Category Archives: MY BOOKS

Decisions, decisions

12 Sunday Jul 2015

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Main Beach at sunrise (Main Beach, Queensland, Australia)

There’s something about sunrise and sunset which can make your decision to open or close a chapter in your life particularly exhilarating or poignant.

There’s a scene I particularly loved writing in Torn, set on a beach just like this one. My two main characters learn about a decision by another character which will seriously impact both of their futures, almost every aspect of their lives from that point on. They discuss what it will mean for them and decide how they will handle the consequences of those decisions.

Is there somewhere you like to go when you have a decision to make? Somewhere which gives you a sense of peace and serenity, time to think and decide?

Modern Monday

29 Monday Jun 2015

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Little boy in a cardboard airplane

When I started writing a historical novel, it was hard not to notice how many things I take for granted. The list grows regularly. Like travel for example. I’m booking a trip to Melbourne for a writers conference. I’ve decided to just go down for the barest minimum – down Friday morning and back Sunday evening. Just a three day weekend action packed then back Sunday night for work on Monday.

It does my head in if I think how long that would have taken for my characters in 1850. There were no flying visits in those days! No flying at all although one of my characters might just have had a broomstick she could ride…

What would they think if they time-travelled to 2015? Electricity, gas, electronic gizmos, kitchen gizmos, cars, traffic, recorded music whenever you wish to plug in some headphones and I’m sure you can think of a million other things which would be objects of wonder for those from a simpler time.

On the other hand, what do we miss, with all our technology and convenience?

We live our lives at a much faster pace, there is information coming at us from every direction, fewer ‘home’ musicians who would play for a sing-a-long, family time without the idiot box in the corner, when people would play games, read books aloud to the whole family. Even books were a much more precious resource. How many of you can remember when every new book was something to treasure and marvel at? When libraries were the only source of reference books, unless a fast talking travelling salesman had convinced your parents to invest in the latest expensive set of encyclopaedias.

Oh and when I pack for my conference in August I’ll be grateful that my 23 kilos of baggage allowance isn’t consumed by all those layers of clothing and corsets, neck to knee and smothered in petticoats to within an inch of your life! Yes there are pros and cons which are fun to think of and important for a writer to know so that your experience reading is as authentic as I can make it without any of us having to live that life. Pity really though I’m sure, if we could travel back to that time, after a while we would miss at least some of our modern conveniences.

What would you miss most? What do you miss most, even from your own lifetime?  I’d love to hear from you.

New Year’s Resolution

28 Sunday Jun 2015

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Bambina mentre guarda lontanoNew Year? In June? Yes, well, I’m being forced to think about where I am, where I’ll end up if I keep on my current direction, and whether that’s what I want. I fear change will come whether I’m ready for it or not so it seems prudent to make some New Financial Year Resolutions, to set the direction for the year ahead.

Change is one thing we can count on and yet we almost all of us resist change sometime or other. The more drastic the change the harder it is to force oneself to make it, usually.

Mary Ellen, in Torn, is forced to make a life changing journey. How will she cope with having to move away from everyone and everything she has always known and loved to a country and a life on the other side of the world with people she barely knows? Leaving behind what you know and love can be like tearing out your heart. Having to do all of that when your body is in a weakened state by starvation would only make it harder. When you have lost your family and friends in death by the same starvation would test the mettle of anyone.

Would going on be easy? Of course not. What would she be thinking, whether she wanted to or not? Would she sometimes feel guilty that she survived when her loved ones did not? Would she sometimes wish she had not lived to watch them die? Of course. She would sometimes wish she didn’t have to go on without them.

What could give her the strength to go on? How could she drag herself back from the edge of the abyss of self pity and depression? What would give her comfort in the harsh world she finds herself in? Would she willingly put herself in the position where she could lose everyone she has come to love all over again? How can she motivate herself to begin all over again?

Questions I’ve had to answer for Mary in my book and some of the questions we might sometimes have to ask ourselves in real life.

Why do I write?

26 Friday Jun 2015

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Thank You Word Cloud printed on colorful paper different languages

Why do I write?

For the love of great words
And of using them right
For the comfort they bring
In the darkness of night

In my own humble way
Trying to comfort and cheer
But it doesn’t require
High cost, calories or beer.

Because when it comes right
I feel such satisfaction
It’s a beautiful thing
Getting positive reaction

So here’s a ditty for you
Coming straight from my heart
From soul deep inside
Thanks for liking my art.

© Zoe Younger 2015

Mellow Monday

22 Monday Jun 2015

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Peceful image of open book resting on a arm rest of a couch. Warm fireplace on background.

After a busy day at work and a lunch break where I didn’t get time to do what I had planned, it’s nice to have a quiet night to catch my breath. I love that image and would also love a nice fire to sit and watch the flames. They are hypnotic aren’t they. We were all chilly at work today. Don’t know what was up but the office was frigid.

Our winters are pretty mild here. It’s rare to get down into the low single digits but after the warmth of our summers, it feels pretty chilly to us. I learned so much in my research for Torn. The Great Famine was not the first famine. There had been a number of them, one after the other.

It was strange really, when I was trying to find a place where my Leading Lady (I intensely dislike the tag Heroine) would have grown up with her family, I went around and around and couldn’t decide where to set them down. In the end I took the map, closed my eyes, drew a couple of air circles and my finger landed in Skibereen. There couldn’t have been many places more likely. Reading about the history of Skibereen broke my heart.

Clothing in those days was not as easily come by and though the rich may have had more than enough, not everyone had what was necessary to keep them warm. In the warmer months many had sold their warmer clothing to buy food and when the winters came in hard their already weakened bodies suffered, many fatal consequences.

We all know that there are people even today who suffer from starvation and privation. It makes me grateful for what I have, realise how fortunate I am. I love stories which make me think, to learn about other people, other places, other cultures and lands. I hope my readers will learn something from my book too. Talking of Torn, the edits are upon me again. Hopefully, this will be the last round and I can release my baby into the world sooner rather than later.

Weekend wonder

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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This weekend I did something I can’t remember having done for a very long time. On the train home Friday evening I wrote my To Do List for the weekend. This evening I am about to cross the last item off the list! I’ve even done a couple of things that didn’t make it onto that list.

As is so often the case, I don’t have a whole lot to show for it but I know what I did and that feeling is pretty darn good. So often in this world we work hard and have little or nothing to show for it. It’s not always like that and for my characters in my book it certainly wasn’t the case.

Moving to Moreton Bay in what was New South Wales, Australia in the 1850s was a courageous thing to do. There were few of the facilities and conveniences they had in Ireland in that time and next to none of those we take for granted today.

Brisbane in the Moreton Bay area had been a convict settlement holding some of the worst, hardened criminals. The convict settlement was closed in 1835.

My hero brought with him a number of his horses though not all of them. He had to begin by building houses, stables, outbuildings, yards and everything else he and his employees and horses needed. That kind of hard physical work can be very satisfying. You can look around and see the work of your hands.

You don’t get that same sense of achievement in an office. But that To Do List with those items crossed off looks pretty wonderful to me.

Wednesday with Wheels

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Highpoint of the week – I got my car back from the panel-beaters! It’s been away for several weeks so I’ve missed it very much. I have to say I did take for granted having comfortable fast-enough-for-me wheels at my disposal anytime I need them.

It wasn’t always so. Can you imagine living in a world where you either rode a horse, a carriage or Shanks’ Pony. Of course roads were very different too, those which could legitimately actually be called a road. Life was a lot slower by necessity. A trip to town to do get supplies might have taken all day, give or take a shop or two. Those scenes were fun to write, after some solid research, of course.

There are so many uses for the wheel in transport. For those who can’t afford a car there are bicycles of all kinds, custom built jobs, mountain bikes, kids bikes with training wheels right back to the old penny farthing. Wheels have gotten bigger – and smaller. From skateboards up to personal mobility scooters, from paddle wheelers to the landing gear on aeroplanes, then the tiny wheels which take the heavy lifting out of suitcases!

So, where are you wheels? Where-ever you are and whatever you do today, may it be wheely fun!

Monday’s Mood

15 Monday Jun 2015

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Portrait of a quiet foggy lake
Monday mornings are notorious and this morning was a doozy! This morning the city was enshrouded in fog. Out in it, the fog became mizzle. Too fine to be called drizzle but more than just a fog, just as I imagine would set the mood for my Irish characters as they left their homeland. Just enough to mask some of the tears one tried to hide.

Travel by sailing ship was a gamble. Of course many sailed the high seas for years without encountering the kind of tragedy which could and did strike the strongest ship with the most experienced crew without warning and with devastating results. Before the Suez and Panama canals were built, the journey was especially hazardous around the “horns”, Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.

The Roaring Forties and the Freemantle Doctor were and still are almost as hazardous as the Great Australian Bight but still they braved them, as the wrecks found scattered about and those forever lost attest. It took a brave and/or adventurous emigrant, or a desperate one, to embark on such a journey voluntarily. Those shipwrecks might seem great diving spots today but the sorrow and the loss of those aboard and those at home must have been immense. To risk your most valuable horses on such a journey was also a calculated risk, not undertaken lightly which is why it was the last resort for Liam in Torn.

Every horse in Australia came from somewhere else. I thought it would be easy to understand the logistics and find out how it was done. It only sounded easy. I spent months, off and on, searching for answers specific enough for me to feel confident to write those scenes aboard ship and in the hold with Liam’s horses. There were some great stories when I finally found what I was searching for.

Those shipwrecks might seem great diving spots today but the sorrow and the loss of those aboard and those at home must have been immense.

To Moreton Bay

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Moreton Bay is just at the end of the street where I live so there seemed nowhere better to set my books. Walking along the shores today there’s little resemblance to what was here in and around 1850 but if I close my eyes… no definitely not much is the same apart from the sun the sea and the sand. Hence a writer has to develop a fertile imagination.

The convict colony in closed in 1842, a few years before the Great Famine in Ireland and long before Queensland succeeded from New South Wales in 1859. So Brisbane was the perfect place for Mary, Liam and their friends to come for a new start.

The Port of Brisbane these days sees thousands of ships and every year more cargo inward and outward than those long ago sailors ever dreamed. The terminal a little further up the river now sees huge cruise ships instead of clipper ships. On the bay there are still fishing boats though very different as well. Then there are the jet skis and kite boarders beneath the planes taking off and landing at the international and domestic airports. Even the kites flown most weekends… you get the picture.

Twenty years ago, when I first started coming with my husband to visit his parents in the family home, my mother-in-law and I would walk along the shoreline. Occasionally we would see dolphins out in the water. It’s been years since I saw one. I believe there are still some there along with the turtles and dugongs but nowhere near as many. The huge ships, speed boats and the like have their downside.

Each time period has it’s own positives and negatives. Life was tough back then though much more simple. Visiting the Moreton Bay of the 1850s through my research has given me a different outlook on that water at the end of our street.

Good Friends are Family

07 Sunday Jun 2015

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striped kittens sleeping together

Family and friends. Sometimes they are one and the same. Sometimes your friends become your family and sometimes family become your friends. It doesn’t matter whether they are blood related or not, family and/or friends are necessary for our mental health, in good times and in bad.

What makes a friend as dear to you as family? Simply put, it’s love. Even though they may not live close enough to be with them as often as you would wish, you know they care. They are there for you when you need them most whether in person or on the phone; when you just want to enjoy some relaxation with someone you can ‘let down your hair’ with, be yourself with, you want to be with them – contiguous; when you can make a fool of yourself-or spill the entire contents of your coffee mug-you know it’s okay, you don’t feel as if you’ve ruined your friendship by being a klutz.

But that’s only half of the story, or it should be. There’s an old saying, “to have a friend you have to be a friend”. That means that when your friend needs you, you have no hesitation, you want to be there for them. There’s nowhere else you would rather be but there with them while they work through whatever their pain or problem is. Even if you can’t do a thing to help, you want to be there, sit quietly and listen, make a cup of tea or coffee,  or whatever it is they like best to comfort them. You want to do a load of washing, cook a meal, do some chores which will free them up when they need it.

What a lonely world this would be without family and friends. Moving from your home to the other side of the world would be so much harder if you had neither family or friends. In Torn Mary finds new friends along the way, friends who become her family. A friend she expected to be as close to her as family turned out not to be the person she thought she was, well, at least not in Torn. And, those she didn’t expect to like as friends in the beginning became her family.

Today I’m feeling blessed that I have both family and friends whom I love dearly. Family who are friends and friends who are family and I want to thank you all for being there for me recently. I hope I can return the favour though hopefully you won’t need me for quite the same reasons as I needed you recently.