Today is the day that The Wonderful Thing About Phoenix Rose lands out in the world for your to read. And to celebrate, I’m just going to leave you with this quote that my publicist just sent me and I have to say it has made my day.
Josephine is proving to be the go-to voice for warm, funny and vibrant stories – and this novel about a woman who is tasked with driving a car load of eccentric animals from Tasmania to Brisbane is an escapist’s dream!
With competitive jam makers, a variety of jam, The Ghan rail travel, the Australian outback, the Barossa Valley, Maggie Beer, four generations of women, IVF, grief and new beginnings… The Jam Queens covers quite a bit of territory. Here’s an introduction to some of the inspiration behind these elements.
The food
Deciding which food to pursue is never an easy task for me as there is an endless supply of wonderful foods to explore. I always research my foods as much as I can and I practise making them from scratch (e.g. tea, chocolate, cheese, cakes, jam), with the exception of coffee (in The Gift of Life), which requires a lot of specialised equipment (though I certainly watched talented craftspeople doing it).
My apricot and vanilla jam
I have to love the food in my story as it’s ‘the hero’. In order to write about it with enthusiasm, I need to pick a food I enjoy and and am fascinated with. (For all the wine lovers out there, I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet found enough enthusiasm for wine to take it on.) It was actually my husband who suggested jam and after initially thinking it was too limited, I began to wonder about the whole competitive jam making scene and its place in our modern world and that caught my attention. I taught myself to make jam from the internet and realised I would have to enter shows to truly understand the process. I entered the Royal Brisbane Show in 2019 with my strawberry jam and was delighted (and shocked!) to win first place in the novice category. It was a lot of fun and I got a little bit ‘hooked’ 🙂 I then entered my gluten free Persian Love Cake into the Noosa Show and won second place, and another cake into the Eumundi Show (which one first place) and if Covid hadn’t cancelled everything in 2020 I would definitely have gone back for more. (As an aside, the recipe for the Persian Love Cake is included in the back of The Cake Maker’s Wish.) There’s a lot to be said for country shows and their cookery competitions and there is still more I’d like to explore there in the future.
Location research
My foodie themed novels always come together from ‘the outside in’ and my setting is usually the first thing I decide on. I’m a strong world builder so I want to really know that world well, and that usually involves a research trip. For The Jam Queens, I travelled to the Barossa Valley in South Australia with my husband and young son back in 2017. I wasn’t certain about my food theme at that stage but I was interested in fruit and especially apples. (I’ve had an ‘apple book’ floating around me for years now that just hasn’t quite settled yet… One day I’ll get to it.) While in the Barossa, I was lucky enough to be invited to tour the Trevallie orchard with Sheralee Menz, who took me around the apples, pears and apricot trees on a freezing, windy and grey day. My poor sub-tropical Queensland hide was shaking incessantly but Sheralee charged on with enthusiasm and effortless grit. The highlight was seeing a tree there that was over one hundred years old, majestic and magnetic.
The Ghan
The idea of journeying on The Ghan came to me while I was driving the two hours home from a day trip to Brisbane, when it simply popped into my head. I think it must have swum up from the depths of my sub-conscious because my beloved Uncle Anthony had frequently mentioned his hope of taking the trip and it must have settled into me somewhere as a great bucket list item.
I mentioned it to my husband, who enthusiastically agreed and declared it done (he’s fabulous like that), and told me to take my sister. I have been lucky enough to take Amanda with me on nearly all of my research trips, including to the Cotswolds and to Italy, and she is the best travelling mate. We have a ball. Somewhere on that trip, we found our alter egos in Myrtle and Dolce and those two characters became the ones you find in the book. I adore Myrtle and Dolce and wish them a lifetime of wonderful journeys to come (and hopefully a book of their own!).
The teenage pregnancy
The character of Aggie is a forty-five-year old woman who had her first child when she was seventeen. The origins of that backstory came about because while I was promoting The Gift of Life, a friend came to see me speak and the bookseller mistakenly believed she was my mother. My friend has a great sense of humour and we had a good laugh while she mused what sort of teenage mum she would have been. I was in the early stages of playing around with the character of Aggie and I was inspired to explore this idea of teenage pregnancies. I watched many episodes of the reality TV show 16 and Pregnant and was rather horrified at how dreadful so many of the family members behaved towards the pregnant teen and how, in every episode, the pregnant teen was actually the one holding it all together while people all around her fell apart. From that, I knew Aggie would have been a good and capable mum, especially if she got the right support. I also knew it could be a cause of serious separation between her and her mum (Valeria).
The IVF journey
Early on in The Jam Queenswe discover that Aggie has been through IVF and now finds herself at a crossroads in that journey, along with her ex partner, Gideon. That particular storyline was specifically inspired by a Mamamia podcast called The Quicky, which provides daily news updates followed by a ‘deep dive’ into a particular issue. In this case, the issue focused on the unique position couples find themselves in when they have ‘leftover’ embryos and must decide what to do with them. I was really captivated by this, not having ever considered it before and wondering what I would do in that situation. I was especially interested to consider how a couple would work it out if they were no longer together.
These are some of the themes and issues The Jam Queens explores. Keep an eye out for my forthcoming post on Maggie Beer and how she made it into the novel too!
The Jam Queens is out 13 April 2021 and you can preorder now from all good books stores and online retailers.
Thrillers, romance, suspense, fantasy, contemporary, rural, memoir, historical and kids…. whatever you read, you’re sure to find something in this list, with plenty left over to fill your gift buying needs for a long time to come!
Here it is, the full list of 100 books up for grabs in the giant book raffle, raising much needed funds for flooding relief support for residents of Townsville and beyond. A huge thank you to all the Aussie authors who have donated their books to this cause and another round of applause to everyone who has already bought tickets in this competition. Your ticket money will be going straight to GIVIT, the charity coordinating the distribution of donations. You still have time to buy tickets, with 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes being drawn on Friday 29th March at 9am.
Without further ado… here they are.
Josephine Moon
Three Gold Coins + The Gift of Life + The Beekeeper’s Secret +
The Chooclate Promise + The Tea Chest
Monica McInerney
The Trip of a Lifetime
Lia Weston
Those Pleasant Girls
Rachael Johns
Lost Without You
Michelle Johnston
Dustfall
Michaela Daphne
Purlieu
Rachel Bailey
The Finn Factor
Liz Byrski
A Month of Sundays
Karen Viggers
The Orchardist’s Daughter
Michael Trant
Ridgeview Station
Christian White
The Nowhere Child
Annie Seaton
Diamond Sky
Lisa Ireland
The Shape of Us
Anna Campbell
A Scoundrel By Moonlight
Wendy J Dunn
Falling Pomegranate Seeds
Barbara Hannay
The Summer of Secrets
Kirsty Manning
The Jade Lily
Darry Fraser
The Widow of Ballarat
Tess Woods
Love and Other Battles
Anna Daniels
Girl In Between
Jane Gillespie
Journey to Me
S.D. Wasley
Downfall
Fiona Palmer
Sisters and Brothers
Vanessa Carnevale
The Florentine Bridge + The Memories that Make Us
Christine Wells
The Juliet Code
Helene Young
Return to Roseglen
Kali Napier
The Secrets at Ocean’s Edge
Michelle Endersby
Awakening Around Roses
Louise Guy
A Life Worth Living
Emily Madden
The Lost Pearl
Jodi L Perry
Nineteen Letters
Louise Allen
The Sister’s Song
Charlotte Nash
Saving You + The Paris Wedding + The Horseman
Donna Cameron
Beneath the Mother Tree
Kylie Ladd
The Way Back
Fiona Lowe
Home Fires
Sally Hepworth
The Family Next Door + The Mother-in-law
Jay Ludowyke
Carpathia
Lauren Charter
The Lace Weaver
Nene Davis
Whitethorne
Esther Campion
The House of Second Chances
Beth Prentice
Dangerous Deeds
Phillipa Nefri Clark
The Stationmaster’s Cottage
Eliza Henry Jones
P is for Pearl + Ache + In The Quiet
Rhonda Forest
Two Heartbeats
Lisa Ireland
The Shape of Us
Kelly Rimmer
The Things We Cannot Say + Before I Let You Go
Pamela Cook
The Crossroads
JoanneTracey
Happy Ever After
T.M. Clarke
Nature of the Lion +
(Child of Africa; and Slowly! Slowly!) (to go together)
Research is my happy place. I do extensive research for every book I write and it’s where I learn not just technical information but also start to find my character development, settings and plot points too. I get to travel within Australian and overseas for location research, which is a great gift. I interview people, spend hours on the internet, watch loads of YouTube videos and, inevitably, buy a lot of reference books. It is the phase where anything is still possible, ideas are still forming and excitement takes me back again and again for more.
My forthcoming novel, The Gift of Life, is based around organ donation, specifically, heart transplants. I love anatomy (I studied it for two semesters) and Biology was also my strongest subject at school and I then did another semester of it at uni. As a result, I loved brushing up on all my anatomy and physiology and researching the many causes and treatments of heart failure, some of which lead to the need for an organ donation. I even ended up at the cardiologist myself, as I have a long history of arrhythmias and, as I found out in my research, these can lead to heart failure! (Fortunately for me, the type I have appear to be uncomplicated.) My husband, too, also ended up at the cardiologist, then my mum went… It seemed like every time I turned around, ‘hearts’ were the theme of the day. One thing I learned through all this research was that we are all vulnerable to heart issues, which can come with a long list of complications, which can also lead to a need for a transplant. I really had no idea how common it was.
The amount of personal testimony I came across (both from the point of view of a heart transplant recipient and also from the family of those who had consented to the donation of their loved one’s organs) is significantly higher coming from the USA than it is Australia. This was both tricky–because the USA medical and legal systems are very different to ours–and also an opportunity to hear different experiences and voices from those who’ve gone through the process.
There is a wealth of videos on YouTube and I even came across one that showed a heart transplant operation. That one was a little tough to stomach, to be honest!
I interviewed two Australian heart transplant recipients, which was a fabulous opportunity to hear their stories firsthand. They were both very different people–he a middle-aged man with a wife, children and career–and she a young woman in her twenties with a long life ahead if only she could get the chance. Their experience of the process was vastly different too. The organ transplant process is a gamble at every stage: the illness, the waiting period, the operation, the recovery, the chances of rejection and ongoing complications.
In the end, I had way more information than I could use in the book, which is normal. The Gift of Life starts two years after Gabby McPhee had her heart transplant; therefore much of what I learned about the difficult, emotional waiting stage (and the ongoing physical rehabilitation and care through that period) had to be cut and left out; however, it’s all there in my mind, forming the basis to the background of Gabby’s psyche.
I also became really interested in the more silent half of the story–the experiences of the family members who make the decision to donate. These stories are harder to find, and understandably so, as their experience is rooted in trauma, shock and grief. But as a writer, that ‘silent space’ is the most interesting to me. The possibility of a new, untold story is the one I want to follow. The wealth of information I found on the other side (the recipient’s stories) served to highlight a gap in the narrative that, when voiced through the character of Krystal Arthur, fleshed out the full circle of life.
I loved researching this book. It was utterly fascinating from beginning to end.
I’ve been asked a lot of questions lately on my thoughts on lots of writing topics so it only seems fair that I should share them here with you as well. Today’s topic is about swear words–how to use them, when to use them, how many of them to use, their validity etc.
‘I’m telling you, that Darcy is a $%*!@! and he can go and $#*&*&! himself!’
Here are my thoughts on this.
The first time I read a Jane Austen novel, I was utterly blown away by the depth of disgust, contempt, jealousy, rage and hatred she could portray and never a swear word was spoken. I always keep that in the back of my mind when writing and I try to hold myself to higher standards than I set in my real life.
In my life, I swear. But every year I try to stop (clearly, it’s a work in progress) because my feeling is that, basically, it’s lazy and unnecessary. And, also, any moment now my toddler will begin saying the same words back to me. Which is interesting, isn’t it? We all know we shouldn’t swear around children and we’re alarmed when we hear a five-year-old spouting off a litany of words that make us blush. But somehow the rules change as adults?
As I get older, fewer swear words appear in my writing. I will use them sparingly for impact where I feel it’s validated. But I think there are so many more ways to show character other than via swear words. The way they act and, of course, what they think, is arguably more important. As a writer, I feel it’s my job to dig deeper. If I’m relying on lots of swear words then maybe I haven’t gotten down to the true crux of what I’m trying to say. If I see a swear word in my manuscript, then I ask myself if that is really what’s necessary there or whether I just haven’t worked hard enough.
This is precisely why I write books: to make people feel good.
Books like (legal) brownies for all!
I love this story. From May this year, ‘Books on Prescription’ will begin in the UK, with doctors able to ‘prescribe’ a book to assist a patient and improve their mood. The books include both non-fiction and fiction, as well as poetry. It’s also hoped the scheme could help the struggling libraries. Win-win. How wonderful!
In the first couple of months after my baby was born, life was pretty insane in our house. Something I missed the most was reading and it was only when I began to learn how to get the reading time back into my life that I started to feel normal again. I always read before going to sleep, something that’s a very powerful mood producing activity for me. I literally feel stressed if I don’t have a good book nearby to delve into.
But it has to be the right kind of book. For me, there’s no point in reading something angst-ridden, violent, negative, sarcastic or miserable in order to feel better. Uplifting, comforting, engaging and fun–that’s what I want to read and that’s what I want to write.
My contemporary fiction novel, The Tea Chest, about three Australian women thrust together in a bid to sell tea to the English, will be out in 2014. And if you’re looking for something to make you feel good (a book that reads like a chocolate brownie tastes) then it might just be the book for you.
