disassociated

The stories of three women, living millennia apart, form a single, though not immediately obvious, thread that runs through One Illumined Thread, published by HarperCollins, March 2023, the debut novel of Australian author Sally Colin-James.

A young woman living two thousand years ago in Judea, an ancient kingdom in parts of what are today Palestine and Israel, is cast out of her home after failing to become pregnant. She longs to have a child, and as a way of keeping the hope of motherhood in her sights, takes the unusual step of learning the craft of glassblowing.

Fifteen hundred years later, in the Italian city of Florence, a woman is left without any money after being betrayed by her husband. The Renaissance is at its height, but with a son to look after also, she battles to make ends meet. The third thread of the story plays out in latter day Australia. Here a woman, devastated by a loss, working as a textile conservator, faces danger that puts her life at risk.

While the challenges confronting each woman seem insurmountable, the three share a link, even though they are separated by vast periods of time and distance.

The premise of One Illumined Thread brought to mind The Bass Rock, written in 2020 by Anglo-Australian author Evie Wyld. Wyld’s novel, winner of the 2021 Stella Prize, recounts the story of three woman who lived in the North Berwick area of Scotland at various times. Two women, Ruth and Viv, have a family connection, step grandmother and granddaughter, while the third, Sarah, lived several centuries earlier.

But where the ties between the three main characters in The Bass Rock are more apparent, the links in One Illumined Thread are far less so. Here is a story shrouded in mystery.

Before she took up writing, Colin-James worked in events management, and communications, both in Australia, and internationally. In 2020 she won the inaugural Historical Novel Society Australasia (HNSA) Colleen McCullough Writing Residency in the aspiring writer category. The residency, named in memory of late Australian author Colleen McCullough, awards recipients a week on Norfolk Island, where McCullough spent the latter part of her life.

Colin-James has also won the Varuna PIP Fellowship Award, and the Byron Bay Writers Festival Mentorship Award in 2020. In addition, she was also shortlisted in the First Pages Prize for writers who do not have agents, in 2021.

Melissa Clark-Reynolds and Beth Barany talk about writing science fiction on the Writer’s Fun Zone podcast. One point that emerges is science fiction’s relevance to contemporary matters on planet Earth. This at a time when some Australian publishers have no interest in looking at science fiction and fantasy manuscripts, possibly because they deem it irrelevant.

I’ve seen so many different stories use science fiction to explore where we are today. And, there’s something always very surprising about them. I just really enjoy them.

A great point. A lot of sci-fi pertains to the here and now. It’s not all a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away. Literary agents and publishers take note.

There’s all sorts of reasons, but a lack of time to seek out new compositions, and not simply a love of “old music”, is one:

One explanation for the age-based reduction in music consumption simply posits that responsibility-laden adults may have less discretionary time to explore their musical interests than younger people.

This is where good old radio can help. Switch to station that plays newer, less familiar, music, while you’re working or driving. Since radio playlists are generally repetitive, new favourites will gradually worm their way into your ear.

Tommy is desperate to create a legacy for himself. But he can’t wait until he reaches old age. Tommy needs people to remember who he is sooner than that. Before his birthday, to be precise. For, come the conclusion of each lap of his around the Sun, all memory of his existence is erased from the minds of everyone in the world. No one at all remembers him.

This includes his parents, his friends, and even the girl he has a crush on. As far they’re concerned, he was never there. Every trace of his life is obliterated. Memories. Photos. Shared experiences. Every last thing, including, presumably, a criminal record if he has one. Each and every detail gone, as if it were never there. And you thought you were having a bad day.

But not everything dissolves when the clock ticks over into his birthday. Anything Tommy is in direct contact with, such as his clothes, stays with him. The phenomenon is some sort of enigmatic cosmic occurrence that Tommy has dubbed “the Reset”, and it began the day he turned one.

On his first birthday, his parents woke to find an unknown baby in the house. They had no recollection whatsoever of having a son. Clueless as to who the infant was, they called the police, who sent Tommy to a foster home. And so it went. Every year all traces of Tommy are wiped from the world’s slate, leaving him to spend the following twelve months rebuilding his life.

How to Be Remembered (published by Allen & Unwin, February 2023), by Sydney based Australian journalist and podcast producer Michael Thompson, straight away had me thinking of Harold Ramis’ 1993 film Groundhog Day. Like Ramis’ hapless protagonist Phil, portrayed by American actor Bill Murray, Tommy is aware of his predicament, albeit one that plays out annually instead of daily.

He remembers everything from before his birthday. To him, his life is continuous. He still knows those around him, although they don’t have the faintest idea who he is. Accordingly, Tommy has devised strategies to re-establish himself in the lives of those he was with before the Reset.

But Thompson’s debut work of fiction is not only reminiscent of the likes of Groundhog Day. Parallels have also been drawn with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and even Forrest Gump. The Reset, meanwhile, is another matter. It is a sadistic abnormality that perhaps a serial speedster — seeking only to have an unblemished driving record restored every year — might appreciate.

But it is for that reason I see How to Be Remembered being a story that will excite readers. So much so, that I wouldn’t be surprised to see a screen adaptation in the not too distant future.

Phil Siarri, writing at The PhilaVerse, notes the number of new podcasts has declined by eighty-percent globally, compared to 2020-2022, based on data published by Listen Notes.

219,178 new podcasts were created in 2022 as opposed to 337,063 in 2019.

But James Cridland, writing at Podnews, says that while the number of new podcast shows has declined, the number of new episodes has increased:

The increasing number of episodes suggests that podcasters aren’t, as the narrative suggests, “giving up”. Committed podcasters are continuing to release new episodes, at an ever-increasing rate. Far from podcasting being in severe decline, the industry seems healthy and growing.

I can’t go anywhere on the web without tripping over a podcast show, so suggesting podcasting is in decline seems like a big call, even though some data might indicate this is the case. It seems reasonable the number of new podcast shows would fall once COVID-19 lockdowns ended, and people were no longer looking for so many ways to occupy themselves while at home.

Here’s a selection of Australian written books, either recently published, or in the pipeline, that I’ve spotted in the last week, for the consideration of your TBR list.

• Viking Women by Lisa Hannett, tells the stories of the wives and mothers, girls and slaves, widows and witches, who sailed, settled, suffered, survived, and thrived, in the patriarchal society of the Vikings.
• Desi Girl: On feminism, race, faith and belonging by Sarah Malik, is a collection of short stories exploring the complexities of living between different worlds as a young Pakistani-Australian woman growing up in the west of Sydney.
• Locked Ward by Anne Buist. A psychiatrist discreetly seeking treatment for a sleeping disorder at a private psych facility becomes embroiled in a murder investigation. But not because she was present at the time, but because she knows everyone involved in the case.
• The Albatross by Nina Wan. Primrose is a woman at a personal and professional crossroads in her life, who suddenly decides to take up golf. Despite a shaky start to her game, golfing proves to be a panacea for many of her problems.
• The Heart Is A Star by Megan Rogers. Layla is a middle-aged woman dealing with a failing marriage, a demanding job, her children, an overly dependant lover, and exhaustion. Things only get worse when Layla’s overwrought mother calls to say there’s something pressing about her father she needs to know.

If ChatGPT wrote a book for you, can you really claim to have written said book yourself, asks American author Emily Temple, writing at Literary Hub:

Would-be author Brett Schickler told Reuters that after he learned about ChatGPT — which can instantly generate cogent blocks of text from any prompt — he “figured an opportunity had landed in his lap.” “The idea of writing a book finally seemed possible,” he explained. “I thought ‘I can do this.”’ In “a matter of hours,” he had prompted the AI software — using inputs like “write a story about a dad teaching his son about financial literacy” — to create a 30-page children’s e-book about a squirrel who learns to save his money. Well, hate to break it to you, buddy, but… you still haven’t written a book.

Writers are using the AI chatbot to assist with research (be sure to verify what ChatGPT tells you though) and maybe some passages of text. But if you’re going to spend your days constantly prompting ChatGPT for exactly what you want, why not do it yourself?

And while AI technologies might “write” a book for you in a matter of days, can it publish the work just as quickly? Not at the moment it can’t. You’ll still be waiting months, or more, to see your work on the shelves in bookshops.

To make good art argues Billy Oppenheimer, writing for Every, the art creator must have a connection of some sort to people.

As an example, he cites the writers of the old Seinfeld TV sitcom, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who, in the early days of the show, would go out and discreetly mix where people gathered, to figure out what they liked.

Their process played a part in the creation of the show’s many memorable screenplays. This is an advantage ChatGPT lacks. For the AI chatbot to succeed as an “artist”, it needs a more direct attachment to its audience.

Artists who get so famous that they can’t go out in public talk about how not being able to do so makes it hard to create art that connects. To come up with material for Seinfeld, for instance, Seinfeld and co-creator Larry David liked to hang out in public settings where they could observe and eavesdrop on strangers. As the show became a cultural phenomenon, Seinfeld and David couldn’t go out in public like they used to. Strangers didn’t act like strangers around them. This slow detachment from humanity made it harder to make a show that connected with humanity. When you don’t experience reality like most people do, it’s hard to make things that connect with most people.

Of course there’s no telling what people will go for, so a ChatGPT created work of art may still end up being riotously popular.

Twenty-something Sydneysider Rory is ready for a prolonged period of isolation. Her job, writing reports for a private investigator, means she doesn’t need to leave her apartment building for work. She has a pet dog to keep her company, and the roof area of the building is a fine place to exercise and walk the dog. Rory is also possessed of a vivid imagination. She has even given backstories, of her own making, to some homeless people, whom she never spoken to, camping over the road.

Lockdown is going to be kind to Rory. But there’s only one thing. The COVID-19 lockdowns are no more. Rory’s confinement is self-imposed. Her fear of the outside world is so intense, she even goes all out to avoid her neighbours. Rory is a woman with a troubled past, and the gilded cage she has created is her only tonic. But the future is about to add to her woes, in Apartment 303, published by HarperCollins Australia, in March 2023, by Newcastle based Australian author, Kelli Hawkins.

When one of the homeless people across the street is murdered, Rory is forced to adjust her relationship with the outside world. She has frequent contact with police investigating the death, and also makes the acquaintance of neighbours for the first time. But not all of the knocks at the door are welcome. And when a chapter of her past, one that Rory would rather forget, comes calling, she begins to feel unsafe in her previously protective home.

Apartment 303 is Hawkins’ third novel, and like her protagonist Rory, Hawkins’ likewise writes reports for a private investigator, between working on manuscripts. And as with many writers of fiction, Hawkins’ own experiences shape her stories. Her debut novel, Other People’s Houses, published in 2021, tells the story of a woman, Kate, who spends her Saturdays inspecting houses listed for sale.

In the same way Rory finds solace by locking herself away from the world, seeing the homes of other families bring comfort to Kate, whose son who died ten years earlier. Hawkins is no stranger to viewing properties either. Between living in Australia, and stints in the United Kingdom, and America, she has been a frequent house hunter, including more recently, in tragic circumstances, following the death of her husband.

Early reviews on Goodreads have described Apartment 303 as “a slower burn thriller”, “a stirring, suburban tale of mystery, suspense and daring”, and “a page-turner”.

Having penned three novels in as many years, Hawkins’ output could be described as prolific, and another novel is probably already in progress. Hawkins has also worked as a graphic designer, political journalist, mystery shopper, and a role as a “staple remover”, in the past. I see plenty of inspiration for more stories in amongst those occupations.

Three Ukrainian authors, Kateryna Babkina, Olesya Khromeychuk, and Maria Tumarkin, who were scheduled to speak at Adelaide Writers Week in March 2023, are no longer participating in the event:

The event’s director, Louise Adler, confirmed Kateryna Babkina and Olesya Khromeychuk, who were scheduled to speak at a session on the impact of Russia’s invasion on Ukrainian civilians, had decided not to appear. She said the move was prompted by comments of another guest, Palestinian-American author Susan Abulhawa, who has described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “Nazi-promoting Zionist” and accused him of dragging “the whole world into the inferno of WWIII”.

On Tuesday, Australian law firm MinterEllison withdrew their support for the festival, in the wake of the same comments made by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American author.