonder if the millipedes are still in residence.

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Sunday, 26 March 2017

Good Night Truck

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Good Night Truck (Post 85)

Good Night Truck (2014) is a cheerful little picture book for children who are fascinated by vehicles. The child narrator greets each toy vehicle, (truck, digger, rocket, boat etc.) and proposes a suitable game, and then swings round to put each toy away for the night. Finally, the truck, clearly the child's favourite, is tucked into bed in the position more usually occupied by a teddybear.

I wrote this text when our grandson was small, because at the time he was fasicinated by all things vehicular and there seemed few bedtime stories of the appropriate level and subject matter. In the way of things, he was probably a little old for the book by the time it came out, but still, I dedicated it to him.

The pictures are bright and cheerful, with mild personification of the toys. The cover pictured is the US edition which is similar to the local one but which has shining stars. Good Night Truck is in print as of 2017 and can be bought in multiple places. This link is one of them.

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Saturday, 25 March 2017

Trinity Street

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Trinity Street (Post 84)

Trinity Street (1997) is one of my favourites. Shortly after it was published, I wrote an article called The Road to Trinity Street which was published in Viewpoint Magazine.

I still have the article, so I decided to reproduce it here. Bear in mind it's almost as old as the book it discusses.

THE ROAD TO TRINITY STREET
By Sally Odgers,

Science fiction is often seen as a masculine genre, a combination of violence, planets and whiz-bang technology. The best science fiction may have some of these aspects, but it will also include strong characters and provocative ideas.
Children's books are often seen as the soft option, the books you write if you’re not up to being a novelist. That might have been true once, but children's books came of age long ago, and now you'll find just as many strong ideas, just as much love and just as many tears in books for children or teenagers as you'll find in any modern adult novel.
There are two lessons in life that seem to me to be very hard. One is that sometimes it's impossible to tell right from wrong and that whatever you do, someone will be hurt. The other is that life isn't always a contest between good and evil, or morality and immorality, but between two different aspects of good, and two different faces of morality.
Is it moral to kill an unborn child simply because its birth would be an inconvenience?
Is it moral to expect a woman who has made a single mistake to carry a baby to term and then give it up for adoption?
Is it moral to expect a raped teenager to carry her child to term?
Is it moral to kill that child because its father is immoral?
Is it moral to preserve one badly damaged infant while a dozen genetically superior children are never allowed to be born?
Is it moral to nurse an injured murderer back to health and then hang him?
Is it moral to preserve the life of a brain-damaged person when his or her organs might allow dying children to live normal lives?
I don't expect any of you to answer these questions because I can't answer them myself. I don't see how anyone can answer them in absolutes. Perhaps the fairest thing to say is this. It all depends.
On the other hand, there are plenty of folk out there (and you might be one of them!) who believe implicitly that there is only one right answer to each of these questions and that that answer can and should be made. I might say; "don't impose your morals on me!”
If we all said that the result would be total anarchy with some of us believing in our absolute right to make our own decisions, no matter who else might be affected.
I feel very uncomfortable with these ideas, and so two years ago I set out to exorcise some of them by writing a novel. Yes, it's science fiction. Yes, it's for children (or teenagers, at least). Yes, it deals with some harsh subjects. But I hope it might make a stand as a plea for tolerance, as a forum for thought, and as a bloody good read as well!

The novel is called Trinity Street, and here's the way it came about.

For some time I had been wanting to write a science fiction novel about three characters caught up in a shifting relationship. Finally, in March 1995, I found myself a window of opportunity and made a start. I chose two girls and one boy as my protagonists, but I didn't want to write any variation on the traditional triangle, and I didn't want to write a teen romance. I wanted a story that would be both plot-and character driven.
I already had the germ of a plot in mind. I read a snippet that suggested the current trend which sees university-educated couples having few or no children might one day cause a drop in average world intelligence. To this I added my own theory that childhood immunisation may reverse the rule of survival of the fittest and leave our descendants with poorer natural health than we have now. Take this germ and add the following premise; what if our descendants made an effort to reverse these trends by persuading people with good health and superior ability to produce more children? And what if these genetically superior (HI-Q) children had trouble finding acceptance in the wider community of IQ-normals?
Having this skeleton of a plot, I named my major characters and chose their attributes to complement one another.

Girl 1. Estelle Clancy. Known as Tell.

Fifteen years old. Almost plain. Parents divorced.
Tell is the result of the clashing genes of a tidy, cool, perfectionist father and a warm-hearted, slapdash mother. She has inherited some character traits from each parent, with the result that "Tell was often at war with Tell. And unlike her parents, the two halves of Tell could not file a divorce and go their separate ways."
Salient characteristics include a strong organising/caring aspect, moderate intelligence and more than moderate tenacity. Tell is an excellent swimmer and will become a strong woman - if she lives that long.

Girl 2. Camena de Courcey.

Fifteen years old. Beautiful. Adopted as a baby, adoptive parents died when she was thirteen. Now lives with her elder sister's family.
Camena has a genius IQ, but is retiring and socially awkward. She suffers occasional migraines. She and Tell Clancy make an odd couple, but their friendship works because Tell loves to look after Camena and because Camena needs a visible friendship to help her feel and appear more normal. Camena has everything - and nothing. Almost everything about her is ultimately contra-survival.

Boy. Gerhardt Watchman a.k.a. DHQ #49. or Daichcue Forn.

Eighteen years old, but claims to be fifteen. Gerhardt is a child of the 27th century, the result of a breeding programme known as Donor HI-Q.
Trained from babyhood as a "recovery operative", Gerhardt's task is to travel back to the late 20th century and "recover" Camena de Courcey from the site of a potentially fatal accident so that her valuable genetic heritage won't be lost. His cover story is that he is a bodyguard sent by her unknown natural father to preserve her from a kidnap threat. Gerhardt is an expert at protective colouration, but although he appears to be an attractive and self-confident young man, his inner loneliness could destroy him.

Only later does the truth begin to emerge, and some of it is as much a shock to Gerhardt as it is to Tell. Camena never does learn the truth.
This slow disclosure to the reader involved Gerhardt in telling ...

(a) a cover story designed to convince Camena but leave Tell and the reader sceptical.
(b) what he himself believes is the whole truth, but which Tell doesn't accept.
(c) the whole truth as he finally learns it - a truth which destroys his trust in his own world and leads to Camena's apparent death. It also leads to exile for himself and for Tell.

Trying to remember how much each character knew at any given time, and which parts of their knowledge were "true" and which were distorted fact or complete fabrication, kept me on my mental toes throughout the ten weeks it took to write the novel. I covered pages with notes and memos to myself, and spent ages plotting and rewriting backwards whenever I got a better idea.
Every Yin needs a Yang, so I invented RI.P., an organisation trying to prevent genetic recoveries on the grounds that such interference was dangerous and immoral. Trying to present a fair case for the two opposing philosophies was a big challenge, and so was the creation of the three main characters. Each had to be flawed in some way, but each had to be attractive enough to involve the reader in their adventures.
The novel ends with Camena's apparent death, and with Tell and Gerhardt time-travelling to the future to escape both RI.P. and Gerhardt's foster-father/mentor. To return to Tell's time or to Gerhardt's will be the death of them, and they don't know which year they've reached. And - not only are they stranded on an island in the far future, but they're not even together! Only their telepathic link, Tell's habit of survival and their own strong faith in one another hints at a qualified happy ending.

A few examples follow;

Tell’s name. I wanted a name that could be unusual without being weird. Also a name that would hint at Tell's duality of character. Estelle is unusual but not odd. It means "Star". Tell on the other hand could mean either a story or a grave. My mother once had a friend called Estelle Douglas. Her nickname was Tell. My Tell's surname, Clancy, is borrowed from Clancy of the Overflow. It is also an Irish name, and hints at a strong streak of Celtish iron in Tell's character.
Camena de Courcey’s name comes from two different sources. I once met a girl called Camena when I was conducting school workshops. I asked her about it, and she told me it was a Tasmanian place name. I thought then how pretty it was and how well it fits with our usual naming stock. It also fulfils the criteria of being unusual without being overtly odd. de Courcey is the surname of the actor who played Howard in the wonderful series Archer's Goon, which I had seen on television.
Gerhardt Watchman’s name comes from a pun. He styles himself as Camena's bodyguard (a watch-man). Gerhardt is a German name which means - spear-brave. Gerhardt is certainly a fighter - in the end, and he has to be brave to make the final choice for himself and Tell. Many years ago I met a woman who named her baby son Gerhardt. I liked the name and saved it up in my files for ten years before I had cause to use it!
The season - I wrote the book in March and April and set it in the same period. That made it easier to check on background details.
The place - I set the novel in Tasmania, but chose a fictitious town which I called Cockatoo after a certain feathered friend of mine. Keeping to the bird theme, I named Kestrel Bay and Penguin Point. and the street names Corella and Galah and Sulphur.
Trinity Street. the site of Camena’s fatal accident, is the odd name out, and it reflects both my three major characters and the three faces of Gerhardt's "truth".

Camena's sister Lindall is named after a girl I knew twenty-five years ago, Jens who finally tells Gerhardt the harsh truth, is named after an acquaintance of my son's. Moss, Gerhardt's amoral foster father, is named for the low-growing, long-lived plant. Sib Moss, his rival, is also his twin sibling and her name reflects this.
Other bits of fact that wove their ways into my fiction;
Gerhardt plays patience - or a futuristic form of the game. I played a lot of patience while I was struggling with the plot!
Tell and Camena are in Year Ten at a Catholic college. My son was in Year Nine at the time so I was able to pick his brains for lessons and subject names. Gerhardt Watchman looks just like my son, but their characters aren’t alike.
Subjects I had to research included sail training vessels, PFDs, CPR, adoption laws, Mensa requirements, and chess. Which leads to the problem of writing about people who have qualities and talents that I lack!
Camena plays chess, but I don't know the rules, Tell is an excellent swimmer, but I'm only just adequate. Gerhardt and Tell are telepathic, I'm not. Camena is a genius and an adopted child, but I'm neither. On the other hand, Camena's feelings of detachment from normal social life and Gerhard's habit of clinging painfully to what he believes in the face of all the facts are perilously close to faults I wish I didn't have.
Trinity Street deals with some pretty harsh issues. Abortion, the right to life and death, responsibility to society, the problem of flawed and amoral characters - and (to me) the most difficult concept of all;

...that two opposing parties can each be equally convinced that their ways are the only way, and being convinced that their way is morally correct, they believe they have the right and the duty to impose that way on other people.

This then, was the writing of Trinity Street, which was accepted a year and a day after I submitted it for publication, and was published just over a year after that.

Okay, this is me again... the me of 2017, a good twenty years after this article was written. The book cover on the left is the German edition.

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Friday, 24 March 2017

Sallyo's Kitchen

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Sallyo's Kitchen (Post 83)

Sallyo's Kitchen (200?) is an oddity, even for me. For one thing, I'm unsure of the date. The only thing I can state with certainty is that it can't be earlier than 2007, because the photograph on the cover was taken when I went to a 2007 publishing Christmas party. An obliging guest at the motel I was staying at took the photo, and I recall keeping my stick-on name tag stuck to the velour dress was impossible.

So, what is the book? I originally amassed some of the material for an in-family joke gift called The Slut's Companion. I should add I was using the word in the older sense... that of a poor housekeeper. Over years of lackadaisical housekeeping I've discovered a few sidesteps and shortcuts that have served me well ever since. The rest of the material, which became the bulk of the book, is my own recipes.

At some point, I was invited to join a group of other writers who were producing free e-cookbooks as giveaways. I believe the organiser said this was an excellent way of advertising our commercial books, whether trad or e-pub. We were told these freebies typically got heaps of downloads. I already had the material, so I put this together quite quickly. I forget how many downloads it scored. Was it 2? 1? None? Anyway, I chalked it up to just another of those too-good-to-be-true ideas at the best and downright scams at the worst. If it was a scam though, I have no idea how anyone would benefit, as I seem to remember it was free all down the line. Anyway, I had some fun putting it together and I honestly have no recollection of who else was involved. I seriously doubt if any of us got any useful advertising out of it. Pity. It sounds as if it should have worked. It's possible I have the source file lurking in my hard drive so if anyone wants a freebie PDF let me know and I'll go hunting for it.

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Thursday, 23 March 2017

In Search of a Husband

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In Search of a Husband (Post 82)

In Search of a Husband (1997) is part of a series of three romances I wrote under the name of Tegan James. This was the first one. I originally called it Golden Lode which was the name of a property in outback Australia, but the editor felt most readers wouldn't get the thematic reference and decided on the other title. This always did seem odd to me as the main character wasn't in search of a husband at all. Her fiance had disappeared and she was none too pleased.

Rue Trevallyn is a fantasy photographer based on the Gold Coast. She's engaged to charming John Parrish, who is quite a few years older than she is. Shortly before their wedding, he goes off on business, promising to be back in plenty of time. He doesn't return. Rue, unable to contact him, goes in search and discovers his stepson, Marcus Graham who opines that if "old John" failed to return to marry Rue he must be in some kind of trouble. The two head off cross country following John's travels and get marooned when their four-wheel-drive gets bogged during an outback flood and falls into a ravine. After considerable hardship, they manage to track down John who has what he deems a perfectly reasonable explanation... They wind up on the property known as Golden Lode.

I wrote In Search of a Husband after a trip to Queensland where I spent a couple of days at Broad Beach, and saw a fantasy photography studio. That was a tale in itself, as I was invited to be one of a dozen or so authors at a Book Week function. I was invited so late I'm pretty sure someone else had pulled out. I never did find out.

This was the period when mobile phones were not especially common, but business people did tend to have them. They had a battery life of about eight hours. Mobiles have ruined many a classic plot, but I disposed of Rue's by chucking it down a ravine. I didn't notice until rather late in the day that I'd given Marcus the same name as an Australian actor. Oops. I own the rights to this book, the sequel, Mix and Match and the third one, Triple Treat. TT was never published, because the line was discontinued. I've considered self-publishing the whole three but I'd have to do them as period pieces (they're twenty years old) or bring them up to date, which would mean killing off a GPS and a few other electronic odds and ends... If I ever do, I'll probably restore my own title.

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Wednesday, 22 March 2017

The Children's Book of Australia

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The Children's Book of Australia (Post 81)

The Children's Book of Australia (2000) was a commission. Its format was based on another book called The Children's Book of America, and I think the idea was to produce a local version with a similar tone and range of stories. The book takes Australian icons, folk heroes and major events and puts them in terms that are entertaining and easy to read.

The major problem was deciding on what to include. Subjects needed to be clearly defined, with facts that weren't open to too much controversy or different interpretation. One of the parameters was to include the things the average lay person thinks of when considering Australia, and also to include things that would have continued relevance.

I made a list of things I recalled from primary school history and social studies, and from general reading. Then I read up some modern sources to get the late 20th C perspective. I discovered, as is often the case, that the things I and much of my generation "know" are inaccurate. I learned history from a 1950s and 1960s mindset. I soon found out that a lot of the heroes I remembered from childhood have been reexamined (or retconned) and now many of their actions are seen as foolish if not downright wrong. I found a few whose reputations had survived relatively unscathed, and tried to make up the balance with modern heroes and events. Again I ran into trouble. Our view of events is much less clear-cut than it used to be and one person's hero is another person's villain. Surely, I thought, sports people would be suitable. Yes... and no. I chose a few, and simply had to hope their names and reputations would survive untouched by tragedy and scandal.

This is not to mean I wanted a whitewashed version of history. I wanted a balanced view, not letting my 1999 social judgement see harm when none was intended, but not letting my 1960s erroneous "facts" be perpetuated. I thought then, and think even more now, that harm can be done by perpetuating errors and also by judging people of the past using our modern guidelines. Some people are wicked now and were wicked then. Some people intend harm now and intended harm then. Some people make the best call they can with the available knowledge and zeitgeist of their place and time. Some people intended good and did harm. History judges them good, wicked or misguided, but history has the benefit of hindsight. I think we need to pay them the courtesy of seeing their intentions and their situations as they saw them. The report card of the colonial age may well be Could Have Done Better. So could ours.

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Tuesday, 21 March 2017

The Mangrove Mystery

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The Mangrove Mystery (Post 80)

The Mangrove Mystery (2002) is one of the books I wrote under the pseudonym Joseph Corella. It's a bonsai novel, told turn about in First Person by thirteen-year-old Ruby and nineteen-year-old Oliver.
Ruby and her younger sister Gem are puzzled but pleased when their big brother Oliver invites them to visit him in Queensland. Their parents are not included, but that's okay, because Aunt Evie is invited as well. The girls marshal vague Evie through the flights and Oliver meets them at the airport.

Oliver, as he tells us, mentioned to Aunt Evie that she ought to visit him sometime. To his bewilderment, she took him up on the offer. Hastily, he invited his sisters along as well.

Unfortunately for Oliver, the girls are determined he is to keep his promise of taking them out in his boat. It keeps getting put off, but finally they corner him on their last day. There's plenty of time for fun on the Mangrove River before their plane leaves... right?
This is a comedy of family relationships. It's based heavily on fact, as the little problem that besets the voyagers on the river is the one that beset my daughter, me and my son when we visited him in Queensland. The river was actually the Bohle River The things Ruby sees are the things we saw. Rereading the book fifteen years on reminded me of details I had forgotten, but one of the most striking things is the way Evie is presented... at over sixty she seems more elderly than I would write her now. Hmm, maybe that has to do with my own current age!

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