First
off, I asked Justin how he overcomes the challenges of self publishing, the
limited distribution networks, the miniscule publicity budgets. The secret of
his growing success, Justin told me, is ‘employing the three Golden Rules of
Writing and Publishing. 1. Persistence. 2. Persistence. 3. Persistence.’ And
Justin works hard at being persistent. He almost daily posts on his facebook
pages, he puts in personal appearances at bookshops, chats with radio
interviewers, produces a blog to publicise his books, and attended the 2010
Byron Bay Writers Festival. All this, even as he holds down a day job and works
on his next book.
I am
always intrigued about the person behind the book. Cover blurbs hardly ever
tell you much about the author, so being happily married myself and a potty pet
lover, I like to know that others are in a similar state. And if they are, how
they manage to balance their home and writing lives. (OK, I’ll admit it, I’m just
trumping up the fact that I am a sticky beak, but I bet you’re interested too!)
Justin currently has no conflicts between ties at writing. ‘I am bound to meet
my significant other any day now. I see her all the time. But I have yet to
meet her.’
Still stickybeaking, I then asked for a potted version of Justin’s life and
passions. ‘I grew up in the suburbs of 1970s Australia, back when a child’s
proudest possession was not a PlayStation but a second-hand bike’, he
reminisced, and my mind instantly turned to my own childhood of the 60s and 70s
when I was desperate for a bike so I could range around the neighbourhood (not
that we used that term then. Somehow, that was too American). How well I
remember those wonderful, carefree days. But hang on. This is not about me.
It’s about Justin, who ‘wrote all about this amazing childhood in my first
book, Goodbye Crackernight’.
Childhood
behind him, what does Justin do to earn a crust? ‘My first job out of school
was as a go-go dancer in a 60s psychedelic night-club, I studied Fine Arts at
Sydney Uni (qualifying myself to drive a cab), sang in bands, and worked in the
Australian Public Service for a time though made a full recovery.’ I am glad to
see that the service (or ‘the circus’ as we fellow escapees not so fondly refer
to it) did not knock out Justin’s creativity and sense of humour. They (you
know, the ubiquitous ‘they’) always tell you to make the most of your life
experiences, and Justin certainly did. He worked for the Department of
Veterans’ Affairs, ‘where I was privileged to speak to many WWII aircrew veterans,
brilliant research for my latest book, Nor the Years Condemn’. Now,
Justin works for ‘a not-for-profit organisation who are really supportive of my
writing and writing commitments such as radio interviews to promote my in-store
events, writers’ festivals etc.’
As part
of my research for this first Echat With..., I listened in on one of his
interviews thanks to the wonders of internet streaming. It was held at 11.30 on
a work day, and as well as promoting the aforementioned Nor the Years
Condemn, it heralded the Dymocks signing session. Justin has obviously had
lots of radio experience. He deftly fielded the announcer’s questions and told
just enough about his book to whet appetites and have the local listeners
bounding into the bookshop that weekend. His enthusiasm for his subject shone
through; his passion was clear. And on the subject of passions, writing, of
course, is one of Justin’s but only one. ‘My passions are women, military
history, cooking, women, mountains, fogs and snow, also skiing so am counting
on becoming a best-selling author so I can earn enough cash to keep doing it.
Please help.’ Love that sense of humour!
Just for
a laugh (and to see if our tastes coincided in any way) I said to Justin: You
have a gift voucher for the world’s biggest DVD shop. It stocks every film, TV
series, doco, one off special ever made. What five all time greats would you
spend your voucher on. With barely a blink, Justin proved something I have
long believed, that maths is not a strong point of the creative types: ‘First
Light, the story of Geoff Wellum, youngest allied pilot of the Battle of
Britain, and possibly the best docu-drama I have ever seen, To Kill a
Mockingbird, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, the House of
Cards series, the Sherlock Holmes series with Jeremy Brett, One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Oh, and The Italian Job with Michael
Caine. Sorry, that’s six, no, seven. Doh!’ Interestingly, all bar the classic
caper film are based on books. Just proves that Justin is a reader from way
back, and so, naturally, I asked who or what was the greatest influence on his
reading life. ‘Many’, he told me, ‘but a key three would be Tolkien, for his
mastery of the “journey story”. Michael Herr (Dispatches), for his
capture of the perverse “sensuality” of war, and Bill Bryson for his hilarious,
warm and wonderful humanity’.
Influence
aside, Justin has any number of favourite books, too many really to designate
just one as his ultimate, all time favourite ‘but in the context of my latest
work, Going Solo by Roald Dahl for the way he portrays the adult world
(in WWII) with the involuntary unrestrained perfection of a child’s eye. In the
context of my first book, Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James which a
senior English teacher friend of mine recently maintained as “one of the
funniest books ever written”’. Going Solo was a must read for me when
researching Clive Caldwell’s experiences in the desert. I have not read any
Clive James yet but with such a good (double) recommendation, I will have to
add Unreliable Memoirs to the pile next to my bed. And on the subject of
books on the bedside table, it seems as if Justin rarely takes a break from his
research. Currently piled up for his late night reading, are The Gestapo
Hunters. 464 Squadron RAAF by Mark Lax and Leon Kane Maguire, Mosquito—The
Original Multi-Role Combat Aircraft by G.M. Simons, The Mosquito Log
by Alexander McKee, and Mosquito Mayhem by M.W. Bowman. And with that,
we turned from the personal to the creative, and Justin’s personal book
philosophy.
Justin believes ‘that a book must make me read it. It should never be a
struggle but a constant reward. In precisely this spirit, I try to make
anything I write constantly reward the reader for buying my book. One of the
nicest things I’ve been told by readers about my latest book Nor the Years
Condemn is that they feel IN the history I’m writing about, that the
characters become “friends” to them, even that they “become” the characters.
And to my blessed relief and delight I’ve been told this a few times now’.
I always
wonder how writers start off. Was there a spark that made them pick up the pen,
or was their desire to write as innate as breathing. For Justin, it was ‘When I
met an Australian Korean War RAAF veteran who flew Mustangs there in low ground
attack. Despite all the death and destruction he meted out and narrowly
survived, including the loss of dear mates, he looked at me square in the eye
and said, “Justin, it was the best time of my life.” And I knew that I had to
write and hopefully capture that monumental human irony.’
There is
usually a long journey from spark to first published piece, and many hours
hunched over a desk writing or typing, scrawling notes on scrubby bits of paper
or in a writer’s journal if you are really organised, or even wandering around,
just thinking. Given I try to write in a cluttered office where my creative
life is constantly in conflict with the demands of my ‘real’ life, what, I
wondered, is Justin’s special writing place: ‘The floor of my flat in Glebe’
but he would forsake that spot in a flash: ‘If I won the lottery I would move
it to on the water at Kirribilli’.
That
floor in Glebe has seen the creation of two works now, and another that is
still in the works. Goodbye Crackernight, the first, was Justin’s
‘personal portrait of growing up in 1970s Australia (when it was still the
1950s!). The story is full of laughter, tears, simplicity, in a way a “shared”
memoir for a few generations of Australians, a “mirror” to them. It traces the
demise of Crackernight in parallel with the passing of our youth, showing how,
just as we were growing up, so was Australia, and turning from a “white-bread”
world into the multi-cultural Oz we know and love today’.
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Justin
was inspired to write his latest release, Nor the Years Condemn ‘to
bring to life a truly great Australian story which is so exciting, so heroic
and tragic, in a word so dramatic as to seem the stuff of science fiction and
yet it is true: The story of the young Australians who flew Spitfires and
Typhoons as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, WWII. The true facts on
which my story is intensively based really are the stuff of Star Wars,
the attack on the Death Star. I wanted to bring this largely untold chapter of
our history alive for Australians and in doing so make them even prouder of who
we are. I wanted to tell the story of how the best and brightest of an Australian
generation ironically picked one of the fastest ways to die of WWII and yet did
so much to win it. The loss of any young person in war is a tragedy, yet these
young Aussies were the shining stars of their era, which (given the true
history on which it’s based) can’t help but render my story a heart-rending
read, and the anti-war portrait that it is intended to be.’
As you
would expect, Justin put in the hard research yards. It took ten years to
research Nor the Years Condemn. Happily, he had some indispensible book
resources: ‘Typhoon and Tempest at War by Roland Beamont (Typhoon pilot)
and Arthur Reed, and Chased by the Sun by Hank Nelson.’ His ‘main
research resource’, however, ‘was the internet, and the access it gave me to
the amazing range of WWII historical experts and institutions who so selflessly
aided me. (It’s a massive list, included at the end of Nor the Years Condemn.)’
Justin’s
trawling of the sources has paid off. He has a feel for the cut and thrust of
battle and an affinity with military aviation. Why then, did he decide to write
a fictional account of young airmen’s lives, rather than history? For Justin,
fiction was the best way ‘to bring alive the stunning true history on which my
book is based by engaging readers in a way that only the descriptive powers of
Fiction can allow, and thereby have readers feel the loss of such young
Australians as vividly as it deserves to be felt. Also, it’s only via Fiction
that a reader can be put ‘in the cockpit’, not just reading “about” the history,
but entering “into” it.’
One thing
I have discovered is that other writers are usually all too happy to help
others. I have enjoyed assistance from seasoned writers as well as on-going
chats with new authors, all the while gaining much from their different
experiences. Justin was recently asked to be a mentor to a budding writer and I
asked him about the sort of advice he would pass on. (I will confess to a lot
of self interest here, over and above the sheer altruism of sharing Justin’s
words of wisdom). ‘Find a subject you are passionate about’, advised Justin.
‘Readers will want to buy your book because of your passion’. Next, he
encourages, ‘write the book. Then re-write it ten times, after which your book
may just turn out to be the book it should be. Then when it is, LOVE talking
about it to people in radio interviews and at your in-store book-signing
events. I do.’ Such sound advice. Justin also willingly shares the most
important advice he has ever received: ‘No askie, no gettie.’
Once they
have enjoyed one book (or two!), readers want to know what else the author is
working on. I am no different. Happily, Justin is currently in the latter
stages of a sequel to Nor the Years Condemn, entitled Ghosts of the
Empire. Its ‘hopeful’ due date is towards the end of August 2013. Just over two
months away, so not much time left to wait now! ‘This is the ‘parallel
journey-story of one character from NTYC who flies the awesome “Wooden
Wonder”, the de Havilland Mosquito against Nazi tyranny. One key theme of Ghosts
of the Empire is, if all those young aircrew who flew Lancasters had been
flying Mosquitos instead, they’d have most likely died of old age.’ There is no
cover image yet but click here for a sneak preview of Ghosts of the Empire
http://crackernight.com/2011/06/01/opening-of-sequel-to-nor-the-years-condemn-currently-waiting-on-3-prospective-publishers/
Like any
author worth his salt, Justin is already thinking about what will come next.
There is a sequel to Goodbye Crackernight in the pipeline with the
working title Memoirs of a Go-Go Dancer and he is contemplating
‘something on the truth behind the motives for the Amiens Prison bombing raid
of 1944.’ This is very much in the preliminary stages and, as such, he is open
to ‘Any suggestions?’
Well, I
think that is enough of picking Justin’s brains. For more details of his
writing life and practice, hop onto his blog http://crackernight.com/blog/. You
can befriend him at http://www.facebook.com/justin.sheedy, ‘like’
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nor-the-Years-Condemn and
http://www.facebook.com/GoodbyeCrackernight, or follow him on Twitter
https://twitter.com/Justin_Sheedy. Yup, Justin certainly has social media all
wrapped up!
Happy
Reading!
I am
delighted Justin Sheedy agreed to be the subject of my first Echat With...
Stay tuned for next month’s where Charles Page, former commercial pilot and author
of Vengeance of the Outback. A Wartime Air Mystery of Western Australia and Wings of
Destiny. Charles Learmonth DFC and the Air War in New Guinea, reveals the secrets of his life and writing success, including the
influence of his very special co-pilot.
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