Pittwater, just north of Sydney, September 1928

Pittwater, just north of Sydney, September 1928: this place might have something to do with a novella coming out in 2014.

Can you think of a stranger occupation than writing fiction?

Those of us who do it, ignoring all the mental-health warnings, spend hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year, holed up in a room staring at a pad or screen, dreaming characters and predicaments into existence, all the while hoping that one day the words might be read, and with more than a little luck mean something to someone else, that reader, who may even be moved.

That’s all a fiction writer wants: to be read well, deeply, intellectually, emotionally.  Which is asking the world of them.

And it all comes down to publication.

Drumroll please: the news

'Nuanced and thoroughly original’ - The Newtown Review of Books

‘Nuanced and thoroughly original’ – The Newtown Review of Books

So, it’s with pleasure I can say that, due to the success of Fall on Me and I’m Ready Now (good sales, some gongs – twice short-listed for the ACT Writers and Publishing Award with Fall on Me winning the thing – and, on balance, a warm and generous critical response), the third and final in this series of novellas will be published in mid-2014.  The title, contents, and cover are currently under wraps at the request of Blemish Books, but all will be revealed in the first few months of the new year.

But I can say that this novella will follow the general theme – preoccupation? – of the previous two: contemporary  Australian family life in all its mess and mayhem.  Part of this preoccupation comes from a desire to lift the lid on what’s supposedly a ‘bedrock’ institution, as former prime minister John Howard described it during his long, long, harrowing days in power.  Family may well be important to modern living, because, often, it brings life into being.  But it also hammers life, stretches life into new and sometimes dangerous shapes; it can – and often does – take life, snuff the daylights out of everyone who steps into its confines or whatever it is that defines this thing.

How to explore the murky depths and live to tell the tale

But family life is also the stuff of fiction – always has been and always will be.  Because families are inherently complex.  They’re shifty; more often than not they operate in the grey and dark and black.  And fiction is a good – the best possible? – means of exploring the murky depths, of finding out who and what ticks and when and how, and to record new findings for the benefits of others.

So, then, the final Blemish novella will be about family.

Surely, surely, I could give away some of the plot?

Well, it involves a beach, a boat, two boats, many boats, a piano, a house by the harbour with a significant view, a river, an ocean, and yellow buckets tied to ankles for safety.

There’s also this.

Until next year

Until next year, much gratitude to everyone who has read Fall on Me and/or I’m Ready Now, who’s offered a kind word, or an honest one, who’s suggested that it might be good to carry on with this literary madness – it’s all so very much appreciated.  And, of course, massive thanks to Blemish Books for keeping the faith.  It’s true: writing is a tough and sometimes (often?) ridiculous gig, and I’m glad it’s this press that’s by my side.

Onwards.