• The Story Behind the Book

    August Falling: The Inception

    While I was doing the Hachette Manuscript Development Program, then-Hachette publisher Bernadette Foley asked me to think about where my book fit in the market. As research to that question, I asked some of the other participants if they’d read similar books to my own. The wonderful Kim Lock made a number of suggestions, including one popular novel. I bought a swath of books with the intent of seeing how they related to Just Another Week in Suburbia. That was the summer I house-sat my friend’s house to dog-sit their dog, Jet, so I could work on the revision of Just Another Week in Suburbia. While I was off from…

  • The Story Behind the Book

    Just Another Week in Suburbia and The Hachette Manuscript Development Program

    The Hachette Manuscript Program is a joint initiative between Hachette Australia and the Queensland Writers Centre, which involves a week of workshops on writing, editing, publishing, marketing, agents, among other things. Entrants submit fifty pages. If they’re chosen, they submit the rest of the manuscript, then go to Queensland to participate in the Program. In 2013, I submitted Just Another Week in Suburbia and “Prudence” (the book I wrote immediately after) and, as had become my wont, didn’t expect anything. However, Just Another Week in Suburbia was shortlisted. It was gratifying given it was the novel I’d designated as THE ONE (as in the one where I was determined that…