Merry Christmas from the steamy tropical north of Australia! As we count down the last days till Christmas, we’re looking for rain, glorious rain. We’ve had a few whispery little showers, and the odd crack of thunder overhead, but Darwin is sagging under the weight of a mostly dry, over-heated Build Up to the monsoon season. It’s Mango Madness, Murder Month, Going Troppo, whatever you want to call it, but it makes people crabby and tempers short.

And Christmas was so busy I didn’t get this post finished in time, so Happy New Year instead! That lovely, dreamy period between Christmas and New Year has come and gone. I love that time when the town is emptied out, everything slows down, and people linger over breakfast and newspapers in cafes before wandering off to read a book on a shady verandah or catch up with friends over long slow lunches.

Two weeks in, we’re mostly back to work. I’m starting 2013 in the best possible way, getting my manuscript ready for my new publisher – Pan Macmillan. The process of working through your writing with a good editor is just wonderful. I’ve often been asked if it wasn’t challenging having someone suggest changes to something you’ve spent a year or more writing, but the answer is a definite NO. Nothing is ever perfect (or complete for that matter) and the opinion and point of view of an experienced editor is invaluable when you’ve been up to your eyebrows in your book. It’s difficult to get any distance from your own work, to see where the flaws and the weak points are. You’ve been completely immersed in a particular landscape and a set of characters for what seems like forever, and the trees are definitely getting in the way of the forest. Along comes a clear-eyed person with a pair of pruning shears, and a shovel for some replanting, and suddenly your book is illuminated with a whole new range of possibilities. The surge in creativity is electrifying, and you’re off. At least, I am. Which means this very occasional blog is going to be left in the wilderness for another while. But it means I’m writing.

Have a wonderful year, everyone. – Jo

Lots of things affect the writing process. I’ve spent the last 36 years living in the tropics, and I’ve managed to write under all kinds of conditions – at the kitchen table; on a swag out bush in a stock camp; in an air-conditioned office with a coffee machine close by;  in my own study at home (when I lived in a house); and on a yacht out at sea. If the Muse is willing, I can write in almost any situation. But I’ve discovered that the one condition that guarantees focus and imagination, is a gloomy, overcast, freezing cold day.

I’ve been staying down in the deep south for the last month and a half, at Phillip Island, a beautiful, quiet place at the bottom of Victoria. Its northern edge is nestled in the shelter of Westernport Bay, while the southern coast, a long stretch from the Nobbies to Cape Woolamai, braves cold, capricious Bass Strait. It’s a sleepy place for most of the year, except for Christmas, Easter, and a few weekends when half of Melbourne turns up for motor racing and rock festivals. The rest of the time Phillip Island snoozes, not much disturbing the gently rolling, almost English landscape, or crowding out the world-famous surf beaches and some of the most rugged, dramatic coast you could wish for.

Phillip Island, Victoria

For the first time in 36 years, I’ve been experiencing winter, although I’m assured it’s not nearly cold enough yet. For someone from a place where anything below 25C makes for news commentary, waking up to 7C shouts “winter” quite loudly enough. And I’ve discovered that it’s very conducive to writing. There’s something about black skies, driving rain and icy winds trembling the roof beams, that make one’s fingers fly over the keyboard, and the ideas come tumbling out like the leaves from the trees outside. I’m sitting inside a cosy room, a rug over my knees and a shawl around my shoulders, and I feel snug and safe and in the mood to write. If I run out of steam, there’s the most incredible view through the double-glazed windows of a wild grey sea, and I sigh with deep satisfaction and get back to work.

Looking northwest to Woolamai surf beach

The only thing I have to watch is that I don’t end up channeling one of the Brontes. There’s a definite feeling of the Yorkshire moors in weather like this. Now, where’s that teapot…

Southwest from Cape Woolamai, Phillip Island

The Territory Read Awards were held in the NT State Library last Thursday, along with the NT Literary Awards. My third children’s novel, The Secret of the Lonely Isles, was one of the three finalists. It didn’t win, but it was a major thrill to see it short-listed alongside two other great books selected out of a field of a dozen. Taking the stage with the other finalist, Barry Jonsberg, I felt like we’d both won anyway, being presented with framed certificates of our books, and asked to make short speeches.The winner was a beautiful illustrated children’s book, Savannah Dreams by Lolla Stewart and Elaine Russell. (And my wonderful husband has put the framed certificate in pride of place in his Chambers office. Living on a boat means you don’t have room to hang things!)

It’s such a boost to have your work recognised like this. Australia’s a small market, and not many writers actually make a living out of their books. When governments support awards like these, it encourages and refreshes us, and lets us know our efforts are worthwhile. Writing can be a very lonely craft, but nights like this one remind you there’s a community of like-minded people out there too.

Now I’m back in Melbourne for a couple of weeks, spending time with my dear Dad and getting back to the trenches – literally speaking – my work in progress is partly set on the Western Front!  I’m now getting to grips with the redraft…   And to everyone who let me know my website was down – thanks. It’s back up – a glitch with the changeover from one domain registrar to another.

I’ve had some welcome news this week with an email announcing that “The Secret of the Lonely Isles” has been short-listed in the annual Territory Read Awards!

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Being human means you’re going to experience loss and sadness. Life means that one day you’ll die, and also that everyone you know will die too, sometime. I lost my mother last week. She’s been sick for a long time, off and on over the last thirty years, but she rarely complained about it. “I’m not sick, I just can’t breathe,” was the answer she’d give to enquiries about her health. The hospital admissions were gradually getting closer and closer together, then: “You’d better come down, the doctors think this is it.” I flew 5 hours home and arrived at the hospital in time to find the priest administering the Last Rites, members of the family gathered by the bed. I was able to share a few precious last hours with her and my family as she slipped away from us.

Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about death, funerals, and ritual.

My five siblings and I are all ex-Catholics, but we said the Rosary for Mum by her bedside, knowing it would comfort her to hear it. We arranged a full Catholic Requiem Mass for her, and we joined in the prayers and the hymns. I don’t believe it matters whether or not you subscribe to the religion in which a funeral is conducted: what is important is the ritual.

I first understood this when a close Aboriginal friend died while my family and I lived in Arnhem Land. His funeral lasted for well over a week, each day bringing a new set of rituals and ceremony to be conducted according to ancient Aboriginal traditions. There was a time to wail and weep, a time to perform specific dances and chants, a time to be daubed with red ochre and wreathed in smoke, a time to eat, a time to rest, and a time to start it all again. By the end we were exhausted, physically and emotionally, but we felt as though we had grieved, and said goodbye.

Three years ago I lost my only daughter, at 16. We were in Thailand when it happened, and my husband and I were offered a Buddhist funeral ceremony by the local temple. As we both respect the Buddhist approach to living, we accepted the offer. Like the Arnhem Land funeral, the rituals were ancient and lengthy. It didn’t matter that we didn’t understand the words, or the ceremonies. We understood the respect and honour being voiced for a human being who had died, the acknowledging of her human existence and her departure to another one, whatever form that may be. The rituals spread across three days, and by the end we were exhausted and spent, but we felt we had grieved. It didn’t mean the sadness and loss were gone, far from it, but having so ritually mourned her death within a specific structure, we had marked her passing as something significant.

Again, this time with my mother, different religion, different ceremony, different words, but all to the same end: this is a time to grieve and to honour the person who has died. The days of preparation brought my brothers and sisters closer together, and buoyed up our father. It doesn’t mean the grieving is over. But it gives it a shape, and progresses what is a necessary and unavoidable journey.

Sometimes I think our modern society throws the baby out with the bath water. We have dispensed with so many rituals we used to observe – not necessarily religious – that celebrated the various stages of human life. Maybe we need to think about the purpose they served. Rest in peace, my lovely Mum.

I have just had a writer’s dream trip – a sashay through New York City for a week, a few days in Los Angeles, and now four days in San Francisco. In each place I met the most interesting people, not to mention walking around with face turned skywards marvelling at the architecture in New York… Read more »

My current work in progress is finished, and on its way to my agent in Sydney!

This book is my first general fiction; ie not a story aimed at children. It opens in 2009, focusing on a forensic anthropologist off to work at Fromelles, France, on the excavation of mass graves of Australian and British soldiers from WW1. It’s a family saga, concerning the effects of war trauma on families through several generations.

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I really had no idea what I was getting into when we changed our house for a yacht. The only sailing experience I had was a damp afternoon on Albert Park Lake in Melbourne, in a little wooden boat with a boyfriend who was a Sea Scout. All I remember was dodging the boom (not always successfully) at the shout of “prepare to come about!”, and trying not to think about the slimy weed waiting for me in the shallow water. If this was sailing, I’d stick to landlubbing, thanks. For a few months, my friend and I planned to build a yacht and sail off into the sunset, but then the relationship did that instead, and I stopped thinking about boats.

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