‘The Memory Chest’ was my very first novel and believe it or not, it was over sixteen years in the making.
The idea for a novel began when I first pulled together the recordings of Jean Zuvela into the book ‘Glimpses of Jean’. That was my very first attempt at writing a book and I struggled with retaining Jean’s unique ‘voice’ and making it readable. Jean was a voluble conversationalist and often went wildly off onto tangents, eventually finding her way back to the original point. Because I was dealing with transcriptions of tapes it took months and months to get some semblance of sequence and order, but eventually I got there. I gave the manuscript to a couple of people to read and my brother-in-law came back with the comment “who is this actually written for?” Well, that floored me, mainly because I couldn’t adequately answer, and I interpreted the comment as an implied criticism. ‘Glimpses of Jean’ was then shelved for the next sixteen years until I dragged it out in 2020 and reworked it, and finally, published.
Before I shelved it, however, I had become entranced by the story of Jean’s mother, a rather undeveloped character in Jean’s memoir, but nonetheless with an intriguing life story. I didn’t know enough about her to write a biography but felt that I could use her story as the basis of a novel.
And so, I wrote the first two chapters about a child who was born and lived in Zlarin, a small island off the Dalmatian coast. It was terrifying writing a novel for the first time. I really felt as if my creativity was on show, and so I was very hesitant about continuing, completely lacking in confidence with what I had written.
Then I got a new job on the other side of Australia, sold my house and moved into a role which demanded all of my time, so the two chapters were shelved, along with ‘Glimpses of Jean’. Over the years I would revisit them every now and then and eventually decided they were actually quite good and that the story was worth developing. But I lacked both the time and inclination to revive them.
After I retired, I started writing Mum and Dad’s family histories. Dad’s was first and when I came to publishing I had no idea how to start. I decided to self-publish, realising a family history was hardly the sort of manuscript a major publisher would embrace. So, I looked online for a publisher near me, and found the wonderful Jenny Mosher, who lived in the next suburb. Dad’s history, ‘Winton’ was a large tome, and so I decided I needed to start with something small just to test the system, and so I dug out ‘Glimpses of Jean’, did some reworking, and sent it off.
Jenny Mosher was efficient and systematic and soon gave me a great deal of confidence in the self-publishing process, so I continued to use her company for the family histories.
Once they were published, I pulled out those two chapters about Jean’s mother and decided to have another go. Jean’s mother had lived in the now ghost town of Gwalia after she married and had suffered the tragic loss of her husband in a mining accident while she was pregnant with their first child. The mining accident resulted in a protracted court case which was well documented in the Western Australian newspapers, and so for the first time I began to realise what a valuable source those newspapers were, and discovered Trove, that wonderful national repository.
I began to enjoy the writing of this story as well as the research every step seemed to require. The storyline largely followed the events described in Jean’s memoir, but eventually I decided to move away from the original events and made some changes, as I really felt the story needed some happiness and Jean’s mother’s own life was marred by continual tragedy.
I was getting towards the end of the story and was reasonably pleased with what I had written but had the inescapable feeling that it lacked something. The book still didn’t have a name and I had no idea how to end it. The (fictitous) Zlarin bell was a recurring theme throughout the book, and I suspected that somehow I needed some further reworking around that.
The inspiration came to me during a shower one morning – I’ve since discovered that lots of inspiration occurs during a shower! I suddenly realised that I needed both a modern as well as an historical perspective to the book, and that the Zlarin bell could be the thread that brings them together.
Inspired, I created the character of Susan, a Sydney teacher who had inherited a house in Boulder in 2004. The house just happened to be the house that Jean’s mother – now renamed Katja – had lived in, and during the process of demolition a forgotten memory chest was discovered, and this chest contained the Zlarin bell. This enabled me to introduce an element of mystery as Susan tried to find the original owner of the bell, an investigation which became interwoven with Katja’s story. It also gave me a name for the book!
Finally, I was excited about my novel and finished writing within the next two weeks. I gave the manuscript to a couple of people to read and they came back with positive comments, so I took a deep breath and sent it off for editing. My editor at the time was not very thorough, especially as he used a different program and I hereby apologise to all those readers who have been annoyed by several typos and mistakes.
Once published, I took a deep breath and hoped people would like it. I had no idea how to market a book (still a great weakness!) so my readership was limited to family and a few friends. Initial comments were very positive and although my readership was narrow, my confidence increased and I decided I could write fiction. I also decided that historical fiction was to be my genre in the future and as I loved the research I determined that I would use ghost towns as the basis of my stories.
I couldn’t wait to start writing my next novel…