Today, I’m really happy that Annabel Smith has agreed to answer a few questions about her writing. I first met Annabel at Perth Writers Festival in 2013, where I bought her second novel, Whisky Charlie Foxtrot. I loved the book, mainly because Annabel managed to capture the intricacies of sibling relationships so well. Whisky Charlie Foxtrot has since been shortlisted for the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award 2013 (the winner will be announced on the 15th November and I have my fingers crossed!)

Annabel’s first novel, A New Map of the Universe, was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Book Awards. In 2012 she was selected by the Australia Council as one of 5 inaugural recipients of a Creative Australia Fellowship for Emerging Artists. She has been writer-in-residence at Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre and the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA), had short fiction and commentary published inWesterly and Southerly and holds a PhD in Writing from Edith Cowan University.

1. You are the author of two novels – A New Map of the Universe, and Whisky Charlie Foxtrot. Can you tell us about your journey to publication?

I wrote A New Map of the Universe as part of a PhD in Creative Writing at Edith Cowan University. When I finished, UWA Publishing were seeking manuscripts for a new fiction series they were planning to launch. They called me within a few days to say they were very interested and then kept me on tenterhooks for eight months before making a final decision! A New Map of the Universe became one of two books, alongside Josephine Wilson’s Cusp, to launch the new series in October 2005. When I finished Whisky Charlie Foxtrot in 2008 I attempted to find an agent to represent me in the hopes of being published by a larger publishing house. I was unsuccessful in finding an agent and so I began submitting the manuscript to Australia’s small independent presses. After three years and almost twenty rejections in total, it finally found a home at Fremantle Press.

2. You hold a PhD in Writing. What effect has studying writing at such a high academic level had on your creative writing?

If you are lucky with your supervisor, writing a book as part of a PhD is equivalent to having an editor working with you from page one of the manuscript. My supervisor, Richard Rossiter, was also an amazing mentor, counsellor and cheerleader. It is not an exaggeration to say that without him the book would never have seen the light of day. The other huge benefit to the PhD was workshopping my writing with other early career writers, including Danielle Wood and Donna Mazza. Having intensive feedback from other writers taught me so much, as well as the process of critiquing their work.

3. Your first novel, A New Map of the Universe, was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Book Awards. Congratulations! What was that experience like for you?

It was surreal. It had never crossed my mind that the book might be shortlisted for any awards, and I came back from my honeymoon to find this extraordinary letter amidst a pile of extremely dull mail. I was thrilled and completely taken aback.

4. Your latest novel, Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, is a beautiful story that ultimately deals with the complexities of sibling relationships. What was your inspiration for writing it?

I think family life is rich with dramatic possibilities. What led me towards exploring it that particular aspect of family life was my father having a falling out with his only brother which resulted in them not speaking for a decade. I wanted to understand how two people who had grown up together could reach a point where they didn’t speak for ten years, so at some level I think I wrote the book to answer that question. 5. You write in different genres and forms: short stories, literary fiction, interactive and speculative fiction. Do you find it easy to shift between these? Do you have a preference for one particular type of writing? I never consciously set out to write in a certain form. I begin with a character or a scenario in mind and then I let the story find the form it needs to tell itself best. When I move from one major project to another, there’s some grinding and clunking as I find the right gear, but once I’ve found it, I quickly start to feel at home there. I enjoy the challenges each form presents me with but I struggle with short stories. I just seem to need longer than a few thousand words to get to the heart of an idea, and I never know how to finish.

5. What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working with a very talented creative team to create an app to accompany my third novel The Ark, a speculative fiction set in a post-peak oil scenario which will be published in early 2014. I’m also halfway through a first draft of my fourth novel, Monkey See, which is a contemporary take on the classic epic quest stories. And, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’m also making notes for a fifth novel, which will be a return to contemporary family drama, like my first two novels, and will explore post-natal depression.

You can read more about Annabel and her work on her webpage, Facebook or Twitter.