Fiona Stocker's Blog, page 2

There are great places to eat and drink in the Tamar Valley – if you know where to look. In a recent feature article in a national newspaper, a prominent chef shared his pick of the Tamar – including places on the central north coast. Bizarre.

Below are the places we like to go, and the ones we recommend to guests we have staying with us here at Langdale Farm. These places are definitely here in the valley – ranging from fine dining to simple but scrumptious, and quick bites. The Tamar is semi-rural, and we recommend you plan ahead, check opening hours, and make bookings to avoid disappointment, especially for dinner. The following spots are our favourites, in strict order of preference. Yes, I’ve played favourites.

Timbre Kitchen 

Our top pick, by a country mile. Definitely book ahead, it’s popular and rightly so. Owner Matt Adams is the former head chef of Josef Chromy’s restaurant. His own restaurant Timbre is fine dining, with an ever changing menu of seasonal foods. Matt sources and buys ingredients locally, sometimes from backyard growers. There’s a brick oven, a fire pit out front, and it’s all very unpredictable, in the best possible way. Inventive, creative, delicious food that will just occasionally blow your socks off. Great wines from Velo to wash it all down with. Find Timbre at Velo Winery, about twenty minutes south down the Tamar valley.  Check opening hours, and book ahead. Die regretting it if you don’t.

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Iron Pot Bay Vineyard

Chef Sam Adamson is a local treasure and a genius at combining flavours. She and vineyard owner Julieanne offer a small but delicious menu, and it’s one of the best spots for lunch in the valley. The Moroccan lamb pie in filo pastry is the stuff of local legend, and so good we tried to replicate it at home.  Be sure to do a tasting of the vineyard’s wines, all made by master winemaker Jeremy Dineen of Josef Chromy Wines. We like the sparkling. You’ll find Iron Pot Bay at Rowella, about 25 minutes north in pretty landscapes near the upper reaches of the river.

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River Cafe

On the face of it, a modest cafe. But in-house chefs and an owner committed to using local produce make for a better class of laid back lunch. Everything’s made in house, from the cakes to the dukkha which makes for inventive dishes and everything from seafood platters to great salads.  There are regional Tamar Valley wines to choose from too. Dog friendly on the deck and recommended for a long, lazy lunch overlooking the water. About 20 minutes north of Langdale Farm on the waterfront at Beauty Point.

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Tamar Valley Wine Centre

This place opened at Christmas 2018 but the owner Adrian is a long-time local. He’s lived here for donkey’s years and he knows what the Tamar needed. And that’s a wine bar with a relaxed feel and great food. The place stocks wine from every one of the vineyards around the Tamar and some beyond. And the menu offers simple lunches for an agreeable price tag, and fancier fare for the evening. The platters are great, feature local produce, and every so often you’ll come across a tiny treasure – like the chef’s own pickled grapes. We don’t get out much but we’ve been there at least a half dozen times since this opened. Who knew we were that sociable?

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Rosevears Hotel 

Our local waterfront tavern with regional beers and wines, open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner. On a good day, it’s top notch pub food, with different menus at lunch and dinner time. On a bad day, they’ve changed chefs, the meals all come on different plates, tiles and boards, and your child will eat pasta sauce that taste like something from a tin. It’s Russian Roulette but if you don’t mind taking a chance, it could pay off. We’ve eaten really well here. The platters have been great, and the pork belly sumptuous. Ask for a window table for river views, and there’s an art gallery up the back. Twenty minutes drive away heading south at Rosevears.

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Elmslie

Elmslie is in a lovely old homestead up on a rise overlooking the river. It’s an elegant position and they do elegant weddings – that gives you some idea of the style of the place. There’s a simple but nice menu for lunches, and they do scrumptious teas and desserts. Very nice tucker. Open for lunch and teas but not dinner, and about 20 minutes south down the Tamar highway at Legana. Be sure to check in for a wine tasting and a yarn or two from David at Beautiful Isle Wines – the cute and tiny cellar door in a chapel is to the right of Elmslie’s front door.

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Riley’s on the River

At Paper Beach, fifteen minutes from us down on the river at Paper Beach, a popular local walking spot, dog friendly. It’s a tiny but cosy spot for morning or afternoon tea, or a light lunch. Think pasties and quiches, and great coffee. The cafe is dog friendly too with water bowls and dog treats. ​

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Stillwater

Well worth the trip into town, this is one of Launceston’s landmark restaurants and winner of a major Renault fine dining prize the year after it opened in 2000. We had oyster shots there a few years back and we’re still talking about them. Chef and co-owner Craig Will is talented and trophied, sommelier James Welsh has won the Gourmet Traveller best wine list of Tasmania for three years in a row for Stillwater and showcases the best of the Tamar Valley and Tasmania’s wines. Our pork was cooked for a private function there and was to-die-for. These people are the best. Highly recommended.

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Geronimo Aperitivo Bar & Restaurant 

Owner Jeremy Kode wasted no time in making his mark on the dining scene of Launceston with this uber-stylish bar and restaurant when he returned from an international career in hospitality a few years back. An outstanding menu featuring local produce and unsurpassed bar serving cocktails and all manner of wines and spirits of premium quality, from the region and further afield. This is the place that brought share plates to little ol’ Lonnie, and we’re still thrilling now. See our blog post about Geronimo for further reading.

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[image error]Alex Atala (centre) visiting Flinders Island in Tasmania – photo by Chris Crerar

The seventh best chef in the world is in need of a smoke. Alex Atala’s restaurant DOM in Sao Paolo has occupied a doughty spot in the World’s Best list for fifteen years. Now he’s come to Tasmania as the last guest in the 2018 Great Chefs Series, which sees international names working with students from TAFE colleges.

I’m meeting him at Josef Chromy Winery, where he will mastermind a seven course dinner for almost two hundred diners, working alongside the students and staff there. I’m at the tail end of his press call, and he’s heading for the patio, rolling his own as he goes. He’s smaller and more wiry than he appears on film, and looks as though he could handle himself in a fight. ‘You like to be outside?’ I gesture obligingly.  He answers with gravelly South American vowels and a maximum wattage smile, fixes me with brown spaniel eyes and a firm handshake, greets me by name. His manner is insanely genial and completely absent of ego. I am immediately smitten.

What does one ask a man who is credited with bringing native Brazilian cuisine on Michelin starred plates and is also, as evidenced by Instagram, a scary ju-jitsu master, in ten minutes? Why do you put a single gold encrusted ant on top of your desserts? And has somebody warned you about Tasmanian jack-jumpers?

We settle onto patio benches and I place my business cards before him. I’m a freelance writer but also a farmer, and I want him to know this. Atala is a respecter of farmers. He sees our logo, a Saddleback pig, and falls into a rhapsody about the Italian Cinta Senese, also rare and black with a white saddle. ‘And they are very famous to do Lardo Colonatta,’ he says, referring to the Tuscan tradition of cured back-fat. My husband makes that and leaves it in jars in my fridge, I tell him, and we chuckle companionably. We have found common ground, over lard. He lights up.

One of his guiding principles, I’ve read, is that mise en place and all ingredients begin on the farm and in nature. So what is in his mise en place today? ‘Everything that I taste and experience here,’ he says. ‘I bring a few ingredients from Brazil of course, but we come with open mind.’

In Brazil, he works with Amazonian tribes, has taken the native ingredient of manioc and the staples which derive from it – stocks, sauces and flour – and plated high art made from them. For the past three days he has been shown the pickings of farms, land and sea in Tasmania and will now show, he explains in his charming and workmanlike English, that ‘even if we was in the opposite parts of the world, a recipe can put the strengths together in harmony.’  His simple aim tonight is to show Australian people ‘the deliciousness of my country, and also the possibilities that you guys have’.

Visiting a venison farm the previous day, he was struck by the deep consideration the farmer showed for his livestock. ‘The way that the man treat the animals, even to the death, to the abattoir, that is someone who really respect the animal.’ This is at the heart of good farming. Every farmer knows it, and Atala knows it too. ‘That really touch me,’ he says, his voice quiet with emotion. Told that everyone wants back-strap because it’s the best cut, he took the back leg instead, had the students remove all the membranes, and will serve venison tartare as an appetiser.

[image error]Farmer Michal Frydrych with chef Alex Atala. Photo by Chris Crerar

Is there a balance between giving people food they will be excited by, and also making them think about its origins, I want to know. It turns out this is why he puts ants on the menu. The indigenous people of the Amazon make a soup from ants. As a city born boy, he found it as confronting as the rest of us when first he tried it. But convinced of the need for us to change the way we feed the world, he is well on board with the idea that insects may figure large in our dietary future. Getting us to think about food origins and futures is his mission in life. ‘This is a commitment that a chef can take nowadays. Because chefs maybe are the strongest voice in the food chain.’

There are pauses as he expounds his theory, his gaze  combing the landscape as he brings his argument together. Whilst he’s on social media, he holds no truck with it, and sees food as the original, powerful connector. Facebook, he says, has a billion and a half users. He leans in. ‘But what connects seven, eight billions on planet earth, is food.’ He sees food as a leveller. ‘I’m not impressed, that many peoples in my country never taste my food, or the ingredients that I use.’ What scares him, he says, and ‘froze his heart’ is that people are so disconnected from food that they may not recognise something so fundamental as an orange tree without its fruit. ‘I’m not talking about something fancy, I’m talking about something which has been introduced in our life since we was a kid,’ he says. People are disconnected from food, he says, and if chefs are the strongest voice, it’s up to them to make the reconnection.

Unsurprisingly, the single thing he wants most to pass on to the students this week is respect for the ingredient, whatever that may be. On Flinders Island a day or two before, he has been spear fishing and caught crays, taking only as many as were needed for those assembled for dinner. Nothing should be valued more than the food that we take from nature. ‘Our culture gives lots of value to money. We have been educated to accumulate goods and money and so many didn’t throw away any single coin. Why we throw away food? Why we disrespect that animal who pass away?’

His conscience and concern extends beyond this fundamental respect for what is provided, to our squandering of the environment. Flinders is ‘the only single place on the planet’ that he has seen completely free of plastic waste, and he is blown away by this. ‘Once you have the opportunity to walk on the shore, or go diving, or go to the bush and hunt, with no plastic, no cans, no garbage, this give you a new point of view of the food that you’re going to put inside of you.’

[image error]Alex Atala visits Flinders Island – photo by Chris Crerar

We’ve already been allowed eleven minutes instead of ten by Christopher McGimpsey, architect of the Great Chefs Series. ‘No no no, ta ta ta!’ Atala interjects, grinning as McGimpsey tries to round things up. ‘We have time!’ As we stroll up the path towards the restaurant, he seems in no hurry and I could easily spend the afternoon shooting the breeze and smoking with this humble, thoughtful man. We take in the slopes of the vineyard together. And then he’s inside, surrounded by the pack, being buttoned into pristine chef’s whites. But as someone ties him into his apron from behind, his brown eyes gaze past us all, still fixed on the landscape.

The next morning he’s at Harvest Launceston farmers’ market. It’s always the same when a big chef visits the market, a constellation of managers, minders and food critics drifting past with the sun at the centre. We’ve already seen Brearley and Lethlean orbiting, sourdough baguettes tucked nonchalantly under one arm. Fully expecting our farm stall with its pork sausages and farm-smoked bacon to be passed by in favour of sexy cultured butter and Leatherwood honey, I’m lining up a word with Atala’s sous chef through a translator. Then he sees me – we’re reunited! Arms are thrown wide, husky greetings given, my name remembered and my hand kissed solicitously. Then he scampers over to our stall to seduce my husband as well. ‘Ah, the man who make lard!’ There’s a rattle of Portugese as he shows his sous chef the pictures of our Saddlebacks. Then it’s English again as we ask how dinner went, and he tells us about the lamb dish, ‘a kind of puree, with the brain, and we used the saddle, and the kidneys.’ It was, he says ‘very animal’. We have mere moments before he is swept away, because Bruny Island awaits. But like the highest of ambassadors, he carefully shakes both our hands again, gives a Namaste bow to my twelve year old son. I want to come to Brazil and eat at DOM, I tell him. ‘Please, come!’ he commands, grinning. And then, this ambassador for a nation’s cuisine, this protector of our food chain, like a shooting star, he is gone.

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This piece was commissioned by an Australia publication and remained unused as they are ‘deluged with material’. Such is the way in freelance journalism. Still, my thanks to Christopher McGimpsey, for this glimpse of greatness, it was an unforgettable experience, for us all. 

Last year when my book was in the final stages of edit, three men in my writers’ group told me they would not buy it because it had the word ‘wife’ in the title.

To put their remarks in context, we were having a discussion about the title, and whether I should change it. An old school friend had told me he thought the ‘gender stance’ was ‘open to question’ in 2018. It was an authorial position that the market and my readership should not demand, he said.

After much thought, and a certain amount of stewing, I’m not convinced. Women are great readers of books about other women. And men bloody well should be too. (Some are, of course, but I’m still stewing.)

Apple Island Wife was nine years in the making – many drafts, the bottom drawer, a year of crowdfunding, edit and design with a digital-age publisher Unbound.

It’s a travel memoir, about our first five years in Tasmania after moving there on a hunch. Think Driving Over Lemons, think River Cottage (better hair and glasses.) The trick with this genre, as Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, Sarah Turnbull and Chris Stewart know, is that it’s full of humanity and tales that any reader can relate to easily. Ostensibly, it’s about the author. But at its heart the best memoir is self-deprecating, observant and reflective. It’s about life as we know it, Jim.

My book is light and deliberately commercial. I wanted a readership. It also goes a little deeper, on things in women’s lives that often go unspoken, and which can make us feel isolated. So yes, there are funny stories about learning to interpret what your alpaca shearers are saying (‘Ave you got them drenches ready?’). About having a bra fitted in a country department store. And there are reflections on how women struggle to hang on to their sanity sometimes, in a world where they’re expected to work, raise the family, keep the house, support the husband’s business and be everything to everybody. Common themes in many people’s lives.

I’d be naïve not to realise that these were issues that women think about more than men. But if you’re a father, a husband, or a teacher of people, then I suggest that all of these issues, including the important one of how women and men rub along together, concern you at some level.

To hear those three men in my writers’ group invoke a blanket-rule counting my book out on the basis that it had ‘wife’ in the title, seemed like incredibly reductive thinking. Frankly I was agog. And a little insulted.

Thankfully there was another man at the table, who had been with the group longer and seen my long journey to publication. He spoke up. In his view, the term ‘wife’ had more levels of meaning in a rural environment. To him it meant a woman running a farming operation, and keeping a household, a business, a family and a community together. I know this to be true. The rural women I know, most of them wives, some of them widows, liaise with suppliers, feed teams of harvesters, manage relationships with banks, drive tractors and muster cattle. They’re awesome.

The urban wives I’ve known, it has to be said, are just as formidable . They manage their homes – something people used to have staff for, let’s remember – they partner in businesses, hold down jobs, liaise with schools, raise the leaders of tomorrow, pack lunchboxes, organise events and calendars, and basically run a small-scale logistical and catering operation for their family. In the corporate world, this role is known as Chief Operating Officer and it’s highly paid and valued.

Clearly the word ‘wife’ does not conjure any of these things for those three men. For them it conjures notions of light reading chick-lit which is not serious or weighty enough for them.

This discussion made me prick up my ears generally about how women and men choose books. A couple of weeks later, on a podcast of the BBC Radio program Open Book, I heard a bookseller say that male customers in his shop who ask for a book recommendation frequently say they don’t read books by women.

For the majority of my reading life, in my twenties, thirties and forties, I’m not aware that I’ve ever excluded choices in this hard-and-fast gender-related way. I have never discriminated against a book because it’s written by a man, or because it appears to be about men, or women. I’ve read The Hypnotist’s Husband, Too many Men, About A Boy, The Kitchen God’s Wife, Girl on a Train, Gone Girl and Girl With A Pearl Earring with nary a thought for who’s wearing the trousers in them or whether that matters.

However, the longer I thought about it, the more I had to give some ground. Because my reading habits have changed, and I do thing about gender.

When I was in my twenties and doing what I now consider my ‘serious reading’, I read the greats. Amis, Chatwin, McEwan, Carey (unsuccessfully), Irving and Styron. Those are all blokes. But I also read Atwood , Paretsky, Winterson, Byatt and Tan. They all stood me in good stead and I absorbed their fascinations, their genius, their wit, erudition and skill, and used it as best I was able to hone my own writing.

But now, things are different. I’m in my fifties, and life is busy. I have two teenage children and ten years of working life left in which I must wring myself dry in order to get those children through college and feather my nest for retirement. I’m spread thin. And at the end of the day, I no longer want the great greats, I want the other greats — the ones writing slightly intellectual escapism. And that’s all the clever ladies — Niffenegger, Atkinson, O’Farrell.

These women are my go-tos because I know I can rely on them to give me what I want — high quality, brilliantly written fiction.

What I don’t do, because it’s wrong, is have a blanket rule, and turn down all male authors. When the latest Winton is on all the stands in the bookshops, I’m definitely going there. I gave Lee Child a shot lately because I was sick in bed and he was easy, and because he’s everywhere on the radio. The Jack Reacher series was okay. I stopped at four, because they’re hyper-violent. And nowhere near as witty or culturally sharp as Kate Atkinson.

Perhaps women writers give women readers what they want, and perhaps it’s a world in which women are front and central. Why would I read a John Le Carre in which the women are stereotypes and bit-part players, whores, housekeepers and secretaries, when I can read Stella Rimington, former boss of MI5 and now successful novelist, writing novels about Liz Carlyle who’s a crack spook and also interested in shoes?

And this is where I find I’ve painted myself into a corner. I’m making book choices that are relevant to me. So I have to begrudgingly accept that those three men in my writers group are doing the same. They won’t read my book because they have instinctively figured out that it’s written with women in mind (which it is), and they probably won’t enjoy the jokes about breastfeeding. (They won’t.)

I still find myself wondering at a blanket refusal to expose themselves to the world that women writers conjure, and women occupy.

I fear chick lit has a lot to answer for here. All those subliminal messages that publishers have developed to signal ‘book for ladies’ have spread like a contagion, apparently set some men’s minds against us and our ‘softer’ experience of the world, and perhaps even cross-infected other genres and books by women as a whole.

I guess this can only be true if you consider ‘chick lit’ to be a contagion. I’m not completely sure where the boundaries of chick lit lie but suspect I’ve read some and enjoyed it. I thought some was a bit lightweight, but then I also think Roth is too miserable to be born, Rushdie is unreadable guff, and Peter Carey is only any good when his ex-wife edits him. Just because you’re in the ‘serious literary’ annals doesn’t make your book more worthy. It doesn’t even make it good, in my view. There are plenty of men and women writing and reading both literary and commercial fiction, and whether it’s good or not has nothing to do with the author’s gender.

If you can accept that chick lit is not somethign to be ashamed of writing or reading, then you can see that it discusses heavy duty subject matter in an approachable way. Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies is about domestic violence. In The Break, Marian Keyes makes a persuasive case for the legalisation of abortion in Ireland.

At a later meeting of my writers’ group, one of those three men offered a copy of The Girl On The Train as a giveaway. Had he read it, we asked? No, no, no. He shook his head as if swatting away an irritating fly. Or a preposterous idea. “My wife has. But no, I won’t,” he muttered. I was trying to get comfortable with my new and still tenuously held belief that it’s okay for men and women to choose books that play to gender. I couldn’t help wondering what he was saying about his wife?

Then he offered another book by a local, self-published author — a man — and sung its praises to high heaven. Now, I wouldn’t read that book because it’s self-published. Perhaps you’ll say I’ve got my own prejudices then. But I’ve never read a self-published book that is worth its salt. It wouldn’t hold a candle to anything by Marian Keynes, that’s for sure.

Later in the meeting he expounded the view that ‘You’ve got to read Kafka at least once in your life.’ At that point I found myself getting a bit twitchy about intellectual posturing and pompous twaddle.

If a man excuses himself so comprehensively from exposure to a book written by or apparently for women, if he’s thinking it won’t be up to his expectations, he has a perfect right to do so. But I still think he’s making an unacceptable statement by invoking a blanket rule. And he shouldn’t make that statement out loud.

If Alexander McCall Smith changed The №1 Ladies Detective Agency to something less ladylike, would he reach a wider audience?

Should Chaucer have forgone The Wife of Bath and gone for The Person of Non-Disclosed Gender of Bath, so as to appeal more to your average bloke in the Middle Ages?

If Audrey Niffenegger had written Henry the Time Traveller as gay with a long-suffering partner called Claude, would my gentleman friends at writers’ group have at least heard of her? (They’re no longer my friends, by the way, I’ve resigned.)

The conclusion I’ve reached after my stewing is that it’s okay to think about gender when choosing books, the author’s gender and that of the characters. But it’s not okay to make a blanket rule about what gender author you will read. Exceptions should occasionally be made. And I might be wrong, but I thought what was expressed at that writers’ group meeting was low level misogyny passing itself off as intellectualism.

According to the reviews, my book is read mostly by women, but also by some men, presumably quite broad-minded ones. And by one treasured reader called Di, who said on Goodreads: “I encourage everyone to read this book, and especially men. It’s for everyone, and I really think it gives insight into life and, gentlemen, maybe into the women in your lives.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Fiona Stocker is the author of Apple Island Wife — Slow Living in Tasmania. She is also a wife, mother, freelance writer and occasionally a pig farmer.

Chosen with care and a canny feel for what a person enjoys reading, a book is a great gift for Mother’s Day – or any other day and any of the special peeps in your life.

I lean towards British writers rather than Australian and I hadn’t really considered how many Australian female writers I might be reading – or not – until I stumbled across the Australian Women Writers’ Challenge.   It was a relief to find, on going through my books on Goodreads, that I’ve read quite a few Aussie ladies.

And so here for Mother’s Day or any other time you’re looking for a good book by an Australian woman, is a few I’d recommend, and one or two which are on my TBR list.

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Evie Wyld – All the Birds, Singing 

If I could be any writer other than myself, I’d be Evie Wyld. Actually I’d rather be Evie Wyld as she’s more successful. She also works in an eclectic bookshop in Notting Hill, and is brilliant.

I stumbled upon this, a work of some strangeness and a sense of distance. The narrator is both troubled and in trouble. The setting is far-outback Australia in the early part, and then an island, we’re never  quite told where – somewhere off Scotland possibly. There’s great imagination at work in creating a sense of threat, and later of hope. Shortly after I discovered this and proclaimed her as one of the greats to all my reading buddies, she won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Very gratifying. Intensely readable and lyrical.

 

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Lily Brett – New York 

An upbeat choice. Lily Brett writes the perfect essay. These were written for a magazine, so they’d have to be spot on. Covering a bizarre aspect of her life, her personality, or telling some anecdote, they all have her signature dryness, slightly off-kilter way of looking at life, and occasionally a point of piercing clarity to make. Very satisfying. Everything from the hairdresser telling her she looks like Cher’s mother, to waving madly at a young man on a bicycle on Long Island, and realising later it was a member of the Kennedy family hoping for some privacy.

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Maggie MacKellar – Core of My Heart, My Country 

I read this as inspiration upon taking on the job of writing a history of Tasmanian Women in Agriculture. If every you think we women have it hard after the post-modern feminist revolution, this is the book to dip into. Awful tales of  giving birth on beaches and trekking for weeks through impenetrable rainforest in mountains to claim land, having one pregnancy after another until finally karking it out of sheer bloody exhaustion. Not cheering, but salutary, and one of those important Australian works. A great choice for someone who loves Australian history.

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Caroline Overington – I Came to Say Goodbye 

A tightly, skilfully written book which I read in two gulping takes overnight – so compelling it kept me awake. Unheard of!! It uses the voice of a couple of characters as they give an account of themselves to a judge in the family court. It’s an unusual device and managed with complete conviction. I’ve found out recently that Overington is a journalist, and I’m thinking that’s why she’s nailed the particular detail of the story so well. It’s a downward spiral for its characters, and not exactly cheery, but it keeps hooking you in. A great read for somebody who likes drama with a real-life, gritty feel.

 

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Robyn Davidson – Tracks

One of the seminal travel memoirs. I even recall seeing it on the shelf at Stanfords of Covent Garden where I bought it – and that was in the 1980s. Everything about this book inspired my wanderlust and convinced me that a woman can do exciting and unpredictable things with her life and live to tell an amazing tale. Twenty five years later I’ve watched the film with my children and it’s no less an enthralling story. Robyn Davidson is a one off, a maverick. We should all have one book like this in our lives reminding us what can be if we live without fear, and with an endless sense of curiosity. 

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Karenlee Thompson – Flame Tip 

A curious confession. I haven’t read this. But Karenlee Thompson entered one of her stories into the Tasmanian Short Story Competition when I was a judge and I fought tooth and nail for it to win. It didn’t, but it should have – it was by far the best entry. It floored me with its imagination. Beautiful, forceful writing, and huge originality and flair in the structure – that was the key. Three different endings. I’ve no doubt her collection is just as outstanding, and I’d compare her to Audrey Niffenegger for originality. Must get me a copy.

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Hannah Kent – Burial Rites 

A bit of an old favourite by now, but deserving of perpetuity. It reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s Amazing Grace, inevitable I suppose. A woman is condemned for murder, caught up in a bad situation, and the tale is a sympathetic account from her point of view. The internal dialogue that Kent writes for Agnes when she is at her most desperate is deeply good, as is the descriptive writing – not overdone, just perfect in conveying the grief of the character. Very strong sense of character and place. Wonderful writing and storytelling. A great choice for those who like a good plot and story with literary flair.

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Maggie MacKellar – When It Rains 

Maggie’s second instalment on this list! This is her very personal memoir of a time in her life that few of us could imagine but most of us would fear. To lose a husband in the worst of circumstances and be left to rebuild. Maggie does it the way she knows best, by retreating to country New South Wales for solace and a chance to heal. One of those books that goes deep. A great gift for any woman in your life who’s a thinker and feeler.

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Sarah Turnbull – Almost French 

Completely delightful. An Australian woman falls in love with a Frenchman and moves to Paris. Cue months of struggling to fit in and adjust, and a very honest account of being a fish out of water, looking for work and friends. There’s pathos and humour in here and account observation with a lovely self-effacing tone of the unlikely overlap of two cultures and a sense of wonder that they should ever have been attracted to each other. Summed up in an early scene when her partner-to-be invites her to lunch in his flat and proceeds to lay the table impeccably with fresh flowers and napkins, and serve a lunch he’s cooked himself, while wearing a pale yellow cashmere jumper around his shoulders and tied casually in a knot at the front. As one who is surrounded by Australian men, I can vouch for the impact this would have .Turnbull was and SBS journalist, and so she’s an extremely competent writers, and this is a fine example of the clash-of-culture type travel memoir.

Some silly cow has written a hatchet style review on Goodreads. Ignore that.

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M L Stedman – The Light Between Oceans 

I confess I didn’t like this as much as I expected to based on the way people raved about it. I found it very cinematic but in a Hollywood way – too ready to pull on my heartstrings in a fairly obvious way. BUT, as the days wore on and I wondered what we’d say about it at my book club, I found myself reflecting on the way one or two of the characters were constructed, the clever and complex dynamics between them, the originality of the story, and the way the effects of the second world war were woven into the story so poignantly. I still find it a tiny bit trite in places, but I can see why it has a reading. The obvious choice for women you know who love an epic love story with ‘bestseller’ written across the front cover.

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Liane Moriarty – The Hypnotist’s Love Story 

This is a safe bet as a gift. Everyone seems to love Liane. Because she’s very diverting. This is not marvellous literature, but it’s a really great story that keeps you hooked in, and what I liked most about it is that it’s really well researched and there is fascinating detail on hypnotism – as a therapeutic art. I’ve read a couple more Moriartys after this and they are a mixed bag. I’d say this is one of the better ones. If you were going to wrap up a bundle of three as a gift, this would be a great one to include.

 

About the author

Fiona Stocker is an author and occasional farmer. She lives in the West Tamar Valley in Tasmania with her family, a retired sheepdog, a cat called Charlie and around forty-five Berkshire pigs. Her travel memoir Apple Island Wife – Slow Living in Tasmania was released by Unbound last year. 

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“It reminded me of two writers memoirs in particular – Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons and Annie Hawes’  Extra Virgin (and of their sequels). Apple Island Wife deserves, I think, to be just as widely read.”     Fi Cooper, Make Walk Read. 

“Apple Island Wife is both heart-warming and hilarious. Filled with raw, honest real-life accounts of trying to attain the good life fuelled with a pioneering spirit and a positive attitude. Compulsive reading for anyone who has ever thought they are not living the life they should!”    Steven Lamb, River Cottage ​

People ask me whether my book is selling well. And I have no idea what to say.

Authors don’t get told anything about sales until April and October each year. That’s when the global data is reconciled by a company called Nielsen, and royalties are paid. Then you find out whether your book is being devoured by people all over the world who are buying extra copies as gifts for their friends, or whether it’s a complete dog and you need to move on with your life, or just a long hard slog.

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I haven’t been told this by anyone in publishing. It’s what I’ve heard rumoured by other authors groping around in the dark in the support groups we all belong to.

The only thing you can do, as an author, is look at the hilariously named ‘bestseller rankings’ on that big online book-selling behemoth that we’re all supposed to hate because it’s a conglomerate, but in actual fact we keep an obsessive eye on and secretly worship because it enables us to sell our e-books and paperbacks The World Over.

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The Amazon Bestseller rankings. Books are counted in various magical ways in various categories and then ranked. Some of this is predictive on the part of algorithms. The gremlins have taken over the machine and computers are running this world. Remember the way Mrs Thatcher used to twiddle with the unemployment figures?  Equally scary.

The rankings are recalculated hourly. That probably means that if two people buy your book, and they don’t buy Kate Atkinson or Bill Bryson because their books have been out for a while, yours might go up. It might even go up by a fair bit.

If, like me, your book is in a genre where there are fewer titles published, then you have less competition. And if your book is selling in Australia, where the market is smaller, then it can sometimes seem quite exciting.

Okay, so it can SEEM exciting, but it may mean NOTHING. You have to remember that. As an author. Expect nothing. Hope for nothing.

But here, look at this. Because might be meaningless and ephemeral, but it looks pretty bloody brilliant for about five minutes.

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On Amazon Australia my book is listed in travel categories. And for the second time, it is currently #1 in Australia & Oceania Travel. The other titles in that category are mostly travel guides, like Lonely Planet. And at #11 is Down Under by Bill Bryson. I’m next to him somewhere else. It gets very cosy.

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In another category, Travel Essays & Travelogues, I’m #3. And that’s the category that made me catch my breath this morning. Because it is packed with all my heroes.

Beside me at #4 is Tracks by Robyn Davidson – probably the best women’s travel memoir of all time, about her trek across the Simpson Desert of Australia with a camel train. It’s a seminal work with no equal and I remember buying it Stanfords map and travel bookshop on Long Acre in Covent Garden. I still  have that copy.

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At #7 is A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain. His other book, Kitchen Confidential, is one that I go to every few years to remind myself how to write as if I’ve got bigger balls AND a bigger vocabulary than everyone else. I remember who recommended that book to me. And it remains on my shelf.

#10 is Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. I love his Notes from a Small Island and a few of the others. Haven’t read this one, but still. A bit of a hero.

At #12 is Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons, the book that inspired and influenced mine. From it I took the lesson that self-deprecation is key in a travel memoir. You’re writing about the people around you, but the joke has to remain on you if you’re going to get away with it.  And humour, gentle humour, the means of observing important things in life without sounding pompous.

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At #13 is Anthony Doerr, a well serious dude. I couldn’t read All the Light We’ve Never Seen because it was Christmas and I didn’t need to read about children hiding in ruins from the Nazis during bombing raids. Serious literary company though. Humbling.

At #17 is Bill again with Down Under. And at #18, big breath, is In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I read Chatwin A LOT in my twenties. And he is by turns mesmerising and waffly and self-indulgent, but by crikey he loved the world and he loved to travel in it and see its magic, its undersides, its forgotten people. He was restless and an instinctive explorer and adventurer, and when I was working in an office in London for a company who were sucking the soul from my body, I read his theory that people are essentially nomadic, and that’s when the idea of living elsewhere, travelling a bit, and writing about it began to seep through my bones and into my consciousness. He hasn’t just influenced my writing, he’s influenced my life.

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So I continue to hold back on hoping that these listings mean anything. But you can perhaps imagine what it’s like to scroll down and see my own travel memoir, a lifetime ambition realised, alongside such impossibly august company. This is something I allow myself to enjoy, however fleetingly.

Thank you, if you pledged for my book, and if you have bought a copy and are making it go up in these meaningless but lovely rankings. I hope you’re one of the people who has enjoyed it and perhaps it even meant something to you. This all means something to me. Even if I’m not sure what.

Apple Island Wife has been on a Book Blogger’s tour this week and has kept a lovely lady called Candice warm as she gets through the Winter Vortex Freeze in Canada. Here is her lovely Scottie dog Vinny, who kept her warm too. You can read her review, and others like it, online.

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Are you writing a memoir? Who do you think you are anyway! If you’re not a football player, a celebrity blogger, an ex-politician, comedian or actor, why would people be interested?

Plenty of reasons. Memoir and autobiography are a perpetually popular genre. People love getting an insight into other people’s lives, whether they’re famous, unusual, adventurous or just living in faraway places. You too could write a memoir that’s of interest to a wide readership – yes you could!

Here are some salient points.

Inspiration

Ideally you should already know and love the genre you’re writing in. Whether you do or don’t, read for inspiration and knowledge on how it’s done. Travel memoir has always been a particular favourite of mine and I have perpetual go-to choices. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence practically invented the genre. Robin Davidson made me long for a more adventurous life after reading Tracks, while Sarah Turnbull made me long for a view of Parisian rooftops in Almost French. And Dirk Bogarde, well known as an actor, was also brilliant at creating a sense of place and sense of an English abroad, in his memoirs such as A Short Walk from Harrods.

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There’s no shame in looking to other works for inspiration and know-how. While it’s not memoir, Harold Jacobson is on record as saying he had an example of the genre he was emulating – a suspenseful noir thriller – open on the desk beside him while he wrote his Man Booker prize winning The Finkler Question. For myself, the minute I read Chris Stewart’s Driving Over Lemons, I knew it was an example of the voice I could be writing in. If you’re lucky enough to be published and invited to talk about your book, that’s when you can mention influences and give credit where it’s due.

Drama

You can’t just rewrite the everyday. You might base your tales on things that happened in reality, but you’ve got to dramatise. Otherwise, what you’re writing is a round robin letter, and you should save it for Christmas. If you’re a natural memoir writer or satirist, you’ll hear and see things in everyday life which you know instinctively will make great material. You should develop your ear so that you’re not only picking up on things, but you know how to make them work on the page. There might be someone you know who’s a bit of a character. Something you’ve heard someone say, a great expression, a way of looking at things. Enhance, embellish, rewrite and tighten.

English playwright Jo Orton made a specialism of this, famously eavesdropping on conversations on double decker buses in London and putting them down verbatim in his diaries. You might want to disguise them a little, and hopefully you won’t meet the same end as Orton, but read John Lahr’s seminal biography of him, Prick Up Your Ears, if you want to know how it can be done.

The ability to write dialogue which jumps off the page and is taut, tight and entertaining – or whatever mood you want it to create – is essential. You might write a first draft which replicates exactly what someone said or might say, but you’ll need to tighten it in edit. Make it flow, whisper, stumble – whatever mood you need that dialogue to create, there shouldn’t be a spare or out of place word in there. Study dialogue conventions in books you enjoy too. They might seem a little peculiar, but inside a reader’s head, they work, and that’s what matters. All the examples given so far excel at this.

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Self-deprecation

If you’re writing about memoir, you’re probably writing about other people as well as yourself. You need to tread carefully here. Unless you’re writing an expose, you might want to keep it respectful and write about people in a way which endears the reader to them. Don’t poke fun, vilify or be insulting – unless you’re up for a lot of unpleasantness or even the cold shoulder from your community.  If you master the right tone of self-deprecation and humility, it will endear your book to readers. It’s the literary equivalent of putting your hands up and saying ‘Hey, the joke’s on me here.’ Praise for Driving Over Lemons is full of comments like ‘humble and enchanting’, ‘modest and humorous’, ‘lack of pretension’, ‘no hint of patronage’. Definitely something to aim for.

It’s not all about you

Well it might be, on the surface. But there needs to be some themes or material that your readers will relate to, no matter who they are and how different they are from you. There’s no way I was ever going to lead camels across the Simpson Desert like Robyn Davidson, but I loved her spirit of adventure in Tracks. Here’s the intro to Penny Pepper’s book First In The World Somewhere: ‘Penny Pepper has led an extraordinary life. She is a writer. Poet. Punk. Pioneer. Activist. And she also happens to be disabled.’

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If you can write in a way that readers can relate to and include themes they’ll connect with, no matter if they’re quite different from you in some way, you’re reaching the broader readership you should be aiming for. Otherwise you’re back to that round robin letter.  My own book is ostensibly about our first five years in Tasmania and it’s a humorous look at life, but it covers many things that women experience – like the push and pull of a marriage, and the struggle to balance life and work and retain a sense of identity after we’ve had children. It’s also a portrayal of the Tasmania I’ve grown to know and love. Think about the things you want to talk about – other than yourself.

So there it is. To recap,

Read for inspiration and get to know your genre and follow its conventions – or break them!
Create drama, don’t just replicate real life. Excite your readers with humour, pathos, a sense of danger – whatever suits the content.
Be humble. If you’re writing about yourself, don’t big it up. And if you’re writing about others, be kind as well as observant.
Think about over-arching themes and the overall comment you’re making. It will give your book a whole other dimension.

That’s it! Most of all, get writing. You can’t edit nothing, but you can edit a rough draft.

Fiona Stocker’s travel memoir ‘Apple Island Wife – Slow Living in Tasmania’ is published by Unbound.

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TasDance in Launceston staged its end-of-year show over the weekend and I went because our son does the hip hop class there. It quickly became apparent that dance, like music, can inspire all manner of grace in every part of the population.

If you’ve had the chance to see the Australian television program Don’t Stop the Music, you’ll know the effects learning music can have on a school population – everything from firing young imaginations to completely revolutionising attendance records. There can be no doubt that dance has the same kind of power.

I feel a little bit qualified to talk about performance because my degree is in Theatre Studies and Dramatic Arts (darling). I do still work partly in the creative arts so it wasn’t a complete waste of time or like writing your name on a piece of toilet paper, as an accountant friend once suggested (I don’t see much of her anymore). And sometimes when I see a piece of performance, it all comes back to me and I remember why the arts are important.

The TasDance show was perfect in one particular crucial way and the very first piece exemplified it. The music began, and a crowd of little girls in simple pale green outfits, leggings and a t-shirt, trotted onto the stage on graceful tiptoe. Two of them towed a single long stretch of white satin behind them. For the next five minutes they worked as one, their average age all of about five, circling with the satin cradled in their arms, sitting with the satin over their legs and wiggling them so it looked like a river, flapping the satin over their heads so perhaps it was like rain. They kept discreet eye contact, and beamed helplessly throughout with a kind of quiet glee. I’m smiling as I tap this out and remember it.

This is the best kind of performance, because it relies not on expensive props, costumes or staging, but on simple presentation and the performer’s art. I’ve seen fantastic work done this way, by cash poor but talent rich theatre companies, and by major dance companies. It keeps the choices simple, and lets the work and the talent shine.

The show just got better from there, and there was so much to like. Slightly older groups of girls in simple leotards and ballet skirts performed with an elegant adult ballerina. She danced among them, and then they all played out a scene in which she pretended to be their teacher, fluffing their skirts down and appraising their work. The theme of nurturing and passing on learning was then continued so beautifully, when an girl of about eight stood just ahead of a group of tiny tots in little pink  leotards and sparkly skirts and slowly led them through their simple, graceful movements, looking back all the while to make sure they were keeping up.

TasDance has a strong community focus and offers open classes for grown-ups as well, and so next a line of ladies with parasols brought a slow serenity and romance, playing out their piece against Renoir paintings projected onto the back wall.

 

The simple costume choices and showcasing of the craft continued when teen dancers appeared in primary coloured shirts. Because the artistic direction and the choreography was so assured, the piece was as every bit as watchable as any mature-age dance ensemble. Contemporary dance is particularly expressive and mesmerising, and the beauty of it is that you can mix accomplished performers with enthusiasts and not only get away with it, but produce a piece that sings.

It was great to see boys as well as girls doing this form. Moving in this deliberate and powerful way gives you a sense of confidence and coordination, self and identity, and that’s incredibly valuable for teens. There were one or two performers whose work stood out and it’s a precious thing about dance and music that all levels of talent can work in ensemble, support and showcase each other. That’s inclusiveness for you, writ large.

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By the time the little girls had been on, I had turned into the weeping second-row tragic I always am, and had accepted the inevitable loss of my mascara over the remainder of the show. As each short piece ended there was a round of applause. I often find myself wishing that parents would clap more warmly and for longer than they sometimes do at these things. Don’t they know, can’t they imagine how hard these small people have worked and what courage they have mustered to be there? I have no self-restraint in these circumstances, so it was no surprise to me when there was a sudden whoop during the hip hop piece. It escaped me unbidden, I couldn’t help myself, people were doing things on stage that were just grand, very exciting, and which would result in a gastric torsion if I myself tried to do them. Fair play to them. And fair play to the rest of the audience too, because by the end of the show there was whooping and effusive clapping all round as everybody got caught up in the mood.

Finally my own son, who only joined the hip hop class because his very confident friend did, took his spot mid-stage and threw some fancy footwork and a line of cute street moves that he’s been doing around the kitchen for the past few weeks. Cool as a cucumber. More whooping.

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So if the ladies had elegance, the little tots had sweetness, the hip hop kids pulled some attitude, and the teens showcased what self-possessed talents they are emerging to be, what does it all mean ultimately and why is it important?

Because apparently when human beings first got going many thousands of years ago, emerged from Africa and made their way east around the globe populating it, at some point they met up with themselves. And it’s believed that the way they created détente and went on to form tribes and get on with life was by sitting around a campfire and doing things like singing, dancing, telling stories and laughing. So the arts aren’t just a pastime, they’re survival mechanisms, they’re things that define us as a species, draw us together and help us communicate.  That’s why they’re important. They are amongst our most ancient, most deeply ingrained and most defining instincts.

So don’t stop the music, and don’t stop the dance. Vote for people who understand these things at the next election. Send your kids to dance as well as sport. And sign up for one of TasDance’s classes next year. They’ll bring out moves you never knew you had. And whooping. Don’t forget the whooping.

 

[image error] I’ve read a lot of literary fiction and commercial fiction in my reading life, and there’s a constant narrative in my head about the relative merits of the two, and whether there should even be a distinction.

I’ve just read Marian Keyes’ latest novel The Break and wrote a review of it for Goodreads, and it got me thinking about the debate again.

She’s great craic, Marian Keyes. I’ve read a few of hers before and thought, there’s a writer who doesn’t put a word wrong. Besides being great craic, she’s clever, for a so-called ‘commercial women’s fiction’ writer. That’s what she’d be classed as. I think she’s cleverer, and a better writer, than that moniker suggests.

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Colm Toibin, who I’ve moved on to next, would be classed as altogether more serious. Literary fiction rather than commercial fiction. Altogether more weighty. Something you have to have your spectacles of intellect on, for the reading of.

And it shouldn’t be so.

When I scored a copy of The Break for a dollar at my corner shop in a fairly remote part of Tasmania, I was pleased. Marian Keyes manages to be all the things a reading woman such as me wants of a book in my busy mid-life. She’s entertaining and engrossing. I look forward to catching up with the characters and the story at the end of every day. She’s irreverent, in a real and authentic way that makes you feel it’s okay not to be entirely serious and listening to the news all the time, at a time when the news is always pretty shit. And finally, she’s always just quietly addressing something relatable, like staying married through your mid-life. And then at some point in every book, she address something important, like substance addiction and the havoc it wreaks on families, or like a lack of government sanctioned, public service, legal abortion services.

SPOILER ALERT. Three quarters of the way through this book one of the female characters has an unwanted pregnancy and the family has to deal with the crisis, in Ireland, where abortion is still illegal. Keyes writes about it in a very real and pragmatic way which conveys both the emotional distress and logistical difficulties. The fear of going to prison if you’re found to have ordered an abortion tablet online. The banal challenge of finding somewhere to stay in London when you go over to have the procedure there, getting back to Ireland on the plane when the patient is in pain, and finding someone who’s available to pick the person up from the clinic when the mature adults in the story are either at work at commitments that can’t be rearranged, or are men who aren’t really well enough known to the patient.

Women all over the world can relate to this, including those of us in Australia. There are no public service abortion clinics in Tasmania currently. Our state government struggles to sort this out, partly because it’s difficult to find places to locate such clinics for the safety and privacy of those using them, and partly because our government is run by Rather Conservative Men, some of whom appear to have religious views which would make this part of their job difficult for them.

The rest of this book is a story about a mid-life couple who have a bit of a crisis. It’s very relatable-to. It made me feel better and more determined about my own marriage. It was a bit long winded towards the end, and the central character Amy resists getting back together again with Hugh a bit longer than she should have done. But it was a highly diverting read for at least a week.

The Colm Toibin book I’ve moved on to (another Irish writer, but male and perceived to be all manner of highbrow and poetic) is about similar things, it’s about a mother of four who’s lost her husband and has to cope. Similar mid-life crisis written from the woman’s point of view, then. But this is by a Serious Man Writer. I started it last night and I’m one chapter in so far.

The conventions of literary fiction are apparent already, in that there’s a faithful retelling of banal, everyday conversation, and there’s a strong internal dialogue for Nora, the central character, who is facing a life changing situation. In this way, it’s no different from The Break, by Marian Keyes.

Where it’s different is that Nora Webster, by Colm Toibin, makes you work a little harder to read it. Maybe I’ll offend here, but there’s a banality about it, deliberately so.

And in my mid-life mind, a mind which has read many, many book like this in the past and unfortunately cannot now be bothered with them, that makes it a boring, laboured read and somewhere I’ve been too many times before.

Marian Keyes never makes me feel like that.

Literary fiction, I believe, doesn’t have to be laboured and banal. Look at Tim Winton – he’s anything but.

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There’s faithful retelling of banal conversation in Marian Keyes’ writing as well. The difference is that Keyes writes it to be deliberately entertaining and more heightened, dramatic and funnier than everyday life. More irreverent. It’s harder to do than you would think, this, so she deserves all the kudos she gets.

Colm Toibin is evidently for people who like their everyday life a little more under-stated than me. People who aren’t looking for escapism with an occasionally reflective bent. I’ll give him a bit more of a crack, but he’s going to have to pull his socks up.

I’ve recently written my own, deliberately commercial book and it’s on the point of being published now. I applied for funding from Arts Tasmania when I was writing it, and was told they looked for ‘literary merit’, the inference being that mine didn’t have that. And no it didn’t, not at that stage of first draft. More reflection and a more literary style came later, during the edit stage, which isn’t unusual, but Arts Tasmania don’t apparently know that. Pity.

Although I’m not a ‘literary’ writer as such, there are now moments of literary flair in my book. But I set out from the start to write something that was heart-warming and relatable, while also reflecting upon the challenges we all face. Inspired by writers like Marian Keyes, because I think the literary world is sniffy about such writers where it shouldn’t be.

I’ve seen some of the aspiring ‘literary fiction’ that gets funding from Arts Tasmania and  I suspect it’s a case of it making the right noises. It tends to have as its subject matter the Tasmanian landscape, Tasmanian indigenous heritage, Tasmania’s environmental value. The example I’ve seen, of work that got funding, was not good writing. It had a clumsy and dull use of language, the prose didn’t flow or sing from the page but was lumpen and boring. Unedited. My fingers were twitching to work it up.

Two reasons I don’t want to write like that are 1) it’s not very good writing, and 2) I wanted to write something that might just sell. I need to help support my family. My somewhat middle class goal is to buy a caravan. I’d like to go on more holidays with my husband and children, while some of them are still interested. Sorry, Arts Tasmania, if those are the wrong aspirations.

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I actually doubt that Colm Toibin is going on many five star holidays but perhaps I’m wrong there. If not, that’s another reason to eschew a five star literary fiction career.

Thanks Marian Keyes, for the craic, the reflection, the entertainment. And carry on as you are! My dollar was well spent and I’d have paid a bit more too – just as plenty of other readers do.

This post is based on a review by Fiona Stocker on Goodreads. You can find her travel memoir Apple Island Wife as an Ebook on Amazon, and a paperback at the Book Depository, or your local bookshop.   

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If I have one goal in life it’s to appear on the legendary BBC Radio 4 program Desert Island Discs. For fifty years, the Beeb has been casting celebs and other notables away to a hypothetical desert island, on a weekly basis. As aids to survival, they must choose the eight music tracks they will take with them, one book, and a luxury item.

There’s so much to glean from this program and over the years I’ve listened in awe, amusement, delight and sorrow to guests of every persuasion, some I wouldn’t have expected to be interested in, who open their hearts and lives to the airwaves.

People as diverse as Kofi Annan and David Beckham have given me and countless others pause for thought, reflection and moments of hilarity. One of my favourite, more irreverent moments was when northern playwright Jimmy McGovern, who had been gritty and amusing throughout the program, chose as his luxury object ‘that thing that I use every day and couldn’t live without – haemorrhoid cream’.

So imagine my delight when Chris Sayer, presenter from Launceston’s City Park Radio, asked me to be a guest on The Hot Seat, their very own miniature version of Desert Island Discs. We’d talk about my book, getting it published, and I should bring five music tracks of my choice, he said.

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Gleefully, I was all set to comb my Spotify account. Only one catch, Chris said. The tracks had to be on CDs. They’re not down with the digital age at City Park. So it was off to the drawer underneath the telly then, where the discs of yesteryear are still stored.

Analogue life continued in determined fashion at City Park’s studios, when I arrived early and went to spend a penny. Suspended from the window frame by a straightened out coat hanger was one of those clock radio alarms from the nineteen eighties, tuned into the station and crooning gently. So you can listen live while you tinkle.

Here’s my Hot Seat, if I can put it like that, in which I tell the tale of bringing Apple Island Wife to the light of day, and working with my wonderful, ground breaking publisher, Unbound. It’s an hour long!! We’ve lots to say, Chris and I. Listen while you’re making dinner?

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It’s been a turbulent week. Oliver, my Other Half, always says you have to take the rough with the smooth, or as he puts it, the “ultra-smoove”. Once an Essex boy, always an Essex boy.

On the upside, Apple Island Wife, the book, the birth, the long-awaited tome, is designed, blurbed, raising its head above the parapet and waving a pair of gaily coloured undergarments ready for official release on Thursday 1st November!

Hallelujah, and let the golden trumpets of literary greatness sound!

Last week it was uploaded onto Amazon, iBooks and Kindle for pre-order, in Australasia, the UK and the Americas. It could be elsewhere as well, for all I know! Ireland? Haven’t checked! It is gradually becoming available, in ebook and paperback, in all the places people look, and in some places with postage from the UK!

Somewhere in England, print machines are running off copies and binding them in the gorgeous cover. Pretty soon, my publisher Unbound will send the files to a distributor in Tasmania, so copies can be printed for the bookshops here.

Pledgers who so kindly supported me during crowdfunding, you will get yours very shortly! If you pledged for an ebook, this will be sent soon after publication. If you pledged for a paperback, you must wait a little longer, as your limited editions are printed separately – they are larger and altogether grander.

But as if that’s not exciting enough, this week went off like a rocket. Not a NASA-style rocket fuelled by octane, maybe just a hybrid rocket driven by a middle aged lady.

Last week my story was featured by the Department of State Growth within the Tasmanian government, on their website Make It Tasmania.

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On the strength of this and whatever publicity I’ve been generating in my torrid efforts on social media, Apple Island Wife has been bobbing up and down in a most invigorated manner in the rankings which Amazon updates hourly.

Last Sunday evening, I lay in bed and watched as it climbed the bestseller lists (before it’s been published!) to number 2 in one of the Australian travel categories, and top ten in three of them. That’s far more excitement than is normally experienced in our bedroom of a Sunday evening.

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For a while there it was nestling alongside Anthony Bourdain, whom we all miss so sadly, and squished between Jeremy Clarkson and Bill Bryson, which was quite comfy.

How can a book be a bestseller before it’s released? Well the rankings are updated hourly. So if a handful of people were pre-ordering Apple Island Wife, but not buying Bill Bryson because he’s been out for a while, up, up, up we go!

And then down, down, down the next day….. but then up again! (Number 6 as I write – see the category live here.)

It’s excellent news, because the bookselling algorithms and gremlins latch onto it and promote it as a ‘Hot New Release’. It’s not often I’m referred to as ‘Hot’ so I’ll take it, thanks.

Too much information??? Undoubtedly. But for an author, this stuff matters and I’ll be living and breathing it from here on.

Did you know that Dickens was serialised and people used to buy the next chapter of Our Mutual Friend or whatever in paper copy from a street vendor? Serialisation has a long and honourable history as a means of creating market interest. So I’m honoured and thrilled that Apple Island Wife has been selected for serialisation in the digital age by The Pigeonhole, along with Jeffrey Archer’s latest! I didn’t have to go to prison for inspiration, but it’s probably auspicious company.

Meanwhile, what can you do  other than pre-order a copy or wait patiently for yours to arrive? Limber up those reviewing fingers, ladies and gents! Because the other thing that matters is reviews – yes, reviews on Amazon, Kindle, iBook or wherever you like to purchase, and reviews on Goodreads. These are gold to an author and her ranking status (and consequent excitement in the bedroom, see above.)

Thank you so much for your interest if you have pledged or pre-ordered or marked it as ‘want to read’ on Goodreads. Your support has got us this far and will keep it soaring up the charts! Keep reading and clicking!

Fiona – aka the Apple Island Wife