Across the Dark Sea cover

Across the Dark Sea - the book arrives!

My author copies of Across the Dark Sea arrived last week, and it looks lovely. Donna Rawlins' black and white illustrations are stark and evocative – and, as a representative of the Victorian Vietnamese Association said when I gave him the book, "truly depict the memory of the story, the story of the Vietnamese Boat People."

I feel honoured to have been able to write this book, and hope that I can arrange some sort of local - Melbourne - launch or celebration for it to honour the people who inspired it as well as those who helped me with the background to write it. It will be launched in Sydney next week with three other books from the National Museum of Australia's Making Tracks series, at the Book Expo in conjunction with the CBCA conference.

In the meantime, have a look at the website pages the Museum has created for it, at: http://nma.gov.au/play/making_tracks.
That page includes all four just-released books: Across the Dark Sea is at the bottom of the page. I won't link it directly to the Explore 'Across the Dark Sea' page because then you'd miss the fantastic interactive activities: you can even have a go at navigating your own boat from Vietnam to Australia. I failed dismally, which won't surprise anyone who knows me....

Life imitating fiction

Writing has been slow lately, and readers of The House at Evelyn's Pond might be interested, or amused, to know that it's partly because my daughter has just moved to Vancouver. Of course she is not Megan of the book and her story now is not the story I wrote for Megan six or seven years ago - but still, it is ironic. (And exciting, nostalgia-making, and a whole mix of other emotions.)

It will probably make it even more difficult for people to believe me when I say the novel is not autobiographical. Jane is not me; neither are Ruth or Megan, and their stories are not mine. However all my characters - Nim, Alex and Jack as well as these more realistic women - are pulled from different parts of my personality, different roads that my life could have travelled. It's one of the things I love most about writing: exploring being different people - a bit like putting on a mask and disguise for a fancy dress party, without all the trouble of having to figure out how to make a peg leg for a pirate costume!