Where am I Wednesday

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, LOVE, MY BOOKS, SHATTERED, THE WRITERS' LIFE, TORN

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family, food, Irish Famine, sailing, ships, shipwreck

As part of the gathering of the clans, I am up in Rockhampton, Central Queensland. People are arriving from everywhere. My great-nephew and his sister are here from New Zealand, sisters and other family arriving from all over.

My trip up was… interesting. I can’t remember how long ago it was when I flew in a propeller driven plane! It felt a little, dare I say, archaic? We really are spoiled in this modern world. So many things we take for granted. Warm clothes, cool air-conditioning, fast jet planes and more food than we could eat or than is good for us! Especially now, food has been arriving for days. I’m with my nephew and his family at the moment and she is saying she hasn’t had to cook in days!

What a different world it is, even in this age, in other parts of the world some not so far away and others not so long ago in history. Excuse me for harping on about the Irish Famine, but that’s the era I’ve been “living in” for the last I-don’t-want-to-say how many years. It hard to imagine a world without electricity for a start! Add to that the transport problems.

At that time in history steam ships were the newest latest whizz bang technology. Sailing ship captains navigated by the stars without the aid of computers and it took months to travel from Ireland to Moreton Bay off and Brisbane. Many didn’t make it that far. Shipwrecks were not uncommon either.

When I was tempted to turf Rosaleen off the “Reliance” in Africa. My critique partner wisely told me I shouldn’t. Rosaleen is, she said, was “such a good bad character”. After nearly being pushed overboard again in the Great Australian Bight, I relented and she survived! She kept trying to take over the story in “Torn” but I’m pleased to report she has settled for being the leading lady in “Shattered”, the follow on book from “Torn”.

Before I go, spare a thought for Liam’s horses on the “Reliance”. Every horse in Australia came at some time from overseas. It wasn’t easy to transport horses and it was not easy to research how they did it! But that’s a story for another time.

Be a Thriver

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, LOVE, TORN

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Irish Australians, Irish Famine, Survivor, thriver, victim

Victim? Survivor? Thriver?

Different individuals can go through the same circumstance and come out vastly different. Even siblings in the same family can react differently to trauma. What makes one a victim, another a survivor and another a thriver?

This fascinates me. So much so that my book, Torn, begins in Ireland at the time of the Great Famine and follows Mary who chooses to be a Thriver. She survived when the rest of her family died of starvation. But she does much more than Survive.

“The victims are dead. You are a survivor.” Those words are still as powerful today as they were when I first saw them. But, is survival enough? Not for Mary, not for Liam and not for me. My characters want to live the best life they can. Mere existence is not enough.

How far would you be prepared to go to get the kind of life you want? Many Irish famine survivors were prepared to go to the ends of the earth to make a new life. The ships they sailed on were called “Coffin Ships” because of the number of victims they carried. Some victims had no chance of arriving at their destinations because of their physical condition on embarkation. Others died because of the conditions on board, the overcrowding, sickness and disease.

Thankfully, Mary and Liam are not forced onto one of those ships. They, along with their friends and some of Liam’s horses, sail to Moreton Bay, in what was then part of New South Wales. Some years later it became part of Queensland but, that’s another story.