Dr Helen Edwards on Writing Difference: Lighthouses, Selkies & Strength

Music. In the spirit of reconciliation, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community.

I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Highland peoples today.

Welcome to Totally Lit, the podcast celebrating reading, writing, and creating literature. I'm your host, Kai Garvey. Thank you for listening. Helen Edwards, welcome to Totally Lit. I'm so pleased to have you on as a guest. I'm very excited because you won a pretty special award this year for one of your books with the Foreverability Awards. Did you want to tell me a bit about that experience? It was a big shock to actually win it. Well, to get even in the shortlist.

It's an award that is very close to my heart because of the focus and bringing forward with books that include diversity and difference and champion those things. And that's something I try to do in all of my books. So it was a really special thing and I was very proud of myself. It was my second book, Legend of the Lighthouse Moon. And I think I'm still buzzing about it. I always wanted to have a shiny sticker on my book since I was six years old.

And my first book was shortlisted in an award and longlisted in an award. But to actually have a winning sticker on the book is great.

Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? So the Forever Ability Awards showcase disability and inclusivity and own voice and your book, Legend of the Lighthouse Moon, through Riveted Press. Won an award for that because that book features a character with a disability who has type 1 diabetes. Did you want to tell me a bit about why you included that character in your book? Yeah, sure. So I got type 1 diabetes when I was 12. I've just turned 58. So 46 years ago, when you hit 50 years,

you get a special medal from Diabetes Australia. So I want to get that medal too. And so I knew when I started writing, I had self-published a picture book for children and that was called Diabetes Can't Stop Me, which I still have on my website today about Diabetes Dino and his amazing friend, Dragon, who both have type 1 diabetes. But when I started writing novels for middle grade, I knew that I wanted to have at least one book that featured type 1.

And it wasn't originally going to be in Legend of the Lighthouse Moon. I started writing that book and had written about 15,000 words, and it was going in one particular direction. And then I went over to Kangaroo Island to tour the lighthouses over there and to visit the sea lion colony. And that was when the whole book flipped and I threw the whole 15,000 words out. There was elements that remained, but it went in a different direction.

And one thing that happened was my main character, Mona McKenna, started to tell me that she had diabetes. And I was sitting at my family shack discussing this and, you know, I need to write a book with type 1 diabetes. And then I said, actually, I think my character's telling me it's going to be this book, but it's set in 1970.

And my mum said, why can't she have type 1 diabetes in 1970? 70. And so I thought, well, that's actually a really interesting way to do it because I'm writing about management of type 1 in an era when I got it, which was very, very different technologically to what it's like now. So it'll be interesting for both people with and without type 1 diabetes to go back and see what it was like.

And what it showed was that the emotional experience that Mona goes through is very similar to what it is now, even though the management was very different. In fact, talking to Diabetes Australia about having some articles on that particular topic because it's interesting how those themes remain the same for people in terms of the struggle with having it, but also in terms of the resilience. So that was how it ended up in that particular book and I think it works really well.

I can imagine for a child too being diagnosed, Well, with any condition, it's a challenge and it's unknown.

But then also when you have to learn about how to manage your own, like diabetes is something you really have to learn how to manage yourself. In terms of how to manage your blood sugar, if you have to inject insulin, and also the things that you would feel as a child missing out on, like all the fun stuff in life. The way we celebrate life is through food and drink a lot as well.

So having that feeling of always not quite being able to participate, but also the significant things of if you don't manage your blood sugar, you can end up in a coma or there's really significant ramifications if you're not taking care of yourself. So for a child, that would be quite scary, I can imagine. Yeah. So some of the things that made their way into the book, I was actually given a list by the dieticians at the hospital called Forbidden Foods List.

And I've still got some paperwork. That was the language that was used. And there was just so many things on that. I say to the kids in schools, what do you think's on that forbidden food list? You know, and it's sort of all the things you were talking about, but also some quite surprising things. I couldn't even have cough mixture with sugar. I got given this thing called Buckley's Canadian mixture. It was like paint stripper. It was awful.

Now we know much different to that. And yeah, that sense that it's forever and initially your parents help, but there's a period of transition where you're expected to start looking after it yourself. And with type one diabetes, you are constantly walking a fine line between low blood sugar, high blood sugar, bouncing around, feeling like rubbish, risking going too low or too high.

And then being told things like, I got told at 12 that I would probably lose my legs, go blind, be on dialysis, would never have children if I dared to, they'd be born deformed or stillborn. And I have three beautiful strapping sons. It was difficult during the first two pregnancies in particular, but they were very healthy young men. Yeah, a lot of the messaging and some of the messaging hasn't changed. And there's also a lot of guilt.

There's a lot of, there's targets. There's targets that you have to try and achieve. A lot of numbers, a lot of measuring, a lot of testing and having to try and stay within a certain range all the time. And everything affects your blood glucose, hormones, sleep, travel, excitement, good things, eating, drinking, not eating, not drinking. Being sick, periods, menopause, pregnancy, you know, stress.

So it is a, I think it's something like people with type 1 diabetes make an extra 180 decisions a day on top of what everybody else is doing. So in this particular book, it's a fantastical story because the story weaves in the Selkie tales that come from where my grandmothers come from in the U.S.C. With the conservation of the sea lions and the historical preservation of the lighthouse, the first lighthouse in South Australia.

And the kids have also lost their mother in a fire and their father's disappeared. So they've got these problems that they're trying to solve. And she's also grappling with all this guilt. And some of the things that she does as a result of her type 1 diabetes are things that I actually did myself as a teenager. She is shoplifting. And that's something that I actually did as a teen and got caught.

Never did anything like that ever again in my entire life. It was, yeah, it was a pretty, I was pretty stressed out by all of that, which is good. But that was a reaction to what I was going through. And that sense of feeling on the outside and that sense of feeling different and alone and living with probably also undiagnosed anxiety and ADHD, which, you know, weren't diagnosed until I was an adult.

But yeah, there's a lot of people with diabetes have double the rates of depression as well. So a lot of mental health issues. And do you find, because there's type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and there is quite a lot of stigma attached to type 2 diabetes, do you find that, or did you find that people didn't really distinguish between the two? Yeah. So people might not know that I also started my own online counselling service in 2001, back when there was no social media.

And there was so little use of the internet for that. I think I was the third organisation offering online counselling. There were no guidelines. I was using international guidelines on how you should do online counselling. It was all done by email. And I studied diabetes education and qualified in that. So I worked in diabetes and mental health for 16 years, and that's where I got my PhD too. There's a lot of stigma around.

All types of diabetes, because there's also gestational and there's also what we call LADA, which is a four type one, which is latent autoimmune type one diabetes in adults. And a lot of people just think that all types of diabetes mean that you're fat, you're lazy, you ate too much food, too much sugar, or they say, you don't look like a diabetic, or can you eat that? There's all these stigmas.

And so in actual fact, that's all rubbish. You know, there are people who are overweight who don't get type two diabetes. There are people who have been who do get type 2 diabetes. There's genetic risks. There's all sorts of things involved in type 2 diabetes and there's a lot of blaming. But, yes, people often don't understand and there are some in the type 1 community that want to change the name because of that.

Really? That's interesting. But I take the approach that we all do have a similar type of condition. It's all to do with insulin, the hormone insulin, and we all have to kind of manage food and some type of medication and a lot of people with type 2 end up on insulin. And, yes, they're different, but we should support each other rather than having sort of fighting from within as well.

But diabetes still gets – I've started recently watching streaming shows and turned them off because there's been a diabetes joke in the first episode. I'm like, oh, there's so many donuts on the table, I'll get diabetes. You know, all that sort of stuff. It's that kind of ableist language and comedy. And diabetes is one that it still seems to be sticking. It's not people haven't sort of stopped and thought maybe we shouldn't be saying that.

Well, every now and then I will see kind of like an autistic joke in a comedy show or I saw a movie where some of the characters were gender fluid and the joke was, oh, it's okay to be different. But it's not like you have autism. And I was so angry about that because we should be inclusive no matter what the difference is. And I'm probably a little bit more sensitive to it because I have two sons that are on the spectrum.

But it does seem like if someone is a little bit marching to their own beat, they'll go, oh, they're probably on the spectrum and it's kind of like, come on, people. Yeah, I've got the same experience with our son too. So unfortunately, I don't think it's necessarily ever going to change because people don't, if you're not on the inside of the situation, not everybody seems capable of actually seeing what that would be like.

I think it is changing a lot. And I find like in my son's, my youngest son's generation, there's so much more accepting of difference and of each other, which I think is really lovely. Have you had any response from your readers? I have. I've had a few people write to me. When we launched my last book on gallant wings, we went to the rural Victoria to launch that book because a lot of it's set there.

And we visited some schools. And I walked in because I have my continuous glucose monitor little sensor that I wear. That's the most amazing thing. Oh, it's amazing. Yeah. And I had that on my arm quite a lot. And I walked in and this girl came up and just showed me her arm. She had exactly the same sensor or system. So we were having a big chat. And then at the end, she came back with the books from the library for me to sign.

And we're having a really big chat about how we manage and everything. And I could just see how important it had been to her. We had a Reader's Day, Reader's Festival, and there was all sorts of different kids came to different schools. And same experience. When I say, because I talk about diabetes in that presentation, when I talk about that particular book and explain what diabetes is and do a little bit of education with kids, but also just finding out if they know someone.

And there's always someone knows someone, but there was a teenager in the group. He said, yeah, me. And so again, we had that conversation. He showed me his sensor and that would be happening without me even knowing it when people are reading it. I know someone that bought it only this week has got type one diabetes as well. So, yeah, so definitely. And that's really cool when you're in a school and kids identify with your characters. And just, I think kids, they need to see themselves in books.

Yes. But it also helps their peers around them as well understand and accept the condition as well. Yeah, I talk about books as being windows and mirrors. So, they're a mirror for people who have got those experiences to see themselves. Yeah. You know, we didn't. I mean, the only book I got is this little book about Peter and Mary have diabetes, and it's absolutely awful. It's terrible. And they're windows because we get to look inside other people's lives and see what it's like for them.

So they're important from both perspectives.

And I think for kids in schools to see the examples of how they can be inclusive to their friends because I don't believe anyone ever really wants to deliberately exclude or make someone else feel less than because they're different but they may just not have an understanding of how to make someone feel like they belong.

My son he's got some lovely friends who he met them in primary school and now they're all at uni and they're still hanging out together but my son has some very specific dietary preferences and whenever they hang out, they always make sure that they order Lockie's special pizza that he likes so he can have that and not feel like he can't eat anything. That's so nice. His is all personal preference though because he's very sensitive.

He's got sensory sensitivities so it's got to smell right, it's got to taste right, the texture's got to be right and they've never made him feel excluded. They're just like, yep, we've got to make sure that one's for Lachlan. No one else ate that. We've ordered that one for him. And so he just feels part of the crowd. And it's not that hard. No.

I had the experience yesterday. I went to a new hairdresser and the young woman, I said to her, you might hear my insulin pump beat because, you know, blood sugar, whatever. And she said, oh, no, I'm deaf. And I'd never had a deaf hairdresser before and she was a mad. So I just said to her, okay, so do you lip-breed? Like what, how does this sort of work? And she said, yeah, yep, yep, she lip-breeds. So I was just really conscious.

There was a big mirror and I was really conscious when she would ask me lots of questions. She made lots of conversation and I just made sure that that was going well. And then she was telling me how she'd read a book with a deaf character and what a difference it had made to her, how she thought that was a deaf character. And yeah, so we had that real bonding over like completely different disabilities and both kind of just out there living life and doing our thing.

And it was really nice. It was a really nice connection. Now, you've got some amazing books coming out in 2026 as well.

So I was checking out your website, which I loved. Oh, my God, there's so many more coming out. Did you want to share with me what you've got? Yes. So on the 29th of July, I'm not sure when this will go to air, but on the 29th of July, Kate Gordon and I have got the Disappearing Circus coming out, which is really exciting.

Which is a magical tale about two girls running away separately who find themselves in this strange circus filled with ghosts and mythological creatures and extinct animals and a dark ring mistress. And it's an allegory on hope and grief, really. And then in February, my magical historical middle grade novel, A Light on the Rocks, is coming out with Riveted Press. It was the project I have been writing since late last year as part of my fellowship with the State Library.

So I won a fellowship with the South Australian State Library supported by Writers of Serene. Thank you. And also a grant from the SA History Trust. And it's based on two very real parts of history in South Australia. One is the Cape Jaffa Lighthouse, which is on the limestone coast. And that's actually in the town of Kingston now.

It was eight miles out to sea on a reef. So it was a real long house where the light keepers, back in the very old days, the families would all live in that lighthouse for weeks and months on end. In 1960, when this story, that part of the story set, they would live for two weeks on the reef, the keepers, and then two keepers, and then two weeks back in the town, and then one would swap out each time. But I've spoken to a man who was a child of the head light keeper,

and he used to go and stay on the light with his dad. So, the other part of the story is set on South Australia's worst shipwreck in 1859. It was called the SS Edmela and it took off from Port Adelaide to Melbourne in August 1859 and it actually crashed on Carpenters Rocks, which is not too far from Kingston. And it was the worst shipwreck because not only the number of people that died, there was 130 on board and only 20, I think 23 survived. So, there wasn't

More loss of life in some other shipwrecks. But in this particular shipwreck, they were only a mile out from shore. But because of the roughness of the waves and the reefs, people couldn't get to them. So for eight or nine days, they were hanging on this ship that was broken into three bits. And they were just clinging in the fore and the aft of the ship. And it was really horrific. But they did rescue 19 people off the boat. And I think three or four got to the shore.

So I was fascinated by this and the fact that these two things happened, you know, a hundred and something kilometres away, but in the same limestone reef that runs all the way from Portland and all the way around South Australia. And the fact that there's an upwelling there. So there's a seasonal upwelling of warm water and the whales come down from the top of Australia and come around there and go around to Portland, et cetera, but they feed there.

So my books often have nature, history and magic. and this was a very big undertaking because I've got two timelines 100 years apart, two different characters. One real event, the shipwreck, which has got fictional characters on it, real characters, real people, but also my main character's fictional and the lighthouse, which was real with fictional character and then there's a giant blue whale who lives in both time periods. Oh, wow. And there's also a ghostly horse.

On the SSW there were six horses and one of them fell over and when they were riding that horse, they kind of think maybe they went a bit off course, other people disagree, but there were six horses. Two made it ashore, went on to run in a race. Oh, wow, nothing's stopping those horses. I know, right? So that was like, God, there's got to be a horse in this story.

So A Light on the Rocks is coming out in February and then in, I think, August, Kate Gordon and I have written, We're writing a junior fiction series called Lenny and Mare's Mysterious Museum. And it's about twin girls who live in a mysterious museum. And the first book's coming out in August. There'll be more on that coming soon. I feel like I have so many questions now. I need to know how did the light, what occurred that the lighthouse is now in a different location?

Yes. So it's actually the 50th anniversary on Australia Day of the moving of the lighthouse onto land, which was an epic undertaking. I don't think it's ever been done before. So it's a metal lighthouse. It's actually got iron struts. So I've been to the lighthouse and land and been inside it. It's got a, at the base of it, you've got a cottage that they lived in. And then inside that, there's a cylinder with the stairs that you go up to the light that's at the top.

And I think it was because the government, I think they were going to get rid of it basically. So there's a jetty that's out on the reef and that's still there with the platform. It took, I don't know, it was something like, three years, I can't remember the history, but way longer than it was supposed to, to build it because they didn't realize when they went out to survey, it was a nice calm day.

But, of course, it's not often nice and calm out there because there's these limestone reefs everywhere. And so it took a really long time because they drilled down into the limestone rocks to put those legs into it to make it solid for the jetty and the lighthouse. And it's called a Wells Screw Lighthamps. So they have these thin legs so they kind of move, but they don't have a lot of resistance to the waves, so it keeps it nice and stable.

And so, yeah, so they actually were able to get money from the state government and gave it over to the History Trust and they moved an entire lighthouse. There's a lot of information online about how they did it with different things, but they moved this whole metal lighthouse onto the land.

And they are so amazing, those History Trust people. They love that lighthouse and they're actually about to paint it and do all sorts of renovations to it and they run tours in it.

And the three lightkeepers cottages are still there to a private one you can rent out, which is pretty cool and I've been renovated of course but that's the actual cottage my character would have lived in in 1960 so immersive research that that's my next question is what was the research like was it obviously a mammoth task but was it an enjoyable experience I look I'm a complete history nerd I always get in a tether and then I think I'm not writing

historical fiction ever again I'm going to write something that's not historical and I actually did write a middle grade that's not historical and it kind of just all poured out of me and it was an amazing it It was fun, but I just loved history. The fellowship was amazing because I've spent a lot of time in the State Library recalling resources and going into the reading room and just finding all these incredible resources about all this history.

But you've got to remember, I was researching two different timelines. So I was looking at, well, what was Adelaide and Port Adelaide actually like in 1859? What was North Adelaide like? Because that's where the characters live and how did this whole journey happen? There's two amazing resources. I found. So one was written shortly after the wreck by somebody and it's got all these personal recounts of what happened to the Admela, which was amazing.

And also I found a book written in the 60s. So I was able to follow that to get the timeline and the actual major points of what happened and the passengers that were on there and who lived and who died and things like that. And then I had to make sure that I created a character and her family that wasn't just repeating what was written in the fax. You know, it was actually writing a story, a story around that. So lots and lots of research online, in trove, in books, in journals.

Going into the library, then a research trip to Mount Gambier where the shipwreck trail kind of starts because the telegraph station there was used to call for help for the people on the shipwreck. And we went to Portland because Portland's where they actually brought the survivors and the lifeboat they brought the survivors in is there in the Maritime Museum, which is very emotional. And the grave of the captain who headed up that lifeboat is in the cemetery and the hotel they took them to.

And then from Portland, it's like a two and a half hour drive up to Kingston, but we took seven and a half hours because we stopped at every single point along the way. There was another museum with lots of Edmela stuff in it. And we went out to the actual site on the beach where the rescuers were, where you could look out a mile and see where that ship would have been. I was in tears standing up there because I was thinking, this is actually where those people were, clinging to that wreck.

And so, yeah, so we kind of did that whole trip back up through. And then I spoke at an event in Kingston that night, and then we did the lighthouse. So we saw the lighthouse in the day, but we also went up at night and they lit it up for us and showed us how they used to keep the light. And had it spinning around and stuff. So it was the icing on the cake to do that.

Then I finished writing it and edited it and, yeah, it's a book. And how much of that process, like while you're gathering all of those facts. Deciding what you're keeping in and what you're leaving out, did it all just come naturally? Like, did things pop out at you and go, this needs to be part of the story? So with the lighthouse side of it, because that's all made up character and made up story, but with the, like with Legend of the Lighthouse Moon.

Getting the facts of how the lighthouse worked and how would they have got from shore to the lighthouse and things like that. So interviews were really important with that. So the History Trust people and the people who had relatives who had worked on the lighthouse and talking to them about it was really helpful because they used to go from the shore to one particular point. You couldn't go all the way in a cutter, which is the type of boat, to the lighthouse jetty because it's too dangerous.

So they had to stop in this area called the basin and moor and then one person would come from the lighthouse in a dinghy and then they would take them back. And they had something like a 20-foot ladder they had to go up. But if your feet weren't in the right spot, you could get crushed by the dinghy or a wave could rise up and knock you off. And you've got to remember women were going up that with children and babies and supplies and things back in the late 1800s and early 1900s when they were

going up there. So it was pretty hairy. I guess with that story I had a bit of freedom to make up everything that happens to the characters, but had to get the facts right.

But with the Edmela, it was really that sense of I went through that whole recount of the journey and what happened and wrote that into the book, but then went back and said, now I need to modify that or change that or this is where my character is going to do this so that it became my story, but that I stayed true to everything that happened in that shipwreck and how it happened. Yeah.

Once you got to the point of submitting and working with Riveted Press, was there then a process of you working through it together or did you have it, do you think you had it pretty much ready together? Well, that's coming next. So it's been published and it's been accepted and everything happening in February. So now Rowena and I will knuckle down in the next few months and go through all of that editing process.

And we've worked together now on four books. So the last one obviously involving Kate too. So that was really interesting doing a three-person edit. Oh, I can imagine. I had not done that before. I don't think Rowena had either. Kate had because she's co-written with other people. I guess Rowena and I have a little bit of an understanding of each other and how we work now.

And she's an amazing editor who can just clear out a story and see what needs to go, what needs to change and how things need to be shifted. And I actually really like editing. It's one of my favourite parts of writing. So, yeah, so that's to come next. And then she'll go off to print, I suppose, towards the end of the year and become a book. How amazing is it to be collaborating with Kate Gordon?

Oh, I had a crush on her, a writing crush, and I had secretly, I've got so many of her books, and I had always secretly wanted to write a book with her, and because we're both with Riveted Press, and I didn't know that Rowena had given her an early copy of The Rebels of Mount Buffalo, my debut book, and we just did an interview with Brenton Cullen actually on his blog, and she said on there that she read that and thought,

we've got the same writing brain and the same values and feelings and she just asked me if I wanted to write a book with her and I'm like, I want to write a book with you. Oh, that sounds incredible. And then we just loved it so much and we just loved each other so much that we've just kept writing. So we've actually drafted a YA that we need to do some more work on. We've got the full book Junior Fiction and we've just started another Junior Fiction together as well.

So we kind of just want to keep writing together. It's a dream to collaborate like that. At the moment, all my writing is just me working on them alone. It can be lonely. Yeah, I would love to collaborate with someone one day. Well, you should ask someone because, you know, you just don't know. And the worst thing that happens, they just say, oh, no, or not at the moment, you know. Yeah, yeah. And it is a completely different way of working. It's so inspiring. You learn off that other person.

You learn things about your own writing. It's fun. I kind of imagine it's a bit like when you're in a writer's room, like for television or script writing, and you're bouncing stuff off each other. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think that it's an exciting opportunity to be, like, testing out ideas, figuring out what works and what doesn't work, and to experiment with new things as well, because sometimes when you're writing alone –, you might not try something because it's just in your own head.

But having someone to say, hey, what do you think of this? Let's have a go. Yeah, it sounds really exhilarating. And we do do that a lot. One of us will say, oh, what if we did this? And then the other one says, yeah, that's a great idea. Or one of us might write a chapter and the other one might say, I think maybe try going that way or this way, you know. So there's a lot of collaboration and bouncing. And I love what you said about I'd love to be in a writer's room. I'd love to do screenplay.

That would be amazing. It's a big little secret dream. It's not secret anymore. No, now everybody knows. But the good thing about it, like you're putting it out into the universe, you never know what will happen now. You've said it out loud. That's true. I'm all about manifesting. I'm this mix of wanting things like manifestation to be real, but I'm also a cynic as well. Yeah, I hear you. So I cancel myself out, I think. I hear you. It's neutralising. Yes, yes.

So I have a few little questions just for our guests who are listening in. Do you have any advice for emerging authors that might like to try your style of your genre of writing?

Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I've done the four, and that'll be my fifth historical. Or actually the third one, there'll be my fourth historical fiction book. So I could talk about that. I do also have a fantasy duology that's coming out in 27, 28. So I've also done fantasy and the one with Kate is fantasy, but I'll talk about historical. I think one of the main things is you do have to love history because you're going to be spending a lot of time with your head buried in it.

You need to know there's nothing wrong initially the way that I do it to actually be info jumping a bit, to be actually putting the history in to the structure of the story, but you have to go back and take it out because you don't want it to be a Wikipedia page. You cannot let the history take place of a good story. It's okay to play with some aspects of history so long as you let people know you've done that.

I'm a stickler for making sure I get things exactly right in terms of timeline and events but for example in Legend of Lighthouse Moon there were a few things I did with a beach that I made up that suited the story where the Selkies were but there were other things I wouldn't play with so you want to make sure that you get the culture and the setting and the way people dress and you know that that sense of place is super important in history but it's okay if you want to slightly

shift something so long as you let people know that that was the case. I tend to do a lot of research at the beginning and start writing and then try to stop researching for a time and just write. And then I go back to little bits of research as needed. And then I might stop again, particularly if I'm stuck and do more in-depth research again, and then go back and do cycles of writing. So it's easy to get lost down a rabbit hole.

And then you just never get any further with your writing because every time you sit down to write, oh, yeah, but would they have worn red shoes in that era? And then, you know, you're going off and you're on some great big tangent. You can leave a note to say check if they wear red shoes or whatever it may be. But if you're on a roll with your writing, then keep going with your writing because it can really bog you down otherwise. And I do magical historicals. So my first one's a time slip.

My second one's got selkies. My third historical is more historical. So Ongoing Wings is straight historical. Yeah, and obviously I already said there's ghosts and things in the next one. So you can mix and blend different aspects of story with your history too. It doesn't have to be straight history. So you are asking your readers to like suspend something like that? Yes, yes. So Magical Historical, which I really enjoyed writing Ongoing Wings, which is straight history as well.

And as with all my books, it's got a neurodivergent main character. They're not all neurodivergent, but it's got a character in there who's got some form of difference and diversity, which is what I like to do in my stories as well. So in A Light on the Rocks, not only is it two timelines and real history and ghosts and everything else, but the main character, Max, in 1960 has got dyslexia and dysgraphia like my husband.

He grew up in the 60s with that and nobody knew that's what it was and just called him stupid and all the rest of it. The principal told his mother he was stupid and would never amount to anything. He's actually highly intelligent. And he actually used that intelligence to be able to get by and finish school and get a trade, even though he had troubles with reading and writing. And his sister, Rose, has asthma and I had asthma and I had asthma and it was quite severe as a child.

So, and that was also, people would say, oh, it's in the head. It's, you know, it's, she's hysterical. She's stressed. It's anxiety type of thing. So even in that story, there are those aspects to it too, which I like to keep in there. And I would like to ask you, can you share with my listeners a fact about yourself that people may not know? No, that's a hard question because I've just told you my whole life story.

Yeah, I know everything about you now. What might be a fact people don't know about me? I wanted to be an actress and or singer. Oh, exciting. Yes, as well as a writer. I want to do all three. Triple threat. Well, triple threat and I have acted in, sung in musicals and I have also studied singing and sung in competitions when I was younger. Music is a real passion of mine. And I also studied art for a while at art school because visual arts was something I thought I meant to be.

So you could be illustrating your own books as well? Yes, I could be illustrating in my own style if I decided to go that way. I studied a certificate in design and colour as well at International School of Colour and Design and was told that surface design would be something that I would be really good at. So, you know, designing wallpapers and abstracted pattern type things. Colour is something I'm very into. I'm very drawn to colour. I cannot sing. I cannot act. I cannot draw.

You can do podcasts. I can chat on a podcast. It's interesting how we are all made up of different talents. Absolutely. I'm always so envious of people who have multiple talents. I'm like, that would be amazing. The one great thing about my podcast is I get to chat with wonderful creatives like yourself and get to learn lots more about you. So thank you so much for joining me today and thank you for sharing with my listeners as well. Thank you so much for having me on. I know you're super busy.

Yes. Yes, I am, but I'm also available and eager and I'm always willing to chat and help share my writing friend's work as well. Thank you. Very much appreciated.

Totally Lit is an independent podcast. You can help support us to continue to chat with wonderful Australian creatives by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing our socials with your friends. You can also make a contribution at www.buymeacoffee.com, backsplash Totally Lit. This will also help with equipment and podcasting platform fees.

I love to interact with our listeners, so feel free to say hello either by email or social media at totallylitpodcast at gmail.com, or you can find me on Facebook, Insta, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and now Blue Sky. I've also created a group on Facebook called the Totally Lit Writing Community. It's a space to continue the conversation and share your writing successes, events, launches, and latest projects.

Jump into the group and say hello. Thank you for listening to Totally Lit, and don't forget to go out into the world to read, write, create it. Music.