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Zoe Younger

~ Life Changing Journeys, Life changing Love

Zoe Younger

Tag Archives: Richard Armitage

Apologies for going Missing in Action…

05 Thursday May 2016

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

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"North and South", books, courage, Elizabeth Gaskell, friends, goals, Irish Australians, John Thornton, LIFE, loss, LOVE, Margaret Hale., Relationships, Richard Armitage, sailing, Survivors, thriver, victim, writing

Retirement crisis concept as a couple of adirondack chairs sinking in the ocean during a thunder storm as a metaphor for financial investment problems for retiring seniors who lost their savings or broken dreams symbol.

My humble apologies for neglecting you, my friends. Life has been all go and not much stop recently. Now, though, it’s time to get back into routine.

My work on “Shattered” has slowed to a crawl. This is Rosaleen’s story, a redemption story. She and Mary from “Torn” were childhood friends and I’m sorry to say that the Rosaleen of “Torn” was not the friend Mary knew back when. She had always wanted more… more money, more things, a higher position in social circles and she thought she had it all, until “Torn”. Now she must start again, from the bottom; and when I say from the bottom I mean much further and she’d have to dig!

I’m sorry to say that Rosaleen died in the first iteration of “Torn”. She died in childbirth. She was swept off the ship en route to Australia. She was left behind in Africa. What I didn’t do to try to kill her off is hardly worth mentioning but – she survived. She always was a survivor. If there is one thing that stands out from counselling, it is that the victims are dead. The fact that one is a live makes one a Survivor. But, don’t be content to merely survive, make sure you go on to thrive.

Survivors are the backbone of my writing. I admire and look up to people who have not just survived but who go on to thrive. Those who pick themselves up by their own bootlaces and head onward and upward.

Who are your inspirational literary thrivers? One who was in part the inspiration for “Torn” was Elizabeth Gaskell’s John Thornton from “North and South”. For those of you who have not read this book or seen the miniseries where Richard Armitage does a very memorable job of playing “Go where you will… the name of John Thornton of Milton is know and respected amongst all men of business…”. From childhood poverty after his father’s suicide he paid his father’s debts AND raised himself and his family to fame not “in England only, but in Europe…” as his mother proudly declares. To be bankrupted himself, lose everything and yet not afraid to begin again.

Of course, beside him he had the resilient Margaret Hale, survivor of much family heartache and tragedy. Surviving and Thriving are always so much better when  you are not alone.

So, I’ve told you mine, now please, tell me about one of your inspirational literary heroes?

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Well, Hello there!

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Zoetic Words in LIFE, MY BOOKS, POETRY, THE WRITERS' LIFE, TORN, Uncategorized

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"For the Term of His Natural Life", "North and South", Blogging101, Colin Friels, Daniela Denby-Ashe, Dick Francis, Elizabeth Gaskill, Enid Blyton, Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, John Grisham, Marcus Clarke, Michael Conley, Richard Armitage, Richard North Patterson, The Classic Drama DVD Collection

2013-06-15_655Yes, I know. I’ve been very quiet lately. I ran out of poetry suitable for posting, the 100 word stories have gone missing in action and I’ve had some changes happen in my life which have run away with my time. I’ve been struggling to blog and felt the need to learn more about what I can do. So, today I’ve started Blogging 101 with WordPress. Hopefully you will notice a change in the quality of posts. All feedback gratefully received.

Assignment 1 is to tell you a bit about me and why I want to blog. Some of you will know this already so please bear with me because here we go again. I hope it’s not too boring for you.

Ever since I was a very little girl, I have loved words. Big words, little words, poetry, prose, a bit of everything. In fact, one of my earliest memories is from when I was first going to school somewhere between Grades 1 and 3. We lived 9 miles outside of Proserpine in central Queensland, Australia. For one of the very few times we ever received pocket money I spent my entire shilling (yes, this was pre decimal currency – about 10 cents), a fortune to me as a young kid, on a “Little Golden Book”, called “Out of My Window”. I took it back to school and almost the first thing that happened was one of my schoolmates dropped there chocolate icecream/popsicle onto it. I was devastated.

There were years when poetry flooded out of me. Teen angst city! There were years when I wrote a poem every time I went to the wedding of a friend. It became quite a tradition. None of those are posted here because they were personal to those friends. If you disagree and would like to read some, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. Then the poetry dried up but never did my love of words, of reading and writing. Life got in the way as it does.

My jobs have continued adding to my vocabulary. I loved temping, that is, working for an agency, short term assignments as a legal secretary, clerk, taking dictation and later transcribing from analogue and now digital dictation and worked in some very interesting jobs. The photo above is one taken when I was working on my very first computer at work (as opposed to one at college).

One temp assignment led to 9 years working for a veterinary pathology laboratory and learned soooo much about the insides and outsides of all kinds of animals. I typed reports on butterfly pupae, beached whales and about everything in between. I loved it and looking back, I wish I had stayed there. But, life goes on. We live and learn.

As a matter of fact, while I work on getting some editing and copywriting jobs, I’m returning to temping after being made redundant in my last position. That is, I’ll be working for an agency on short term assignments. Over the years I’ve worked as a legal secretary, administration officer and clerk, taking dictation and later transcribing from analogue and now digital dictation files. I worked in some very interesting jobs. Years passed and I ended up deciding that if I was ever going to be a writer I had to just do it. So I started writing.

As a compulsive reader I loved reading authors like Dick Francis, Michael Conley, Richard North Patterson, John Grisham so started with a who-dunnit. Much as I loved reading them, I found out that I didn’t want to live in that world all the time it takes to write them. I tended toward depression at the time so I changed my direction.

My other favourite books were those of authors such as Jane Austen, Enid Blyton, Elizabeth Gaskill and Georgette Heyer so I started writing books with happy-ever-afters. When I entered my contemporary story in a competition, one of the judges commented that I had an “old-fashioned voice”. Lights went off. Duh. Of course. I loved historical stories.

Watching Colin Friels in “For the Term of His Natural Life” was not a hardship. I saw it just before I went on holiday to Tasmania to see the places mentioned by Marcus Clarke in his classic book of that name. However, I didn’t want to write convict stories. I hated Port Arthur and Macquarie Harbour. I hated what happened to the convicts, what people do to people.

My subscription to “The Classic Drama DVD Collection” of BBC period dramas was one of my all time best buys. I still watch them over and over any chance I get. After watching all the Jane Austen series’ I came across Richard Armitage and  Daniela Denby-Ashe in the adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill’s “North and South”. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it and happily bring it out for anyone who wants to watch it again or for the first time. The plight of the Irish wasn’t a highlight of the series but I was fascinated by what I saw and what I learned afterward. My research led me to write “Torn”.

So I’ve decided “Torn” is to be the first of a series about people who came to Australia voluntarily. There will be some convicts but they won’t be about convicts and their hardships. Australia is such a multicultural melting pot. My own ancestors were English, Scots, Irish and Finnish. “New Horizons” will explore some of those and hopefully many others.

“Torn” follows Mary and Liam at the time of the Great Famine as they set sail from the “Harbour of Tears”, Cork in Ireland with her friend and his horses to Moreton Bay which is at the end of our street. Yes, I did a lot of research and it took me a long time but it’s currently with an editor awaiting a decision.

Entering writing competitions has led to two short stories being published in the RWA’s “Little Gems” anthology and I collected 63 poems from 28 members of the “North Pine Bush Poets” in an anthology as a fundraiser when the club hosted the Australian Bush Poetry Championships. They were popular and the fundraising continues despite the boxful I still have in my office. My own three contributions are here among the poetry on my blog.

Like so many other writers I’d love to live by my pen. Whether that means working as a temp again or editing and copywriting until I can live by my books, well c’est la vie.

I hope you’ll find something you like in my blogs and will be excited with me when I finally see my own book(s) in print.

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Book 1 New Horizons Series

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