Editing, pruning, perusing and bookclubs
What I have and haven't been up to since last we chatted.
Well hello lovely,
How are you? Where has the time gone? It’s August, for pity’s sakes! What have I been doing? Good question. Well, editing the next novel has been high on the list. I’ve had family dramas galore eating into my precious writing time. When I haven’t been able to face my desk any longer, I’ve been pruning— the roses, the wisteria, the pomegranate and the crepe myrtle. To put that in perspective, it took me four days to prune the wisteria as it’s got a little out of control. Ditto the pomegranate. There are eleven rose bushes, so that took some time. Currently, I am pruning the crepe myrtle along the driveway. Our driveway is 200 metres long, there are 20, count them, twenty! crepe myrtle that have never been pruned in the ten years I’ve lived here. Needless to say, it’s a big job. And those said crepe myrtle have never properly flowered in those whole ten years, so I am hoping a good haircut and a feed will make them feel loved enough to produce a proper display. If they don’t, I guess that’s not the reason they refuse to produce more than a few measly blooms. If you happen to be a crepe myrtle guru, please message me!
Other than that, I finally put my foot down with Master 17. At the end of the holidays, I told him we were driving to school every single day of this, his final term of school EVER. Because, Lord help me, he should have his Ps by now but he hasn’t seemed overly motivated. But I jolly well am! I want him to have his freedom because that means my freedom too. Apart from anything else, there is no public transport where we live. And once school finishes, he simply must get some kind of job and start adulting. I don’t understand it. My daughters were itching to get their driver’s licence, why is he being so meh about it? Is it a boy thing? Seventy-eight hours to go. Sigh.
But to business. In Behind the Scenes I update you on my beavering away efforts at the developmental edit. In terms of reading, well, the truth is, my reading has been all about either New Voices Down Under or reading for the events I facilitated at various festivals in June and July. So, I’ve decided to share three titles from my TBR pile instead. I seem to recall I had exactly this same problem last newsletter. To be fair, editing does suck up a lot of my brain power. I’m less in the mood to read when I’m editing. Too many words dancing before my eyes!
Are you a bookclub member? I am. We’re currently reading The Butterfly Women by Madeleine Cleary. Excellent, by the way. I will review it in my next New Voices newsletter. But, have you heard about Australia’s Biggest BookClub? It’s part of the Together We Read campaign to support reading and libraries across Australia. I’ve included all the details in case you want to join in. This year, they’ve chosen Smoke by former journo Michael Brissenden, who is not only a lovely guy but, according to the crimewriting legend Chris Hammer, Smoke is the best crime book he’s read this year! Big call. But how will we know if Chris is correct unless we read the book, right?
Behind the Scenes
As predicted, since we last spoke, I have been fuelled on chocolate and coffee. Some writers loathe editing (but I shan’t name and shame them) and others just roll up their sleeves and get the job done. Me? I actually love editing. Not in the same way as I enjoy drafting a new novel, ripe with new discoveries and possibilities, but because there is something uniquely satisfying about moving a story closer to what it might be.
Editing is about so many things. At this stage, the developmental edit, it’s less about typos and sentence structure and more about whether the story makes sense. Are the characters as richly imagined as they could be? Do their motivations make sense. Could the storyworld be more visual? As well as answering questions from my editor like, why did you do THIS??!!??
I’m not a fast worker. Nor, I must say, is it easy to write a story that keeps you turning the pages. Like a ballet dancer, it has to look effortless. You, the reader, have to feel like the words glided onto the page with me as some sort of medium, channelling the story into reality. If only!
I have until the end of August to finish the edits. I’m not panicking — yet! But I am rather looking forward to having some time away from my desk in September and giving my poor brain a break. (Hence all that pruning therapy.) And, by the next newsletter, I hope to have something meatier to say about titles and publication dates etc so we can all start getting excited about The Importance of Being Delia becoming an actual book!
Books to Love
Like I said in my introduction, it’s been a lean couple of months for reading. But we gather here to talk about books, so I can hardly leave you with nothing! That’s why I decided to focus on my TBR teetering on the camphor wood chest behind me.
Here are three of the recent releases I’m dying to dive into. I’ve included the cover images and a short blurb from the publishers website so you can get an idea what they are about. From my TBR to yours :-)
Your Friend and Mine by Jessica Dettmann
When Margot receives an email from her best friend it comes as a shock ... seeing as Tess died twenty years ago. Margot is catapulted back to 2000, meeting the confident English backpacker visiting Sydney, where their intense friendship led to plans to travel back to Europe together. But then Margot fell in love with Johnny, and she never made it to London. Margot still feels guilty for letting Tess down.
Now Tess is providing Margot with the means to fly to London and have the trip they never got to do together. But there are stipulations to Tess's beyond-the-grave generosity — Margot must scatter her ashes and carry out 'tasks' in the company of Leo, Tess's stepbrother.
Margot can't help but compare the dreams and aspirations of the girl who partied with Tess to the bored, exhausted woman she has become. How could Tess have predicted that Margot would need a second chance to get on that plane?
A warm, witty and wise novel about second chances, friendship and romance for readers of Marian Keyes and Liane Moriarty.
Eva Reddy’s Trip of a Lifetime by Fiona McKenzie Kekic
When Eva Moore wakes up on her fiftieth birthday, her drab middle-class life immediately starts to unravel. First, she receives an anonymous Facebook message claiming her husband is having an affair. Next, she is restructured out of her job by her obnoxiously young boss. Then, just when she thinks her life can't get any worse, her elderly parents wilfully go missing from their group tour of India. All they've left behind is an increasingly bizarre series of TikTok videos.
Eager to put some distance between herself and her failing marriage, Eva undertakes a rescue mission, determined to save her parents from certain disaster. She wants to find them. But what Eva really needs is to find herself. If she can do that, she might get a second chance at life and love - and, along the way, become an inspiration to anyone who fears their best days are behind them ...
Witty, warm and acutely observed - a book club book from an extraordinary new Australian voice about taking life, and adventure, by the horns. A funny, defiant shout into the face of society's expectations around ageing.
Be A Good Girl, Valerie by Marcia van Zeller
When Valerie, now in her sixties, learns that her Gen Z co-worker, Anna, has effectively been fired for rejecting the boss’s advances, Valerie becomes her champion, and so ensures that justice will prevail. But it brings back traumatic memories of when Valerie herself was the victim of sexual assault when working as an aspiring TV reporter in 1970s London. Exposing the unfair consequences of saying ‘no’ in the workplace, the book vividly and with warm humour illustrates the power of standing up for another woman’s rights, and your own.
2025 Together We Read
Love the idea of participating in a massive bookclub moment? Then the 2025 Together We Read campaign maybe exactly your cup of tea.
Book lovers can join thousands of readers across Australia in this year’s Together We Read AU digital book club. From 12 to 26 August, you can download Michael Brissenden’s Smoke for free as an eBook or audiobook just by downloading the Libby App. Your family, your book club, your netball team can all borrow the book at the same time with no holds.
HOW IT WORKS
To participate in Australia’s biggest annual online book club, you will need:
A local library membership – join for free easily online or in your local participating branch.
The free Libby App on your device – download here.
Between 12 to 26 August, download Smoke by Michael Brissenden as an eBook or audiobook free of charge, with no holds or waiting, and get reading.
Share your thoughts with other Australian readers in an online discussion forum for two weeks. Contribute to the discussion here.
There are two live, free virtual book clubs being held for Together We Read: one on Wednesday 20th August at 7:30pm AWST for our WA Readers (register here), and one on Tuesday 26th August 7:30PM AEST for readers everywhere else (register here).
Now in its fifth year, the 2025 Together We Read featured title is Smoke by Michael Brissenden (Affirm Press) – one of the most talked about crime thrillers of recent years. With complex characters, atmospheric settings and a page-turning plot, Smoke is not only a thrilling tale of crime and corruption but also a story of friendship, personal history and the everyday challenges of small-town life everywhere.
After a brutal wildfire tears through the town of Jasper in the Californian sierras, a body is discovered in a shed. It looks like an open-and-shut case of accidental death - until further investigation reveals that the victim was locked in from the outside.
Years after leaving Jasper, Detective Alex Markov has been sent back under the shadow of an LAPD corruption investigation. As the smoke clears, Alex reveals a town corrupt to its core - but exposing that corruption could destroy her and the people she loves. Will she ignore the crookedness and deceit, or face the consequences of pursuing an inconvenient truth?
The Libby App is an award-winning digital app from OverDrive who hold the industry’s largest digital literary catalogue. Available through local libraries across Australia, Libby is a free service offering access to e-books, audio books and other digital content across numerous devices including iPhone®, iPad®, Android™ phones and tablets, Chromebook™, and Kobo® tablets and eReaders.
Learn more about Together We Read AU here
New Voices Down Under
Over at New Voices Down Under this month, I had a fantastic chat with Samantha Byres about her novel, Dead Ends for our July edition of Meet the Author. It’s not too late to read the interview then answer the giveaway question to go in the running to win a copy. In Books to Love, I feature bookseller and now author Nick Croydon’s The Turing Protocol that examines the idea of our ability to create, the power that brings and the enormous burden of such a legacy. Emma Babbinton has turned suburban crime on its head in The Neighbours. A TV celebrity doctor is found murdered in this neighbourhood park. There are plenty of people not too sad that he is dead. But who did it? Plus the chance to win a copy of Dead Ends and The Turing Protocol. What? You’re not a subscriber yet? Then click on the link below to subscribe and receive a monthly newsletter with even more bookish news.
The end of the cup
And now, my friend, my cup is empty. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I’ll be back in your inbox in October with all my news and reviews. Hopefully, my crepe myrtle will be pruned, my son will have his hours up or I will have overdosed on chocolate and coffee. Anything is possible :-) And I hope your life is filled with delightful surprises in between.
If you know someone who might enjoy my ramblings, please share via the link below. Don’t forget, you can check out updates on events at www.meredithjaffe.com or, why don’t you leave a comment below or drop me a line. I love hearing from you!
Keep well,
