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Sally Murphy, Australian author

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Real Characters

April 15, 2015 by Sally

While Australia’s Great War: 1915 is a work of fiction, not all of the characters are made up. Several of them are based on real people who served in the Great War. By populating the story in part with fictionalised versions of these famous people, I hope to keep their memories and their parts in history alive. Of course, with my main characters being made up, the interactions they have with the ‘real’ characters must also be made up, but they are based on things which could have happened.

So, who are these real characters?

  • Charles Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, who Stanley meets several times, eventually helping him compile the Anzac Book .
  • Simpson (John Simpson Kirkpatrick), the stretcher bearer famous for ferrying the wounded on his donkey, who Stanley meets just once, and later commemorates with a poem.
  • John Monash, who Stanley doesn’t meet, but whose tactics and actions he discusses with Bean.
  • Jim (James) Martin, the youngest known Australian to die in service, who was just fourteen when he died. Stanley meets Jim on board the stricken boat the Southland

Finally it’s time to let you in on a little secret. There are some much less famous real people embedded in the story. My own grandfather, Jim (James ) Adam, who served in the war, on the western front, is mentioned in one of Elizabeth’s letters. My husband’s grandmother, Audrey Chadd is also mentioned, playing the piano for a dance Elizabeth goes to. Though this couldn’t have happened – she was only a year old at the time – the Chadd family (her inlaws) were in business in Bunbury at the time, and Audrey, when she grew up, did play her piano for dances and events around Bunbury for many years. She even played at my wedding! There are a few other little hidden bits in the story that are my own little homage to family history.

Famous or not, it is important to remember that everyone who went away to war was a real person who did their bit, big or small. As such, retelling the stories of those terrible times commemorates them all.

Setting the Scene

April 8, 2015 by Sally

During my recent spell at the Literature Centre in Fremantle, I really enjoyed talking about my book 1915 and about developing setting. One of the passages I read was from the opening pages. In this scene, Stanley (my main character) and his friends are climbing a pyramid to have a photograph taken. While Stanley is a fictional character, the photo he is posing for is very real. It is the famous photograph of the 11th Battalion AIF posing on the pyramid of Cheops, taken in January 1915.

Image result for 11th battalion cheops

When I was looking for a starting point for the novel, I realised that this photograph, which I had seen and marvelled at many times, was a perfect opening scene. Stanley, my character, is from WA and consequently a member of the 11th. If he were real, he would have been in that photo, in January 1915. A perfect starting point.

So Stanley climbs the pyramid and poses for the photograph. As he does, of course, he can survey the landscape, including the training camp where he is based. He can also give details about other elements of the setting – the sounds, the smells, physical sensations, emotions and more

I read this scene to seven different groups of students, and asked them what they learned about that setting from what I read. Here are some of the things they came up with:

  • The sight of the pyramid Stanley is on, and the others nearby
  • The view of landscape of the camp, with tents, Artillery Road, water reservoirs and more
  • The sounds of the camp – men training, food being prepared, animals moving, hawkers nearby
  • The smell of sweat on the men, who’d been training for months, and were busily climbing the pyramid
  • The tastes of the dusty pyramid and the desert sand.
  • The feel of the pyramid under Stanley’s hands and feet as he climbs
  • The feel of the heat of the sun and the sweat trickling down his back
  • The feeling of wonder in being n this place so far from home.

Every group found different things – because as well as what was in the words, their personal experiences made them imagine things which the words merely implied. For example, a student who had been to Egypt said she could taste and smell the food that the hawkers were selling.

The reading and discussion were precursors to a writing exercise in which the young writers wrote their own descriptions of favourite places. And what descriptions they were! Rich not just with visual description but with sensory detail which made me want to visit (or revisit) the places they described. (As an aside, these pieces, and those written by TYP participants from around the state will be displayed as part of WA Week Celebrations in June).

Think about your own writing. When you build a setting, are you evoking a range of senses? Remember your old science lessons where you learnt about the five senses (and then think beyond that to senses you may not have covered, including emotion, temperature and more). And how do you deliver this information? Is it all in a big block, or is the information gleaned from what the action?

Here are six tips for building setting:

  1. Give essential information, but don’t dump too much at once. Really think about which bits are essential to tell us, and which bits are implied (do we need to know the exact shade of green of the grass, or will we know the grass is green because it springs beneath the characters feet?).
  2. Trust your readers to build their own picture from key details (there is no mention of the smell of sweat, or of food, in the opening pages of 1915, but most readers said they were invoked).
  3. Try to activate senses other than sight, though visual details are still important. When discussing this opening scene I realised I missed an opportunity to focus on the sounds of the camp, although they were implied in what Stanley sees and thinks about.
  4. Consider the feelings the setting invokes in your character – and how to convey this to readers. I wanted them to feel Stanley’s sense of wonder at finding himself on a pyramid, in Egypt, such a long way from his life back home. I have attempted to do this by contrasting this photo sitting, with one he had back home the year before.
  5. Show don’t tell. While some description may be necessary, a lot of your setting will be built through action. Stanley is climbing a pyramid. His exertion, and the fact that he struggles to hear the sergeant’s orders down below, suggest the scale of the pyramid.
  6. Consider how much of your setting might be already familiar to your reader and hence not need a lot of description. When preparing these workshops on setting, I realised that my verse novels have very few descriptions of setting. When I thought about this, it was because the settings included family homes and school classrooms. A few key details were enough to invoke these settings for readers, whereas Egypt and Gallipoli, are likely to be unfamiliar to most readers, as well as the differences between the world of 1915 and of 2015.

One other thing I learnt from these workshops is that being the teacher doesn’t exclude you from learning things yourself. I am now busily thinking about setting in my work I progress.

Free Books??

April 2, 2015 by Sally

Want to read a book for free? Don’t we all! Twice in the past week I was reminded of this by young fans.

First, a young reader emailed me asking if I knew any websites where she could read 1915 for free.

A few days later, another young reader told me she had read Roses are Blue online. This lead me to Google and sure enough I found a site where people could read Roses are Blue for free. The gorgeous young girl who told me about it had no idea that the online version was pirated – and I’m really glad that she told me, and also that this gave me an opportunity to chat with her about why such sites are problematic.

It’s wonderful that kids want to read my books, and I get that often readers can’t afford to buy the books they are interested in reading. But I do wonder if readers, young and not-so-young realise that sites that offer free scans of books (whether in pdf or ebook formats) are illegal, and that this is a form of piracy.

The pirates who share books online think that they are doing the world a favour. After all, authors and publishers are rich, and books are too expensive, so why not just put the books online for free? And the readers who download them, as I’ve said, may not know that it is stealing, and, if they do, they may also feel that it’s okay because authors are rich.

So, here in simple terms is why you shouldn’t read books through pirate sites (or, for that matter, upload books to those sites):

  1. As a reader, you miss out on quality. Often the scans are not high quality, so illustrations are dull, text is fuzzy and overall, production is missing. A scanned copy is not the same as a legitimate ebook (ie one produced by the publisher, and that you pay for).
  2. Authors are, almost without exception, not rich. When you do buy a copy of a book through legitimate channels, the author gets only a dollar or two per book sold. That’s an awful lot of books that would need to be sold every year just to allow the author to pay rent, buy food and so on. When you deprive the author of that dollar, s/he gets poorer.
  3. When authors and publishers earn money from the books you buy, this enables them to go on writing and publishing more good books. So, if nobody buys books, then this threatens the supply of more well written books with high production quality.
  4. Books are already available to you for free. At the library. Libraries are free to use, and if they don’t have the book you want, will usually get it in for you. And while you are there borrowing the book you want, you have the chance to find out about a whole lot of other books.
  5. I’ve said it already but I’m going to say it again – authors are not rich. We are as generous as we can be with our time and our talents, but we do also have families to feed and mortgages to pay. When you steal our book it hurts. When you borrow it from a library, our heart sings because we still get income from the library purchasing the copy, and from a compensation scheme called Lending Rights.
  6. Lastly, books may seem expensive, but if you compare the cost of a book with the cost of a trip to the movies, or a new tshirt, or a takeaway meal, and consider the value of something which can last so much longer than any of these, then a book is a bargain.

I’m not attacking my two young readers. Neither realised that what they were doing was wrong, and I hope my responses to them educated them but didn’t make them feel ashamed. It’s a shame that this seems to be a growing issue, and one that so many people don’t understand. If you, or someone you know, uses pirate sites to steal books – please reconsider.

First Review for 1915

February 26, 2015 by Sally

There are lots of scary parts about being an author – coming up with ideas, making them work on paper, editing in a way that meets the publisher’s needs, finding a publisher in the first place… The list is long. But for me, I think the scariest part is after a book is released and you wait to hear what readers think.

So, it was a great relief for me yesterday when the first review of 1915 appeared – and it was a good one!

Opening with the words “Highly recommended.” and going on to give a really detailed run down of the book, Fran Knight from ReadPlus praises the “detailed background”, the characters “with whom students can engage”, concluding that the book is “eminently readable “.

What a heart-warming review! You can see the full review here.

Have a great day. I know I will!

(BTW I forgot to say that in amongst the scary bits there are lots of wonderful wonderful things about being an author. A review that gets what you were trying to do is one of them).

The Party Continues

February 9, 2015 by Sally

The virtual launch party for 1915 is over, and I’m delighted to announce that Ella Mickan is the winner of the signed copy, which  is on its way to her now. Congratulations, Ella! If you didn’t win, I’m sorry, but hopefully you enjoyed your free virtual refreshments, and the fun of celebrating with me.

The launch may be over, but the celebrations for the book continue. Today I am visiting the lovely Dee White’s blog, where I’m sharing some tips about researching and writing historical fiction. If you’ve ever thought about using real events as the basis of your writing, head over and see what worked for me. While you’re there, check out the rest of Dee’s posts – she always gives great advice!

Watch this space for more news about visits and events.

 

 

Happy Happy Day!

February 1, 2015 by Sally

Welcome to my website! You’ve arrived here just in time for  a party.

First things first, I always like to welcome my guests with a refreshment. Here’s a nice cold glass of virtual bubbles (alcohol-free of course, if you’re under 18) for you:

Keep an eye out for the wandering waiters who have a wonderful array of virtual nibbles, too. The best thing about virtual food is that it’s calorie free, so you can eat as many as you like and still have room for dinner.

Right, now that we’ve got that sorted, on to the formalities: the launch of my new book, 1915. Let me just mount the stage so you can see me a little better.

PWF12 gesticulating

(Excuse the happy dance, I find it hard to stand still when I’m excited).

Now, can everyone hear? Good! Let me get started then (clears throat nervously).

Thank you all so much for coming. 1915 isn’t just my newest book – it’s the product of two years of research, writing, crying, rewriting, crying some more, rewriting some more, worrying that I wouldn’t be able to do justice to Stanley’s story, lengthy phone calls with my editor, Claire, writing some more, and finally looking proudly at my author copies and wondering what all the stressing was about.

When I was asked to write this book, I said yes, even though I also knew it would be a big challenge. The story of Gallipoli has been told many times, by writers far more talented than I. How was I going to find a way to tell it that was fresh, that would appeal to young readers, but that also told a story which needs to keep being retold because it is an important part of our history?  I had never written a historical novel. I wasn’t even sure why Scholastic had asked me. Amidst all that doubt though, I was determined to have a red hot go. When the character of Stanley came to me as a teacher from Bunbury, where I currently live, he came as a very real young man. I found myself looking at the events of Gallipoli and asking myself, over and over, what would Stanley think? When I realised he had a twin sister, Elizabeth, back in Australia, worrying about her brother even as she carries on teaching his class, I asked the same questions from her perspective. Many times I had to remind msyelf that these two weren’t real – that I’d made them up. And many more times I reminded myself that even though that was the case, people like Stanley and Elizabeth were very very real, and I owed it to them to get the story right.

So, here it is: 1915, a book I’m proud of, and which I hope will play its own small part in sharing the story of Gallipoli.

1915

I’d like to thank Claire Hallifax and Scholastic for believing that I could write this book, and helping to take it from a very raw story to a finished novel. I’d also like to thank Tara, my agent, and my family, who have to put up with a lot of angst when I’m writing any book. I’ve talked a lot about this story with lots of friends and family – so thank you for listening, and for being interested. Thanks to you, too, attendees of this launch, for taking the time out of your busy day to attend my virtual celebration.  But mostly, thanks to Stanley and Elizabeth Moore, for letting me tell their story.

Thank you.

Phew. Well, that’s the speech out of the way. Now there’s just the celebrating to do. While you’re munching on those virtual sausage rolls the waiter is passing round, I’d love if you’d leave a comment to let me know you were here.  To celebrate the release of 1915, I’m going to give one  away a signed copy of the book to one lucky commenter who leaves a comment by  the end of Sunday. The winner will be chosen at random from all who leave a comment about the launch or the book.

1915 is available now from all good bookstores in Australia (if they haven’t got it, ask them!), or online here.

Want to know more about the book? I’m answering ten questions over at the Aussiereviews blog today and will be posting more on this blog, and on Twitter and my facebook page in the coming weeks.

Again, thank you for coming to my launch!

 

 

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