New Episode - Camille Booker on the learning curve from writer to published author
Episode notes
Join us for an inspiring conversation with award-winning author and creative writing teacher, Camille Booker. Listen in as Camille candidly shares her journey from falling in love with writing to becoming a published author. She provides intriguing insights into her process of writing historical fiction, including her debut novel WHAT IF YOU FLY and the successes she has experienced with her second novel THE WOMAN IN THE WAVES. You won't want to miss the invaluable wisdom she imparts about the challenges of writing and the importance of writing for the love of it.
In the second chapter of our conversation, we explore the intriguing world of Como, a town named after the Italian village, as detailed in Camille's historical fiction novel. The protagonist, Francis, navigates the tumultuous period of World War II, a romantic relationship with an Italian immigrant, and the subsequent mystery of his disappearance. Camille shares her experience of incorporating elements of romance, crime, and mystery into the narrative and how she refined her plot with the help of editorial feedback from Hawkeye.
The final part of our conversation revolves around Camille's writing journey, her participation in the Curtis Brown course, and the invaluable role of a supportive writing community. She sheds light on the inspiration behind her novels, her writing process, and the significance of joining writing communities for support and feedback. We also discuss her upcoming novel, a gothic tale set in the post-World War I era, and her experience of winning the Hawkeye Prize for the second time. Camille reminds us that the ultimate joy in writing is connecting with readers, not seeking accolades or publicity. Tune in for a compelling discussion filled with invaluable insights for both aspiring and seasoned writers.
Episode Chapters
(0:00:00) - Supporting Women's Voices and Writers
(0:13:18) - Historical Fiction and the Writing Process
(0:26:23) - Writing Success and Learning With Community
(0:35:19) - Madness, Mystery, and Mermaids Novel
(0:41:31) - Publishing 'The Woman in the Waves
In the Intro
In this episode of Writes4Women, the host introduces Camille Booker, a Quiet Achiever in the world of writing. Camille, an award-winning author and creative writing teacher, shares valuable insights on overcoming challenges in the writing journey. She's a dedicated writer who has achieved remarkable success, including the publication of her debut novel WHAT IF YOU FLY and recognition for her second one THE WOMAN IN THE WAVES. Camille's journey from her academic background to her impressive literary accomplishments makes her a writer to watch out for.
Transcript
04:05 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Thanks so much for having me, pam. As I was saying before, I have always listened to this podcast and to hear that introduction with my name there it's really making me feel emotional. But I'm really happy to be here and, yeah, thanks for having me.
04:19 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Oh, it's great to have you on and to have somebody who I know is a regular listener to the podcast and that whole word journey is very cliched, I know, but it has been great to follow you on your journey and to see you go from an aspiring writer entering all the competitions and putting your work out there, putting yourself out there, and now to be in the position where you've had one book published and then a second coming up. So I think it's a really great example and you're a great kind of inspiration for other authors out there. But you might be listening, but can we start with you telling us about your initial love of writing and where that came from and where, when you think you had these ideas that I want to actually work towards being a published author?
05:00 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, yeah okay, I've always loved reading and losing myself in books, but that didn't necessarily mean I haven't always wanted to be a writer. I just really love books and reading and walking through bookstores and looking at everything and I thought, oh, how good would it be to have my own book up there one day, but never really thought it would happen and wasn't really driven to chase that as a dream. It was only until, I think, I read a really good historical fiction novel and I just loved it so much and it was a really heartbreaking, sad love story and it was something that I thought, oh, I really want to feel that again in another book. So I looked for other books like it, trying to find that book hangover that you sometimes get, just trying to find that feeling again. And I couldn't find it anywhere. And then I started thinking, oh, maybe what if I tried to write one of my own? But that doesn't mean that you can. And so then I just started thinking if I was to write a story you always hear that phrase of write what you know, and obviously I didn't grow up in World War II. I don't know why I thought I could set a story during World War II. Then I started listening to my husband's grandparents talk about their experiences at home during World War II and I just thought it was really fascinating that everyone felt really connected and the war was this thing that was happening far away, and they had dances and everyone felt united, even though they had their sons and brothers and everything going away. They just weren't really that worried about anything. So I thought that's not what you'd expect. So I just started listening out for those sorts of stories and eventually this story started forming in my mind and you grab little bits of inspiration from so many different places until you can't fit them in your mind anymore.
So yeah, I had this idea for the World War II novel and I'm a trained teacher as a French teacher so I was working at a real exclusive boys' school in Sydney, so it was quite an intense introduction to teaching. We had to do the after school sports and all of that, and I'm a sporty person, so coaching football wasn't really my favourite thing to do.
So I started again daydreaming about my story, always just thinking about it, probably a bit too much in the classroom if I'm probably being a French just daydreaming a bit, but really I started writing it because it was an escape, like a creative outlet for me in that stressful first year of teaching, and I never had any expectations for it. It was just something for myself, yeah, to get this story out of my mind and down onto the page. So that's how it started, and I didn't finish it. It was just a Word document that lived in my laptop, which was my dirty little secret, and I would just open it every now and then come back to it and add some ideas to it every now and then.
And then I stopped teaching and had a baby, and that takes over your life for a while. And it was only until we got our son's sleeping routines quite a down pat that I found myself at home with an hour or two every day thinking how best to make use of this time. I can't go out anywhere because the baby's at home asleep. What should I do? I don't wanna just watch TV. I don't wanna do the washing.
So I opened up my laptop and started looking again at my secret story and just kept going back to it, kept going back to it. So it was a long and slow process and I said to myself, if I can just finish the first draft, that's all I'm hoping to do. Just finish it, you've started it, you might as well see it through. So I did finish it and I thought, okay, yeah, celebrate that, be happy that you've done it. And then you think, okay, what's the next step? What should I do next? I've got this story. I don't know if it's any good, but I don't have any real right of friends to read it or anything. So, yeah, so I started submitting it to competitions just to see if it would get any attention, and it did. The Lucy Cavendish fiction prize was long listed there and I thought, wow, I never expected that.
So at that point I think my son was about two years old and I was still at home with him. I wasn't teaching anymore, so it was a full stay at home, mum and I was going a bit crazy at home just with the baby and all of that. And so I enrolled into a part time creative writing degree at Wollongong, because that was our local uni and we spent a lot of time there anyway. So I did that part time, so again as a creative outlet, and I just thought, if I am going to try and make this manuscript as best as it can be, I need to actually learn what it is.
I didn't know what a plot was, I didn't know what character development was. I didn't know anything, so yeah, so I basically took my dirty little secret story with me to uni and just revoked it apart, basically, and just rewrote it so that it actually fit the conventions of everything, of genre, of plot, of everything that it needed and obviously workshopped it as well.
It's so amazing to have people read your work for the first time too, and it is hard because I'd never done it before, but that was the first instance of developing that thick skin that you need as well. So, yeah, so I did that, and then I entered it into the Hawkeye Prize, and that was when it got runner up. So it didn't win, but thanks to that they offered me a contract that came with the condition that I work with them as well and their editors to rewrite a lot of it as well, because it still wasn't white up to the standard that they would have been happy with. So we worked really hard to get it again at another level that, yeah, that they would be happy with.
11:08 - Pamela Cook (Host)
So it's amazing, though, that they saw in both instances, The Lucy Cavendish and Hawkeye obviously saw something in your writing and in the manuscript that caught their eye and that they thought, wow, this can really be developed. Have you got any sense of what it was in there that really grabbed them, or did they tell you, through feedback, what it was that drew them towards the manuscript?
11:32 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I think Hawkeye especially. We're looking for a strong female protagonist, and you find that a lot in historical fiction. Obviously the female characters are often ahead of their time. So there was that that Hawkeye liked and the fact that it was set in Australia too, because there weren't that many, because often they're set in Europe and while this book does go over to Europe, at some points in the middle of the book it opens and the third section it closes in Australia too. So I think they liked that it was based on what was happening on the home front and experiences of that as well. So tell us about the book.
12:16 - Pamela Cook (Host)
WHAT IF YOU FLY - this? Is it here for anybody that's watching on video? It's a gorgeous cover and a great story, Camille. I was really just wanting to find out what happened next when I was reading it, but and one of the things that I loved about it personally was that I grew up in the area where the story is largely set and opens, and so can you tell us a bit about you said it was talking to your grandparents that kind of gave you a lot of inspiration. Can you tell us a bit more about the inspiration for the story? And, as you said, you obviously didn't grow up in World War II, but there was something about these stories that you were hearing that drew you in enough to turn it into a manuscript, and the setting as well. Can you talk a bit about the inspiration on both counts there?
13:01 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, so yeah my husband's grandparents all have lived in Como their entire lives, since they were born, basically, so they had a wealth of knowledge and anecdotes as well from the time. And also that Como is such..it's a place where there's so many interesting historical details about it, like not only the historical pub, which was from the 1880s or back in the 1800s, but the fact that the town itself, como, is named after the Italian village, like in Como, because the Italian town of Como, because the Italians who were brought over here to work thought it looked similar. Yeah, it was named after that. And also the Boatbore field used to be part of the river, but during the Depression, to give people work, they filled it in, I think, 30. So now it's the football field. The train line as well has all these interesting things.
Henry Lawson was a local and drank at the pub and told his poems to locals there. So there's all these interesting things that I had never known about, which I was hearing, and I just thought, wow, Como is a really special place. So, yeah, I wanted to try and include as much of those little details as possible, but the characters obviously are just fictional, they're made up. Yeah, I just wanted a female protagonist. At the end of her, I think, sort of adolescence so burgeoning on her adulthood or womanhood. Yeah, so just it's coming of age, but yeah, love story adventure, but tell us a bit about Francis.
14:47 - Pamela Cook (Host)
So, as you say, she is on the brink of adulthood and we meet her in a time when the war has well and truly started. Her brother has gone off for training for the war and very quickly I don't think it's too much of a spoiler, because I think it might even be on the back cover blue, but very quickly becomes missing in action. She's been a family where she doesn't have that much close connection to her parents at the moment, doing their own thing, and we see her as I. Just when we met her, I just felt like she was this almost a solitary character. She's got quite a good friend, but there's a sense of disconnection there as well. And then she meets someone who she's really attracted to and whose world really draws her in.
15:27 - Camille Booker (Guest)
But I'm answering the question, but can you tell us a little bit more? It's answering it perfectly. I think I wanted her to be a little bit lonely and a bit yeah, like not really knowing that staying in Australia and doing everything that society says she should do, like getting married and having children, is something that she wanted to do straight away. She doesn't quite know what it is she wants, but she knows that she doesn't want to rush into just getting married and having a family. Yeah, she finishes high school and I think she first gets a job in Sydney. She thinks it's really important to catch the train into the city and work at the bank for a while, but, yeah, it's not really enough. So, yeah, she meets this Italian immigrant, Leo, who is out here working on the train line, and they fall in love. But obviously there are tensions because it's a war and Italian people were looked at as the enemy aliens, so forbidden love.
16:30 - Camille Booker (Guest)
But yeah, you're right, she finds in him someone that she can be herself with and talk about her dreams and everything like that. So she does find happiness in him. But then, yeah, he mysteriously disappears and her brother is also missing. So, yeah, she doesn't really feel like anything's keeping her here anymore and sets off on a journey to see if she can make something of a sell and see what happened to them.
16:58 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, it's a really interesting storyline for this character and I love the way that you've pulled. We've got the historical time and place, but you've pulled elements from different genres. So there is the romance and the romantic element. It's a bit of a crime mystery going on there as well, which is set up in the prologue. I'm curious to find out Camille, are you an eclectic reader? Do you read across a lot of genres? Do you think that influenced the writing?
17:24 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I do read across genres, but and I must say this with a bit of honesty, it might have been my inexperience at first writing it, thinking okay, what's happening next? I'm not really conforming to the genre that I had chosen to write in, because I hadn't chosen any genre, I just wanted to write a story and I thought I just kept thinking to myself what's happening next?
What's happening next, what's happening next? So, yeah, it wasn't that I was influenced by the different genres that I was reading. I didn't know enough about World War II historical fiction to think, no, this doesn't happen. Yeah, and so I think perhaps it's what my imagination came out with rather than yeah, which I think is great. I love it.
18:11 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Was it something that you felt when you were going through and you said you set off to learn a bit more about plot and structure and then you had the editing process with Hawkeye conforming a bit more to the genre that you had to rein in as you went through that process?
18:25 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yes, definitely, and especially the ending, because the ending was a little bit undeveloped, I think, and I didn't really know how to tie up all the loose ends. The only way we could come up with that is having the court case, and thankfully my husband's a barrister, so I could ask him all these questions. What would the plush have said in this instance and what would have happened next? Yeah, we definitely had to work through that to make sure that all of those storylines came together.
18:54 - Pamela Cook (Host)
What was that like the editorial process going through that with Hawkeye, because you said that when you were at uni you were getting feedback, but I guess that would have been the first time that you had that full-on editorial process that you were working through. How did you find that?
19:07 - Camille Booker (Guest)
It is confronting at first, and you get the email with the report and all the changes and you just take a deep breath and you think, okay, okay. And then you think, okay, I can do this. And then you go ahead and you do it, and it's just one thing at a time, because if you're looking at it as a whole, you just think, oh, my goodness, I could never do all of this. It's too much, it's too hard, I don't have it in me, I'm not good enough. But then if you just take a step back and think, okay, what if I just did this one thing and change that? And then you just do it again and again until, yeah, it's finished. So yeah, it was really hard, but I just keep thinking I've come this far and might as well keep going.
19:54 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Exactly, and do you feel that? One of the questions that I sometimes get is do I need to do a degree in creative writing in order to be a writer? You're someone who's done that bachelor's degree in creative writing. What do you feel that you learned through that process and do you feel that was really worthwhile for you?
20:14 - Camille Booker (Guest)
For me it was definitely, but I probably could have googled this as well. But maybe I'm just not that type of learner. Maybe I do need to sit in a classroom and be told this is an exciting incident and the rising tension and this happens and there needs to be character development. So maybe the answer to that question is you don't need a degree, because everything that you need to know would be freely available on the internet. But if you're the type of person that learns better in a classroom environment, without the people in a lecture theatre, I just love learning. I just really love it. I've always done it. As you could probably guess, I'm still at university now because it's my comfort zone. I just can't bear to be away from it. Yeah, I guess you don't need to create a writing degree, but if you are someone that just loves those environments and the connections you can make, then I would absolutely recommend doing one for sure.
21:12 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, I agree and, look, I don't think it's for everybody academic learning and certainly there are plenty of other ways.
There's loads of courses and things around, particularly if you are interested in commercial fiction. But yeah, I do agree with you that if you somebody that loves learning and you're also in that situation where you're with people who are doing the same thing that you're doing and you're getting the feedback and all that sort of things even though I guess when I did my masters in creative writing, we studied writing, we studied some of the techniques in writing, but it wasn't really learning anything about, certainly about commercial fiction, that was more a literary degree. But yeah, I didn't feel any of it was wasted, like I really enjoyed it and just doing it because I love doing it. Like you say, I'm a bit like you too, can't get enough of that type of work. It's really good. So once you got through that editorial process with Hawkeye and you had the completed manuscript, what was that like, like for you, going into this first experience of having your book published? Can you tell us a little bit about how that felt for you?
22:14 - Camille Booker (Guest)
It was really exciting and a bit daunting and overwhelming, but different to now, I didn't have any connections in the industry. I really relied on Hawkeye to lead me and just show me the right way to do things and I didn't have the connections that I have now. I didn't really post on social media. I didn't know the things that I know now. So I think if I was to do it again, I would probably try and make those connections earlier with other people. And it's hard because if you don't have them, you don't know where to get them from.
But, I honestly say that Hawkeye are so caring and it's one big family. It's not a huge publishing company, it's part of the small press network. It's such a lovely company to be a part of because they really want what's best for you and your book and even working with them in the editing process. I think I emailed the publisher the day that the book was supposed to go to print because I'd had a dream that night of something that I thought oh, I really want that to be in there, because it's like a symbolic thing that will add meaning to this and that and the publisher can't leave it with me I'll get it in there, and I can't imagine a bigger publishing house allowing an author to do that on the day that the book is to go to print.
So that's the difference with them: you can reach out directly to the publisher and they're there for you and they really want longevity with you and your book. And I know most of the bigger publishers probably. I think there's like three months either side of helping you market and that publicity side of things, but with Hawkeye you're really in it for the long haul. Yeah well, they don't have the distribution to all of their bigger stores like Big W or Kmart, even the airport bookstores, the relationships that we have between authors and with the publisher, I think you don't get that in other places. So, yeah, it's been a really lovely experience to have had and I feel really lucky.
24:52 - Pamela Cook (Host)
That's so good. No, like you say, there are definite advantages to being part of a small press. You were talking about the connections with the other authors. So Hawkeye connects you with other authors within the company who are also being published by them?
25:05 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, they really encourage it, For example Anne Freeman.
25:08 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, Anne's been on the podcast before.
25:10 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, she and I are really good friends and catch up all the time because she's in Melbourne, I'm in Sydney. But yeah, like it's nice to bounce ideas off each other or read each other's work because she's a whiz on social media, you help me with all that sort of stuff and just share each other's strengths to help each other. Yeah, it's really lovely, yeah.
25:33 - Pamela Cook (Host)
And how have you made connections with people outside of Hawkeye and within the wider writing community.
25:45 - Camille Booker (Guest)
The first time I was able to do that, Pam, was thanks to your February challenge or something on Instagram?
25:47 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, the Instagram challenge.
25:49 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Okay, yeah, it was me taking a leap and putting myself out there and just being like, okay, I don't know anyone in the writing community, how do I start? And I did that challenge and I just made so many new Instagram followers and friends that I can call them friends now through that, from commenting on their posts or liking, and just little steps, but little steps add up to those sorts of relationships and other ways. Are Holly Craig's Write Club? Yeah, yeah, that's again through Instagram. I think I. Oh, actually, I think I found Holly because she was on your podcast too.
26:32 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yes, she was yeah.
26:34 - Camille Booker (Guest)
So I found her on Instagram and joined her Write Club and, yeah, there's so many lovely women on there just so focused on writing and so encouraging, so motivating. Yeah, just through those sorts of communities.
26:51 - Pamela Cook (Host)
It's so good to hear that you make connections through writing with women. That makes me feel very happy. Yeah, that's excellent. Actually, I need to get Holly back on the podcast, because that was pre-her being published at all and her books are going crazy, so I'd love to.
27:05 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, actually, I'm part of a book club where we've just read THE SHALLOWS and she's coming by Zoom tonight After this at 6pm. We're going to chat to her.
27:18 - Pamela Cook (Host)
So you have continued on with your writing. WHAT IF YOU FLY came out and has been out for a little while now. You've got a second book that is going to be published THE WOMAN IN THE WAVES. And tell us about that, because that has, looking at their list of accolades that book has already accrued. It's been even more successful in its early stages than WHAT IF YOU FLY. How did you go about writing your second book and how was that whole experience for you?
27:49 - Camille Booker (Guest)
So I had two novel ideas at the beginning of two years ago and I thought, okay, because they came about from a creative writing degree. Because during the degree there was a subject where we had to write a short story every week to workshop. And I wrote a short story which was too big for a short story, there's too much in it. But I thought, oh, keep it at the back of my head, maybe one day it'll get bigger and maybe I can. That can be my next novel. But then there was this other one and I was always calling it my lighthouse story. So at that point I was like, oh, which one do I try to write? I don't even know if I can write another novel. I thought, okay, just pick one. And the lighthouse one was the one that I chose, because I think I had the idea earlier and it had been with me for a longer time, so it was probably a little bit more baked inside my brain.
So I think, the Curtis Brown course. I needed to submit the first 5000 words in order to see if they were good enough to be accepted on the course. So I think I wrote the first 5000 words of that and, thankfully and surprisingly, I was accepted and thought, okay, I'm going to do this. So a six month course, I guess I'm going to do it. And I wasn't supposed to do it because my husband was finishing his PhD that year and he said to me Cami, I need to help this year, you've got to help me this year. I'm like, yes, okay, I can, but anyway, I thought I'll just do it when he's not looking. Sneakily, sneakily, sneakily into my phone.
So anyway, I got into the Curtis Brown course and I committed to it and I'm so glad I did, because it helps so much and it is a really different learning style obviously to the creative writing degree, because it's online and you watch like a prerecorded video for the week.
If it's your week to submit your writing, you submit 3000 words and the rest of the students I think there's about 15 in a course provide feedback on that piece of work. So there's a lot of feedback to read through. But it's all very helpful and it's all done on forums. So you post it all online and then subsequent weeks you'll be providing the feedback for other people's work. So it's a lot of reading, a lot of feedback. But the best thing about doing feedback consistently like that is you read people's work and you pick up on things that you learn to put into your own work. So helping others it's also helping yourself and your own writing, and I wasn't expecting that.
30:37 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, I love that about the feedback process. It's so good like you learn so much from reading other people's work and thinking I do that and maybe I need to not do that, or that's a great idea, that's a great way to, and it's not that you're plagiarising or copying anything, but you're just learning so much.
30:53 - Camille Booker (Guest)
It's techniques they're using or the way that they're showing something, and, yeah, and you think, wow, I'd love to give that a go in my own story or somehow a little bit different. Yeah, so that was really great, and the best thing about the course is that, while it's based in the UK I think me and one other woman was from Australia and we all still WhatsApp. We all still read each other's work. Yeah, it's really good, and I think we ended the course about a year ago and we're still in contact quite regularly reading each other's manuscripts. I think two of them had gone on to write two more. So, yeah, it's such a good way to get feedback, because when I was writing WHAT IF YOU FLY, all I wanted was a writing group.
All I wanted, and I thought I just don't know any writers. I'm sure I can't just put myself out there and you go hi, can I join your group? But doing it in this natural way over time and building those genuine, authentic give and take relationships has just been the best thing. So the Curtis Bank course really helped with that. I think I got really lucky, though, and just got a really good bunch of people. Yeah, I know other writer friends have done the Curtis Brown course and haven't kept in contact with the students. But yeah, I got really lucky with that one again, that's so good, so good.
32:19 - Pamela Cook (Host)
So it sounds like the writing of the second book was a much quicker process for you. Camille, it was really quick.
32:26 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I think the course obviously makes you write it because you have to have those thousand words or I think it was three thousand words every few weeks ready to go to submit. So you're like, oh God, I've started writing, so you're forced to do it. But I just think the constant encouragement and motivation, hearing the other students in the course saying, oh, I hit the 50k mark, and you think, oh, I, maybe I can do the 50k, maybe I can do that too, so you just keep going, yeah, so I found that a lot easier and I think maybe because the idea was already for a long time had been in my mind and I plotted it all out. So that was something that was different from the first book too, I sat down, I wrote the plot.
I wrote a really detailed table of each chapter because I used SAVE THE CAT. Yeah, and I had to write it all out. This has to happen here. What's happening? And then a little description. So it was very laid out. So really I just had to open up that document and think, okay, what am I writing next? Oh, it's up to there. Okay, let's write it. So it was quicker. I think it took probably about eight months.
33:39 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, and were you revising as you go? What's your kind of process like with that?
33:47 - Camille Booker (Guest)
No, I don't think I was revising as I went. I think I just wanted to get it all out and then go back and revise it?
33:55 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, and did you find you said you plotted and planned it a lot more? You obviously learned a lot from that first experience of writing. What if you fly? Did you find the revision process was easier too, as a result of everything that you'd learned over that time?
34:11 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yes, much easier, I think, working with that three-act structure and plotting it out. It means that your second draft isn't just a structural edit. You already have a little bit of a structure, so you know you don't have to do those huge changes. It's more of a checking to see if everything's where it's supposed to be, whether you need to add something. I needed to add a chapter, which I went back and did, so there was that, but it wasn't a huge rewrite like it was with WHAT IF YOU FLY.
34:48 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, yeah, so this one has a bit of a gothic element. Can you tell us, without giving away too many spoilers, can you tell us a little bit about the book?
34:58 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I haven't done this before. So, yeah, I'm calling it gothic historical fiction because that was what the tutor in Curtis Brown told me to name it as. So I thought, okay, yeah, it sounds right, but before that I was calling it psychological horror. Okay, so I don't know, it's a blend of that. I knew when I wanted to write it. I wanted to write a storyline where it's like a descent into madness. So, yes, there's an unreliable narrator, Grace. So there's that as well. It's set during the post-World War I period, so 1920, 1921, in a fictional place Widows Peak. I had to make a fictional because the way I needed the lighthouse to be wouldn't have been there at that time.
It's not a real place. So, yes, that's why it's a bit gothic, because it's during that dark sort of time, just post-World War I. It's a bit gritty. There's a murder mystery element.
36:10 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, and we have another really strong female character there, I'm guessing.
36:15 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yes, it's a dual point of view. When I was plotting it I knew I wanted my protagonist to be this woman. She's a fisherman's daughter, a bit lonely again. A little bit odd, a little bit strange. She sees a mermaid while she's out on the boat and she can't be sure whether it's real or just her imagination, or just the fog, or just something that she's seen. So she's trying to work out what's going on.
And then later that morning she's walking along the beach and the mermaid's there again, but then she realises that it's actually a dead person washed up on shore. So that kicks off the story. That's the inside of Instagram. I love that. And then the second narrator comes in. Who's my detective character. He's an Irish immigrant. He's an ex-war soldier from the Great War, a bit damaged from that, and they get all entangled and have to solve the mystery together.
37:19 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Oh, I love the sound of that. I really love it. I'll work to read it. So, Camille, you've already said you love learning. You sound like you're quite driven. You completed this novel and it has won the Hawkeye Prize this time around and is being published. How did that whole process go for you the second time around? Did you automatically think I'm going to enter it in the Hawkeye again, or what was your thought process around that?
37:45 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I was so hesitant to enter it because obviously, already being a Hawkeye author, I didn't want to take the chance of another aspiring author away. I didn't want them to think that Hawkeye saw my name and thought, oh, we better at least if we're a long listing or a short listing, because she's already a Hawkeye author. But it was our friend Anne Freeman who said she entered and she was longlisted for her upcoming novel ME THAT YOU SEE in the Hawkeye Prize. And she said no, it's all completely blind read, so they're not going to know. It's you, they're not going to see me, they won't even know. So that changed my perception of it. I thought, oh, if that's the case, then there's no harm in entering and I only did it probably the morning that it was going to close.
38:42 - Pamela Cook (Host)
You really did prevaricate about that, and so you would have been shortlisted first, and then it was announced.
38:48 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, I really was. I did not expect it at all. I was blown away that I was longlisted, then shortlisted and thought I'm so happy with that. That's amazing. Let whoever else wins win and enjoy the moment. And then I got the call from Hawkeye to say and I was just about to go in to teach my class at Wollongong Uni, I was getting my coffee, got the phone call and she just won and I said “Really? Like I don't believe you,” and when I was a little shaky then I had to put the game face on and go in and teach. But yeah, I was really surprised but obviously really happy and just excited for the journey to start again, but to do it in a way where I felt that I knew so much more about the industry and what I wanted out of it and to take my time with some things and do things better.
39:41 - Pamela Cook (Host)
And yeah, and just did it a different way. That leads beautifully into my next question, camille, because it is. What do you think are the important lessons that you've learned about writing for publication along the way as part of your journey?
39:58 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, it's tricky because I never had any expectations that WHAT IF YOU FLY was going to be published. I thought it would never be read by anyone outside of my family circle when I was doing an author event at Sutherland Library about a year and a half ago for WHAT IF YOU FLY and obviously my husband came, my mom came, I saw a friend in the audience, but then there were other people there that I didn't know and that no one had invited and they had just come because they'd heard of the book and I just thought that is beyond my expectations and I was just really touched that something I created had found its way into those readers' hands.
And I think the most important thing in the lessons that I've learned is that if you're writing to be published, you just have to think about who your readers are, and if you love to write it and find joy in writing the book, then hopefully readers will find joy in reading it too. And really that's why you should be doing it, not for the accolades, not for the publicity, not for anything other than just because you love words, you love language, you love reading, you love worlds, you love characters.
41:21 - Pamela Cook (Host)
I love that. I think that's really solid advice and I think it's a great basis on which to continue and build your career, which I know that you are going to do. The Woman in the Waves is being published. When is that going to be out?
41:34 - Camille Booker (Guest)
There's no date yet. I'm working with a cultural sensitivity reader and it's the first time I've navigated this process, so I'm still learning about that too and I want to do it the right way. So it's taking a bit longer. But once that's done, then I will hand it into Hawkeye for a line edit and actually got an email from them today saying that the designer is starting to think about the cover design and everything like that. So it will be out next year Great, but there's no date yet because it's still really a bit of a way away.
42:10 - Pamela Cook (Host)
That's exciting, though, and the way time is flying, it'll be before we know it. Very scary. You mentioned the cover designers. Do you get input into that being in a smaller press? Do you have a little bit more input into the cover design?
42:24 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, I think so. I think we do compared to the bigger publishers, which is lovely, because it's just nice to feel that your vision of the world and the characters is taken into account. They'll ask us what colour does your main character have? What colour hair do they have? What do they look like? What does your setting look like? What sort of vibes does it have? What sort of mood is it? Yeah, so it's really nice to send them a big PDF of all the pictures that I use for my mood board when I was writing it. So, yeah, it's nice to feel that you have some sort of input into it.
43:00 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah, oh, that's great.
43:01 - Camille Booker (Guest)
I can't wait to see it.
43:03 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Just a couple more questions. I know you've got to go because you've got Book Club coming up with Holly. Just one thing that came up and this was in the episode I did last week, which was a listener question. I think it's just a really interesting question to ask different authors, but have there been any times when you've thought I just can't do this anymore, this is too hard, I'm not going to do it, I'm giving up. I'm just going to go away and crochet a blanket or do something that doesn't require me getting read reviews or whatever. Have you had moments like that? And, if you have, what have you done to pull yourself through?
43:37 - Camille Booker (Guest)
At the beginning of the year I felt that way. I felt like I can't do this anymore. It's too hard. It's too hard with little kids. I'm not present enough. It's not fair on them that I'm always trying to just give them their naps so I can go away and write.
The story is not vivid enough. I can't write the scenes yet. I don't have enough time to fully engross myself in it. So why bother? If you're snatching 30 minutes or an hour a day, if you're lucky, you feel like you can't give the scene enough of what it needs.
But then I just thought an hour a day is better than nothing and even if you just write a paragraph, you feel better in yourself at the end of the day that you've made some progress, rather than just throwing it all away and think it's too hard because if you're not doing it, then what else would you be doing? You know what I mean. Yes, it's hard, yes, it takes a long time, but if it really makes you happy and a better person because you're doing it and I feel like I am a happier person if I've written that day and I can be more present and be with my kids in a better way if I've dumped my words out onto the computer.
Yes, the way I got out of it was just, I think I chatted to some of my Curtis Brown writing buddies and was like I can't write this book, it's too hard, I don't know what to do. And actually one of them said you need to find a TV series set in the time period that you're thinking of your novel is going to be, because that will give you so many visual ideas and it will make your scenes come to life in your head. And I thought, okay, I'll give that a go. And I watched Poldark. Oh, okay, yeah, and because it's like it's coastal, it's a mining town, they've got their old skirts and dresses and it really helped.
Yeah, I don't know finding a series that has lots of episodes and obviously Peaky Blinders was the one I watched, for I've been in the waves and that had all that greediness, that darkness, 1920s sort of thing. So, yeah, I think if you feel like you can't do it, just step away from it for a bit and watch some TV. And, I don't know, chat to your friends, your writing buddies. And yeah, as I said, if you don't do it, what else will you do?
46:01 - Pamela Cook (Host)
I love that, I love it, all of it so good. And just finally, Camille, question that I often finish the podcast with what would you say is at the heart of your writing?
46:11 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Oh, the heart of my writing. Women, obviously, women doing brave things, women maybe unassuming women, we courageous things for the times that they are living in and bending societal expectations in their own way, rising up against patriarchal structures, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, just women that are slightly, a little off, a little different, but you still want to root for them.
46:53 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Yeah yeah, it was really interesting watching the cogs turn in your head as you worked that out.
46:59 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Oh, yes, yes.
47:02 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Oh, thank you so much. Really great chatting to you Finally. We've been going to do this for a while, so it's been really good to have you on the podcast.
47:09 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Thanks, so much for having me, and actually I'm coming along to your speed dating thing at Sutherland Library.
47:15 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Ah, yes, I should give that a little plug. Actually, everybody. I'll put in the show notes because this will be out this Friday, this episode so 28th of November speed dating with an author, which is not actually a pitching event. Some people are reading that as being a pitching event, but it's actually just where everybody in our writing group, the inkwell there's eight of us, will just be talking about our books, our experience in the publishing industry and just basically having a chat.
47:38 - Camille Booker (Guest)
Yeah, I'm excited. Now I'm going to come up with a really tough question for you and put you on the spot too. Oh, ok, excellent, I'll look forward to that.
47:46 - Pamela Cook (Host)
Thanks so much, Camille.