Love Your Bookshop Day

by Courtney O'Brien

Aspiring writers can have their questions answered about writing, editing and publishing from award-winning and Drouin raised author Lyn Yeowart at this year's Love Your Bookshop Day on Saturday at Need2Read in Warragul.

Ms Yeowart is a consulting writer and editor, and an award-winning author of two historical psychological thrillers published by Penguin Random House Australia.

She won the 2022 Indie Book Award for best debut fiction in Australia. The novel has been shortlisted for international awards and screen adaptation rights were purchased and a pilot scripted this year; and it has been translated into French and Russian.

The author's love of reading and writing was inspired by teachers at Drouin High School and she hopes the Q and A at Need2Read will help and inspire other writers.

"I'm happy for anybody to come and ask me anything that they would like to find out about any stage of writing - How do I start? Where do I get my ideas from? How do I keep going? How do I tackle self-doubt? How do I find an agent? How do I find a publisher? How do I deal with rejections - which are inevitable. What's the process once I sign with the publisher? What happens after I get published?"

"Who chooses the cover? I've got e-books and audiobooks that Penguin produced. How does that happen? Do you get a say in any of this? "

Ms Yeowart's books are set in rural Victoria and are murder mysteries dealing with challenging issues, in carefully crafted, atmospheric prose.

"I think that setting - especially things like psychological thrillers - in rural areas, allows you to use the extremes that exist in a rural setting. So you have extreme weather and extreme landscapes, and often extreme isolation, or enough isolation so that things can happen on a farm that no one else can hear or see, even if the nearest neighbours are relatively close," explained Ms Yeowart.

"Then there are extreme distances and obviously incidents like bushfires and floods and mouse plagues, and I think it just opens up for a writer many more possibilities that are more likely to lead to people, perhaps not getting the support they need or having to rely on themselves a lot more and then getting into emotionally extreme states."

Her first novel, The Silent Listener is based in a fictional town in West Gippsland, on the farm where she spent her childhood.

It is a dark and suspenseful psychological thriller tackling domestic and family violence and why and how people sometimes remain silent about it.
Ms Yeowart said she was very aware of the long-term ramifications that both physical and non-physical domestic violence could have.
"I felt that it was a topical area and worthy of discussion, but also this thing about your isolated farmhouses, and that idea of what happens behind closed doors and people's public persona compared to their internal and family-based behaviours and attitudes, that also lead to secrets and lies and being able to deceive people."
Her second novel, The Hollow Girl also is a dark psychological thriller and murder mystery, set outside Horsham in a fictional home for unmarried mothers in the 1960s and 1970s.
It explores the harrowing reality of countless women in Australia forced into adoption between the 1950s and 1980s, where an estimated 250,000 babies were taken from mothers against their will.
Inspiration for the novel stemmed from the true story of her good friend.
"When I was looking for ideas for my second novel, I just thought, I'm going to use my friend's story, and weave in all of these secrets and lies that were perpetuated that created a lot of grief and sadness for people. There were a lot of really useful kind of things that I could use to build a mystery."
Ms Yeowart said both her novels were complex, with multiple points of view and multiple timelines, with the stories woven together in each.
"Anyone who likes a whodunnit will enjoy it."
She is currently working on her third novel, a kidnapping gone wrong - "but not in the way you think," she said.
The author invites all aspiring writers to go along and chat to her for the free Love Your Bookshop Day event at Need2 Read.
Need2Read proprietor Corissa Rieschieck said this year's theme was: Ask a bookseller. Shake up your shelf.
"The whole purpose of it is to try and encourage people to read outside their comfort zone. To basically, talk to a bookseller and find a new recommendation, is the goal," explained Corissa.
The bookstore will be open longer hours on Saturday, October 10, to give people a chance to chat to Ms Yeowart.