The Next Big Thing

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My Next Big Thing

 

Phill Berrie, a member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild,and all-round nice guy, tagged me for the ‘Next Big Thing’ – which is sort of a pass the parcel for writers promotions. If you haven’t reached this post from his blog post about his next big thing then you can read it here.

 

What is ‘The Next Big Thing’? It’s like one of those old-fashioned chain letters or a better still a benign pyramid scheme where authors promote their own work and tag five of their colleagues to create a huge network of linked web pages about what everyone hopes will be ‘The Next Big Thing’.

 

1) What is the working title of your next book?

For the first time in about twenty-five or more years I don’t actually have a book that I’m writing at the moment (re-writing yes, but not one that I’m creating).  I have an ongoing love-hate relationship with literature and despite having written over 20 books I still sometimes go through phases where I feel the bitch-muse of literature doesn’t love me half as much as I love her and so I don’t want to spend my energies trying to seduce her – but it never lasts too long and another book starts bubbling up in my brain.

 

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

I am going to interpret this as where do ideas come from in general for books – and they generally come from a single seed. A germ of an idea or a possibility, or a single line read, or a character from history that gets into my head and grows and gnaws at me until the only way to be rid of the idea is to explore it and write it out.

 

3) What genre does your book fall under?

I’m now going to drop back into the mode of my last book – which I finished writing a few months back and I tentatively called BACKSEAT DRIVERS. It is a non-fiction book, mostly, written as a travelogue following the footsteps  of the explorers Hume and Hovell down the Hume Highway, but along the way I pick up hitchhikers from history including Ned Kelly, Captain Cook and Caroline Chisholm. So as a genre it is actually a little hard to define. Non-fiction (mostly), I think I’ll call it.

 

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Great question – as several of my books actually go into discussions on this topic. I’d like to cast Hugh Jackman as Ned Kelly, and I thought that when Heath Ledger’s movie came out a few years back too. I’d cast Amanda Kelleher as Caroline Chisholm. William McInnes as Captain Cook. And me – hmmmm – I’m going to have to seek advice from my wife on that one.  (*checks*) She says Jeremy Irons should play me.

 

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

It’s a fact, not yet universally acknowledged, that everybody should at some point in their lives attempt to follow the footsteps of the explorers Hume and Hovell down the Hume Highway, preferably in the company of Captain Cook, Henry Lawson, Caroline Chisholm, Don Bradman and Ned Kelly.

 

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Too early to say. Invariably though the process of getting published is one that takes longer than the process of writing for me. I have an agent who has said this a difficult book to classify (see question 3)

 

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Four months.

 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

The only other books I can think of are the books I wrote on Douglas Mawson and Captain Cook where I have conversations with their ghosts while talking about their lives. In Bed with Douglas Mawson, New Holland Publishing, 2011, and Cruising with Cook Amongst Cannibals, Merino Press, ebook, 2012.

 

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The bitch mistress muse snuck up on me while I wasn’t expecting it.

 

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

It’s about Australia’s past and its present and future, and it’s about all the small communities up and down the Hume Highway that have been bypassed by the freeway. It’s an On the Road for a modern sensibility. It’s the road trip that every Australian should make at some point in their life – or make vicariously if they can’t.

 

Well that’s my Next Big Thing, so who’s next?  The following people are my tagees.

 

Irma Gold is an award-winning writer and editor. Her debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward, was critically acclaimed and shortlisted for several prizes. She is also the commissioning editor of a number of anthologies, most recently The Invisible Thread, a century of literature by writers who have called Canberra home. Irma is currently completing her debut novel for which she received a LongLines Award from the Eleanor Dark Foundation. She is addicted to orange pekoe tea and wishes there were bouncing castles for grown-ups. Her third kid’s book, due out with Walker Books this year, is her next big thing.  http://www.irmagold.com/blog–news.html

 

Kathy Kituai became a poet knowing she will never be able to earn enough money to pay her household bills through poetry.  Strange career choice isn’t it? But writing poetry is a bit like bungie jumping into a mess of words and viewing the world from a different angle. After publishing two collections of free-verse poetry (green-shut-green and The Lacemaker), she pitched herself off the other side of the bridge and published three other collections (Straggling into Winter) and a CD (the heart takes wing) this time in tanka, an ancient form of poetry that originated in Japan 1300 years ago and wrote two more tanka books with Amelia Feildon (In Two Minds and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow). A born risk taker, Kathy is about to strap herself in and swing from another poetic viewpoint 2013,  haibun, another Japanese form that combines poetry and tanka, during 2013.

 

I also want you to keep your eyes out for Brendan Mackie, Katrina Iffland,  and Hal Judge. Watch this space for more on them…