Mark Brandi is an award-winning crime novelist whose fifth book. Southern Aurora – as one reviewer noted, “takes hold of your heart. Breaks it a little, as well as fills it with childlike hope and compassion.” Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler. And on Binge Reading today, author Mark Brandi talks about how his own experience as an Italian-born Australian has attracted him to write stories about young boys coming of age in hard times, Like Jimmy his lead in Southern Aurora, a character who as one critic said was “impossible not to fall in love with. There’s a Mark Twain innocence and inner wisdom to Jimmy one far beyond most adults as he skirts his underprivileged life, seeking meaning and dreaming of a larger existence.” That’s coming up with Mark in a moment or two Links mentioned in this episode Wimmera, Mark’s award-winning debut novel: https://www.hachette.com.au/mark-brandi/wimmera-the-bestselling-australian-debut-from-the-crime-writers-association-dagger-winner The Rip: https://www.hachette.com.au/mark-brandi/the-rip-from-the-award-winning-author-of-wimmera The Others: https://www.hachette.com.au/mark-brandi/the-others Jane Harper’s The Dry: https://janeharper.com.au/ Willy Vlautin: https://www.willyvlautin.com/ Sofie Laguna: http://sofielaguna.com/ Tony Birch: https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/tony-birch-202213710733 The Overland train: https://www.journeybeyondrail.com.au/journeys/overland/ Mark’s Writing teacher: Ania Walwicz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ania_Walwicz The Southern Aurora: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Aurora ‘Grief Invites This Kind Of Magical Thinking.” https://www.theage.com.au/culture/books/mark-brandi-grief-invites-this-kind-of-magical-thinking-20211109-p597eo.html The Anniversary, Stephanie Bishop: https://www.amazon.com/Anniversary-Stephanie-Bishop/dp/0802161677 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(novel) Where to find Mark Brandi online Website: www.markbrandi.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markbrandiwriter/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mb_randi/ Twitter: @mb_randi/ Ultimate Murder She Wrote Booksweeps Draw For our giveaway this week, we’ve got the BookSweeps, Ultimate Murder She Wrote Swag Pack and Book Basket Draw. For mystery fans, what a prize! $550 worth in full value. A library of mysteries and Murder She Wrote Swag, including an adorable Angela Lansbury t-shirt and tote bag. Included is my Of Gold & Blood Book Bundle 2 – a full length historical mystery – Poisoned Legacy – and a New York Christmas novella, Tangled Destiny. Enter the draw in the show notes for this episode on the website, the joys of binge reading.com. enter ultimate murder she wrote draw https://www.booksweeps.com/giveaway/july2023-win-the-ultimate-murder-she-wrote/ And remember if you enjoy the show, leave us a review, so others will find us too. Word of mouth is the best way for others to discover the show and great books they will love to read. Introducing award winning author Mark Brandi Australian literary crime author Mark Brandi Jenny Wheeler: But now here’s Mark. Hello there, Mark, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Mark Brandi: Hi, Jenny. It’s great to be with you. Thanks for inviting me on. Jenny Wheeler: Southern Aurora is the book we’re talking about particularly today. It’s your fifth novel, but it’s set in similar locations to the first books that you’ve written. They’re all small town, rural Australia, with characters who generally live on the wrong side of town. They’re seen as literary crime novels. That’s how they’re defined. But the crime aspect in Southern Aurora is slightly downplayed. It’s more of a coming of age novel. Would you agree with that? Mark Brandi: Yes, I think that’s a fair assessment. Jenny. It’s funny with my novels. If I go back to the first one Wimmera, which came out in 2017. It is also set in a small town and has elements of crime in it. But when I wrote it, I never really thought about it as being a crime novel. In fact, I’d actually never read a crime novel before I wrote my first book. It came as a bit of a shock to me when my publisher started marketing it as a crime and as literary crime and saying it was in a similar vein to Jane Harper’s The Dry. I went out and busily read a whole lot of crime books lest I come across as an imposter. But I suppose I’ve never really thought deeply about genre. Character and voice come first When I’m drafting, my starting point always is character and voice. In this case, with Southern Aurora, with this boy Jimmy, who’s around 11 or 12 years old, as you say growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in this small town. His story actually started for me as a short story. I wrote this short story back in, I think it was around 2014, and it was actually based on some experiences I had growing up in a small town. We had a dog who came to an unfortunate end. I wrote a short story based on that experience and fictionalized it of course. And I suppose I kept going back to it and thinking there’s some more to this. There’s something about this which is scratching at me and I need to go further into this story. And that’s where it began, I think that, that age, that kind of 11 or 12 years old is a really crucial age. And for Jimmy, his friends are his whole world. His siblings are his whole world and his family. He’s the kind of kid that takes the world on his shoulders to a large extent. I felt compelled to follow him and to write his story. I was thinking yesterday, I remember reading this quote from William Faulkner and he talked about the writing process somewhat facetiously. He said that, “writing is easy. You just make up these characters and then you follow ’em around and write what they. do.” Telling a story through a child’s eyes Mark Brandi’s award winning debut novel, Wimmera. It resonates with me a bit because that’s the way I feel about my process. I never think about the overarching story at the very beginning. I never think about genre, but crime comes into my stories at some point. I think you’re correct that this book perhaps has less of a crime element to it and fewer of those kind of tropes that you sometimes associate with crime novels Jenny Wheeler: Yes. What is it that attracts you about telling the story through a child’s eyes, do you think? Mark Brandi: I think my psychologist could probably answer that better than me sometimes. Now my first book, Wimmera was in the third person perspective, but the first half of the book was very much focused on these two kids, Ben and Fab. The Rip was an adult story that was set in Melbourne, a contemporary story. But The Others was told through diary entries through this young boy, Jacob. And now of course, Southern Aurora (Published June 28, 2023). And after I finished The Others, my third book I thought, oh, that, that was really hard going. I found that a really tough book to write and I promised myself at that stage that I wasn’t going to do another first person perspective of a child because I find it really tough because you’ve got a limited palette. To work with vocabulary and their wildness and all those sorts of things. The cruelty of the school yard exposed But you need to be able to still craft a compelling story for an adult readership. And I think that’s where the crux of it and some of the appeal of it is for me because it’s a challenge. It’s a constraint. And one of the things I love about that kind of perspective is that the reader will often feel a degree of protectiveness over the protagonist. They’ll be reading a little bit ahead and a little bit more deeply into what is happening and thinking. ‘Oh, no, Jimmy. Don’t think that, or don’t go there. Don’t go with that person. Or, ‘this is a bad move’ and you take on almost like a caring relationship with the character. And I love that as a reader. Like when I think about books so looks I love by Sofie Laguna or Tony Birch, or the American writer Willie Vlautin, who also writes young protagonists. I just get engrossed in that world and I care so deeply about the characters, so that’s probably why I write these kinds of books, because that’s what I love to read ultimately. Jenny Wheeler: The cruelty of the schoolyard is one aspect of this story. Jimmy falls out with the friends that he has, and he is left in this very isolated position. He resorts to going to the library at lunchtime because he doesn’t have anyone to sit with. And that’s a scenario that I think many of us can identify with at some stage or other in our lives. I know that part of your story was that you came to Australia from Italy when you were quite a young person, and I wondered if you had that sense of being a little bit of an outsider or at least a little bit different, and whether that’s helped you to be able to frame these sorts of stories. Mark Brandi – Feeling for the outsider Mark Brandi: That was very much my experience. You hit the nail on the head. Growing up in a small town in Australia, in Western Victoria, we were the only Italian family in town. I had three older brothers. They weren’t born in Italy. I was born in Italy and it it was tough in the school yard. I was the brown kid in the school yard. And I found that really difficult in my primary school years. Again I think that’s probably a something psychologist could answer for me because I guess I do feel a strong ability to be able to write that kind of perspective because I know what that feels like. And now, I don’t want to say that Jimmy is me, or me as a child, or anything like that, because I feel most of my characters, they’ve got elements of me in them for sure. But part of them is people I’ve met, but also just pure creation. Something out of my subconscious. But that was certainly an experience that I drew on that sense of being an outsider. There’s that cliche in country towns that you’re only a local once you’ve got, two or three generations in the cemetery. And I think that, that was our experience. Now I loved growing up in a country town in many respects there were great elements to it. It was that bucolic cliche in some respects of being let out the front door in the morning. Learning some hard life lessons Your parents don’t care where you go as long as you’re back by night. We would go rabbiting, we’d go fishing, looking for yabbies and all that sort of stuff, playing sport with our friends. So that was all great. But certainly, those early years of primary school were very tough and I think that undoubtedly leaves a mark on you. I think that again is probably part of the reason why I write that child’s point of view and while I’m in interested in writing about that experience, because those early years of our life have a huge formative effect on the kind of people that we become. And I can remember some of the things that happened when I was a kid, and certainly the intensity of the relationships that I had with my friends with greater clarity than what I could remember doing last week sometimes. I think that that was something I wanted to bring to the book; is for Jimmy, his relationship with his best mate Danny is really crucial. He’s his one friend at school, and then this other kid enters the frame. Chadwick, who’s a good kid, but it shifts the dynamic between these two friends. And that was something I wanted to explore because kids can be great, kids can be wonderful, but they can be very cruel as well. And Jimmy’s faced with that in the story. He has to learn some pretty difficult life lessons. Southern Aurora a symbol of hope Jenny Wheeler: The Southern Aurora of the title is a train and it represents something of escape from that life, for Jimmy, doesn’t it? Tell us about Southern Aurora. Mark Brandi: The Southern Aurora was a train that used to run from Melbourne to Sydney and Sydney to Melbourne, and for Jimmy living in this fictional town of Mittigunda in New South Wales, he sees the train coming and going and passing through. It has its kind of luxury, “quote unquote” carriages, sleeper carriages. And it represents something I suppose a ray of hope for him that there’s something more to life and something more outside of the town that he’s growing up in and something more than the experiences that he’s facing. And part of my inspiration for it again, came a little bit unplanned, I think from my subconscious when I was writing, that the train was very similar to a train that went through the town that I grew up in in Western Victoria in the 1980s, which was The Overland, that used to run from Adelaide to Melbourne and vice versa. And I was transfixed by this train going through. this is all pre-internet. Days and you didn’t know much about the outside world or the big cities. I didn’t really go to the big cities and neither does Jimmy in this story. So it represents something more something else out there, and it really offers him a ray of hope. And he often goes down there to the cutting, goes with his younger brother, Sam, and watches the train and looks at the people in the carriage. One day, Sam, we’ll be on that train… And, he tells Sam, one day that’ll be us on that train. That felt very important to me, because he’s facing some tough circumstances. His mum is doing it tough. She has issues with alcohol. She has this new boyfriend who’s quite violent and erratic. His older brother Mick has been in trouble with the police is in jail soon to get out. Things aren’t easy for him in his world. It was very important to me to have that symbol of hope for him. Jenny Wheeler: I found it touching. You mentioned his mom’s attachment to alcohol. She drinks a beer called – I think it is a beer, isn’t it? – The Kaiser? I don’t know. Mark Brandi: It’s wine. A cask wine. Jenny Wheeler: Oh, it’s oh, cask wine. Kaiser is like another character in the story to Jimmy, Kaiser is like a friend that comes to family parties and he recognizes sometimes isn’t a good friend, but the Kaiser has a real personality in the story as well. Mark Brandi: Yes. And I should say that I grew up in a pub, so I was very familiar with alcohol and the many different brands of alcohol and what they might represent. And it was funny. My parents ran this pub for about 30 years. And we would have people, in country towns you have people from all walks of life coming in there. There are very democratic places. You have local police, politicians, shearers, farmers, business people. Alcoholics, chronic drinkers the unemployed, some people had just gotten out of jail. All sorts of stories. And I suppose I witnessed those kind of really dependent relationships with alcohol when I was a kid. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} As a publican’s son, alcohol ‘normalized’ But it was quite normalized to me. I never saw it as a stigma in that way. I thought, these are just people. That’s what. They come to the pub and drink during the day, and then they go home and that’s okay. One of the things, my late father really impressed upon me was that everyone has a story. And it’s really important that you stop and listen to them and talk to them. So that was a great lesson because, he would put me when I got old enough, I worked behind the bar. I was a deeply introverted young person, so that was tough for me. But he was like, go talk to the regulars, have a chat to them, and some of them are just lonely and hear them out. That was just wonderful advice and it taught me that some people just have had a bit of bad luck. And things haven’t worked out well for them and there can be a whole lot of complex reasons why people tend to alcohol. Now for Jimmy, looking at his mum and the Kaiser, yeah, it does become a character of its own, and it’s this presence throughout the novel really to varying degrees and it’s symbolic, as well. of Jimmy’s attempts to try to help everyone in his circle. But also sometimes try to control things a little bit too much for a young kid. He tries to look out for his mom, makes sure that she doesn’t drink too much. Things go well with her new boyfriend. He takes this all on his own shoulders and that’s a, a really tough thing for anyone, let alone a young boy. A celebrated teacher’s wisdom Jenny Wheeler: It’s a classic case of children becoming the parent and it’s recognized that’s not a healthy place for a kid to be. He’s obviously a young boy deserving of more support than he gets, but the tone of the book is carefully neutral about assigning any kind of blame anywhere, and he’s dreaming of his life getting better, but he’s stoically accepted it as it is as well. I wondered, tell me how you viewed Jimmy? Do you think he ended up having a good adult life? Mark Brandi: I remember – it might have been one of my tutors when I was studying, like in a TAFE (Technical and Further Education facility) course, I was doing creative writing. I started this course about 10 years ago. Did it for about 12 months, and it was after a long, a pretty long career working in government, working in the justice system for a large part of that I started this writing course. I had this great teacher Ania Walwicz., her name was, she’s now passed away. She’s a poet and a performance artist. And she talked about, and I loved this description, she talked about the best endings being like gateways through which you see the world a bit differently and you can imagine the characters going off beyond the page and what they’re doing now or where they might be or what they might be up to. I think with Jimmy, it’s interesting what you said about the kind of neutrality that I tried to bring to this book because it’s very important to me not to be didactic, not to be trying to write stories with a “quote unquote “message. A delicate balance on social issues I want to tell a compelling story about people in a given situation that’s hopefully, believable and engrossing for a reader. What a reader takes away from that is entirely up to them. I’m always very careful not to direct readers in particular directions. But I think part of the atmosphere that I’m writing these stories in is one of increasing Inequality and disadvantage here in Australia. And the housing is a huge issue. The gaps between the very wealthy and the poor are widening and the ability of people to escape sometimes very difficult situations is getting harder and harder. So even though this book is set in the mid 1980s, these issues are still there and if anything probably more acute now. As for Jimmy, I hope he is doing okay. That’s all I can really say. In my work in the justice system you would see – I worked in the correct corrections area for a while. I was a ministerial advisor and a lot of what we learned about the corrections system is that people just cycle through again and again. And often it’s from situations of a high disadvantage. I think we see that to some extent with Jimmy’s older brother with Mick because he has his repeated contact with the police. And then in ending up in prison. I’ve higher hopes for Jimmy. That’s about all I’m willing to wager at this point. I’m not sure where he’d end up, but I hope he’s doing okay. ‘Never underestimate the intelligence of readers’ The Rip. Mark Brandi’s second novel took a homeless woman, Dani, as it central character… Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned The Rip, your second novel, and that was one where you had an adult protagonist, but she was a homeless woman. And we have skirted around this. There’s definitely that underlying tone of social justice concerns, but you are very light-handed with them, aren’t you? Mark Brandi: I try to be, because again, it comes back to what I like to read. Anytime I get the sense that an author is trying to sell me a message or teach me something, I recoil. I think you have to treat readers with the utmost respect. One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever got was don’t underestimate the intelligence of your reader. You’ve got to really respect them. There’s definitely this social justice theme. It was partly why I ended up working in government and doing the jobs that I did. Because I, as some people might derisively say, I was a believer and I wanted to improve things for people. I cared about my work and I cared about trying, I suppose to make the community a fairer place for people with more opportunity. I found that tough going sometimes in my professional life, but it was also very rewarding work. Giving the overlooked a platform Even though it was difficult, I can still express some of that feeling in my work and I can follow those themes, but they’re not front of mind when I’m writing with each book. Using the example of the rip, that was probably as much a response again to some of the atmosphere at the time. I wrote it because here in Melbourne, we had and continue to have a big issue with homelessness and what happened around the time that I was drafting that, which was 2017 2018, is that it really hit the headlines because a lot of homeless people had set up camp in C B D because there were some services there. And some of the media took a particular angle on that saying, that this was a an embarrassment to the city and these people should be moved out. They had photos and they continued to do this. In fact, have photos of people shooting up on the street. And I just thought, oh, this is really, it broke my heart a little bit because it just seemed to reflect I suppose a lack of compassion for people who are doing it tough, and I was interested in their stories. Now, I had some contact with people over the years who’d found themselves in tough circumstances through my work and also just in my personal life. And so I felt really compelled to write a story from the perspective of someone who’s living on the streets and in the area that I’m living in now which is lovely area. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Developing a blind spot to others’ needs We’ve got a park not far away, Prince’s Park. And you’d often see joggers running around there and everyone going about their business. And then there were people sleeping rough underneath the back of a grandstand and pretty much everyone turned a blind eye. I don’t say that is a kind of cold heartedness of people, I think a lot of people just don’t understand or can’t cope with seeing that sort of suffering. I wanted to give some kind of insight into that, but not presented as a sympathy story or anything like that? It was very important to me that the main character Dani, that she had real self-respect and pride and she didn’t make excuses for her situation. I think that the line that she said in the novel was “these aren’t excuses, they’re reasons,” and there’s a difference between reasons and excuses. And I think to some extent that’s true. There were very definite reasons why she was in the situation that she was in. But I don’t write books thinking I’m going to change the world, but at the same time it’s wonderful when people respond. I’ve got emails from people who’ve read The Rip who told me how it changed their view about people in their local area who were perhaps sleeping on the street or begging or just facing really tough situations. Seeing the world through another’s eyes And that just blew my mind a little bit. I don’t expect that through my writing, but it’s certainly again a wonderful by product, I think. It’s part of the beauty of literature that it enables you to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You mentioned your dad, who sounds like he was a very wise innkeeper, and you wrote a beautiful tribute to him in the Sydney Morning, Herald Good Weekend Magazine. He died during the Covid lockdown, which was particularly poignant for you, I think. And you titled the piece ‘Grief Invites This Kind Of Magical Thinking. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Mark Brandi: Yeah. Oh, look, my dad, he was, sorry, I get a bit emotional about it, but he was a very unique man. His was a quintessential migrant story. He came over to Australia with nothing but a suitcase and managed to make a go of it. And as you say, he became an innkeeper, ran his own pub and he did a lot of different things in his life. He was always very entrepreneurial and had a lot of self-belief and I think he was one of the great legacies for us as kids because he basically told us, anything you want to do in life, you can do it. Just give it a shot. And he’s part of the reason why I’m a writer. Losing him during Covid and the lockdowns was very hard. Losing a precious parent during Covid It was a terrible time for everyone. The ‘magical thinking’ in that piece… I used to see in my area, which is next to the cemetery where my father’s buried, I used to see foxes quite often at night when I was walking around in lockdown and. they came to symbolize something for me and something connected with my father, because when we were growing up in the country, we had a farm and we also at one point, in one of the traps said at the farm, we caught a fox. My father took the fox home and we kept it as a pet and basically looked after it. That was a real eye opener for me as a kid. It was confusing because I thought, hang on we’ve set these traps on the farm to protect our sheep from the foxes, but then he’s caught the fox and he is saying, we should look after it. So it was one of the kind of first insights that I had into the complexity of my father and some of the complexities of the adult world as well. It was a really beautiful thing to see these foxes around. They live in the cemetery and it was just a privilege to be able to write about that and to write about my father in that way for the newspaper and, pay some small tribute to him. As a lot of people did, we had a funeral during lockdown, which we could only have 10 people there, so his grandchildren couldn’t come. It was a really a terribly sad time for all of us. But it certainly in our family that was tough. But to be able to write about it and to have people connect with the story is just a beautiful thing. Some of Mark’s work may reach screen The Others – Mark Brandi’s novel optioned for the screen. Jenny Wheeler: I think it’s inspired at least the idea of a documentary film? Has anything gone ahead with that? Mark Brandi: There, there is some work happening. There’s a guy over in the UK, a film producer who is trying to raise money at the moment. I’m sure it could be hard. Probably, the film industry is even tougher than the publishing industry, in a lot of respects, to make projects happen. But he’s working assiduously on that. At the same time, I think The Others, my third book, it’s been optioned recently, so there’s some film interest in that. But all the planets need to align, I think, for anything to happen in the film world. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Jenny Wheeler: Oh, fantastic. Look, we always like to ask our guests about their own reading habits, and we’d love to hear a couple of thoughts from you on books you’d like to recommend for listeners. Mark Brandi: Oh, this year one of my favorite reads has been a book by an Australian author Stephanie Bishop, and it’s called The Anniversary, and it’s a wonderful literary novel, possibly could be classified as literary crime. It certainly has a crime in it. Stephanie is a beautiful writer at the sentence level, like it was one of those books where I found myself rereading passages and pages going back and rereading them again because they just took my breath away. I’m in awe of writers who can do that. And you don’t come across books. I certainly don’t, anyway, many books that really make me stop and reflect and go, wow, this is a book by a writer who has just sublime gifts. What Mark Brandi is reading now I highly recommend that. The Anniversary. One book I’m reading at the moment, which is a bit of an old one, is One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Keasey which was a gift to me. My brother gave to me. It’s an old second hand book from a second hand bookshop. But I love those old second hand books that’s got the very seventies style cover. It really takes you back. And it’s a very immersive story. I’m sure many of your listeners probably have read the book and if not have seen the film, which is fantastic, with Jack Nicholson. I’d only ever seen the film, so it’s always great to read the source material and get a different insight into a story that you love. I love that film. Jenny Wheeler: Wonderful. I’m really interested in how you made the transition from your life in the justice system to becoming a writer. How did that transfer occur and was it a light bulb moment where you thought, oh, I must just must write? How did that come about? Mark Brandi: I loved books and I loved writing, and writing came quite easily to me as a kid. I think I grew up in a family of storytellers too. My older brothers and my dad were big storytellers – verbal storytellers, and. I was surrounded with the books as well that my brothers read. My eldest brother was into Stephen King.so I read a lot of his books at an age where I was probably could be too young to be reading them. But even comic books that one my brothers was into. I was surrounded with a lot of books and a lot of reading and I loved writing in school. A one in a million shot in the Hot Seat But I guess I reached a point where, growing up in a small town, when you’re looking at career options? We had a gold mine in the town. We had an abattoir. And then there was the family business, the pub. My parents were very insistent that I go to Uni and try to make something of myself, and I initially studied law which I dropped out of. And after a lot of, failed courses, eventually I finished with a criminal justice degree It was really just pragmatism that I ended up working in those areas because I couldn’t see how writing could be a career, that I could have a creative career. I didn’t really see a pathway for that, but I suppose I did reach a point where I felt like I’d had enough of working in an office environment and I wanted to do something new. I wanted to give writing a crack and I saw a career counselor who recommended that I try that and go part-time. I had a mortgage at that stage. It was really difficult and so I ended up, this is a bit of a strange story, I ended up funnily enough going on a game show here in Australia. My brother recommended it to me. It was Millionaire Hot Seat, and I was terrified. And I went onto this game show. I thought I’d just humiliate myself and everyone would see it, but I was lucky enough to win. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} A debut award winner was rejected twice I won a modest amount of money. I didn’t win the top prize or anything like that anywhere near, but it did enable me to go part-time at work and then start doing the writing course at TAFE. And so that was really where it began. I never set out, I never went into that writing course thinking I’m going to write a novel. I just thought, I’ll do this course and I’ll see what interests me, what I enjoy, if anything really connects with my skills and what I want to do. And I tried to be as open-minded as possible. I studied short story there, corporate writing, all of sorts of different facets of writing. And we had a lot of great teachers who were writers themselves. And so I think partly just the hothouse of that environment and also the informal writing groups that began out of that between fellow students that helped me shape my first novel Wimmera. When I finished Wimmera, that was rejected initially everywhere. I had an agent, but it got rejected by every publisher. Sometimes they rejected it twice. It was a disheartening experience, but it was really after winning the Debut Dagger, (Crime Writer’s Association Debut Dagger, in 2016) for an unpublished manuscript over in the UK that really changed things and helped me get that book published, which is where it all started. The Green Lantern opened Mark’s door It’s been an unusual pathway to being a writer, but as I’m sure you find when you speak to authors, every story is different. No one’s got a linear path to writing Everyone’s experience is different. And, if I hadn’t have had that professional experience working the justice system, if I hadn’t have grown up in a pub and met all those people from all walks of life I don’t think I would be the writer I am now. I couldn’t write about the kinds of stories and characters that I do. All of that experience helps me. Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. Look, I am curious. Millionaire Hot Seat. Was it a general knowledge show? Show like the Chaser and those ones? Mark Brandi: Yes. It was a trivia show. And I ended up in the Hot Seat as they call it, for just one question. I only had to answer one question on the whole show, so there was a lot of luck Jenny Wheeler: Oh my goodness. What was the question? Mark Brandi: It was about the Green Lantern, the comic book character. It was about where he got his superpowers from. It was a multiple choice, so they said it his power belt, his power ring. There was a couple of other options there. I’d read a lot of comics when I was a kid, but I hadn’t read the Green Lantern. So, it ended up just being a guess. Feeling like “I’d robbed a bank” – Mark Brandi I had a one in four chance, and I was lucky enough to get it. iI was the power ring. I was very fortunate. Jenny Wheeler: Oh, that’s marvellous! Mark Brandi: I felt like I’d robbed a bank when I left there. I really felt just yeah, it was a very surreal experience. Jenny Wheeler: Looking back down the tunnel of time if there is one thing about your creative career that you’d change, what would it be? Mark Brandi: Oh. I think I probably would’ve stopped a bit more when Wimmera went out into the world and was being read and quite well received by readers and reviewers and things like that. I think if I could go back, I would just stop and appreciate those moments a little bit more. I don’t think at that stage I really understood how fortunate I was. So many great books are published every year by great writers, and a lot of books go unpublished as well for a variety of reasons. Whether the timing’s not right or there’s a similar book in a publisher’s list, there can be a whole host of factors. I wouldn’t say I took it for granted, but I just had no benchmark against which to judge my experience. So I looked at it and thought, oh, this is just normal. This is what happens. Taking time to smell the roses But now I look back on it and think, wow, I was incredibly lucky. And it was like getting struck by lightning in a lot of ways. I’ve learned from that experience, in some ways. The reception a book gets though is very much secondary for me. Always. The greatest moments for me in writing is that feeling after whatever number draft it is, it might be, draft 15, might be draft 20. Wherever. I’m up to that feeling that I’ve got it down that it’s more or less finished, that it’s doing the things that I hoped it would do. That I’ve done some sort of justice to the character characters in their story. That feeling of satisfaction that’s what it’s all about for me. It’s a great moment. I love the writing process. It can be really hard, but that is what keeps me at the desk and working. If I was just thinking about those secondary things about winning an award or getting a good review or sales and all that stuff, that’s just all out of your control really. All you can control is just producing the best work that you can, and anything that happens after that is a bonus really. I think I would stop and smell the roses a little bit more is probably the crux of what I’m saying. What Mark Brandi’s next year looks like Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely and that’s a nice place to round things off because we are starting to run out of time. What does your next 12 months look like? What have you got on your desk and what are you working on? Mark Brandi: Ooh. I’ve got a project, which I’m still in the early ideas stage of I and my process – I wouldn’t even dignify it by calling it a process, actually. I’ve got a Word document that I keep in a folder, and I throw ideas in there as they come to me. It’s not as though I don’t sit down and think about the concept for the next book and go, okay, what’s it going to be about? Who are the characters, et cetera. I have a broad idea about the kind of story I want to write, and then it’s a process of gathering information and sometimes it can be from the kind of strangest sources. Like I recently subscribed to a philosophy magazine, the New Philosopher, which is fantastic. And I read a lot of articles in that, which really opened my mind about different perspectives on how the world works and about our place in it. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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.formkit-powered-by-convertkit-container{margin-bottom:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-fields{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;margin:25px auto 0 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field{min-width:220px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 0 15px 0;-webkit-flex:1 0 100%;-ms-flex:1 0 100%;flex:1 0 100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Inspiration comes from unusual places Inspiration for what I write can come from pretty unusual sources sometimes. I’m just trying to keep an open mind at this stage about what that story might be I’m contractually obligated to deliver it to my publisher by the middle of next year. We’ll see how that goes. I’m hopeful of getting there, but aside from that I’m just really focused now on, on going out and meeting readers and doing some events to talk about Southern Aurora to talk about these characters, and it’s, yeah, it’s just a wonderful thing. I first started writing this book back in 2015 when I started the novel from that short story. So eight years later, it’s wonderful to finally almost have it out in the world. Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful actually. That’s a great place because the last question we usually do ask is about interacting with readers. Where they can find you either online and in person. I presume most of yours is in person. Some stuff is in Australia, but are you doing any a international events? Where to find Mark promoting his book Mark Brandi: Not at this stage, but I’m hopeful down the track. I’m doing a few events interstate, which will be nice. My last book came out during the lockdowns, during Covid, so I had a full schedule laid out, which then got canceled. It was a bit disheartening and anti-climactic I would say. I’m really looking forward to going out and meeting readers and I would certainly love to head over to New Zealand at some stage or elsewhere. I went to the Ubud Writer’s Festival in Bali a few years back and that was wonderful. I think I’ve seen more of the world and certainly more of Australia through my books and doing events than I otherwise would have. So it’s definitely an unexpected benefit of having my books out in the world. Jenny Wheeler: Do you communicate online? Where can they find you? Where to find Mark Brandi online Mark Brandi: Social media can be a bit of a trap for authors, I think, because we can spend too much time on there. I try to limit that to a half an hour or so a day. But I’m mostly found on Instagram. If people just search for Mark Brandi, I think my handle is, @mb_randi/ and likewise on Twitter. Facebook is @markbrandiwriter Or if people want to get in touch they can go to my website too. It’s www.mark brandi.com. There’s a contact form there. And that also has all my events as well coming up. If anyone wants to get along, if they’re able, that would be great. I’m always happy to meet readers anywhere, anytime. Jenny Wheeler: Marvellous, we’ll put all of those links in the show notes for this episode as well so people will be able to find them online as well. Mark, thank you so much for being our guest today. It was really fun to talk. Mark Brandi: Great. Thanks, Jenny. You loved it. If you enjoyed Mark you may also be interested in… Adrian Hyland is an another award-winning Australian author of twisty crime stories that are perfect for the fans of Jane Harper, The Dry and Chris Hammer’s Scrublands. In this episode of Binge Reading, Adrian talks about Canticle Creek = his latest novel, combining complex and engaging characters, heart racing plot lines, and whip smart writing that captures the spirit and natural landscape of the Australian Heartland. listen to adrian hyland Next Week on Binge Reading Jenny Wheeler: Next week on binge reading. Romance author Annabel Monaghan and Same Time Next Summer, the ultimate nostalgic read about an engaged woman who comes face to face with her first love, who she hasn’t seen in 14 years. It’s an unforgettable love story, bursting with the magic of first love. It’s everything you want in a summer romance. That’s next week on Binge Reading. That’s it for today. See you next time and happy reading.

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