Suzanne Strong

Hi everyone,

In Australia at the moment we are having an inordinate amount of rain. This was actually a blessing for me as I edited and rewrote sections of my novel that I had not had time to do with work etc.

I worked on it all day with the sound of rain drops on the roof and a feeling of cool around me. It is summer here in Australia. 🙂 When an author does not right we think about our work and we live our lives which is great but when I am absorbed in the work I am creating – there is nothing like it for me. Maybe doing visual art as well, seeing it form.

I am immersed in another world with characters and people, dialogue, scene, setting and creation of a world. I absolutely love it! For this year to come I hope and pray I can do this more often, I can create, as this is my inner most desire and why I believe I am here. To write and create visual art as well. It gives me this inner peace.

This novel I am rewriting and editing at the moment, has parts of my own life in it, but is about another character. It has been a fascinating a process which trickled through since 2018 whilst I was also working on Where the Sun Rises. This has parts of me not accessed in previous work and I think it is the richer for it. 🙂

I have always shied away from putting my life into things, only small parts etc. and no author can never put themselves into their work. But there is a difficulty and also a liberty in doing this. It is a piece of fiction crafted by me, but it allows me to express the things I have seen and learnt over the years. I have been through a lot, and I think when an author puts some of their life into their work it makes it extremely rich and beautiful. I think of Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe, loosely based on his life. It is a masterpiece. He weaves his story through the novel and also fictionalises it as well. I have written a character with different experiences to me but then some of my life too. I allowed myself for the first time instead of holding back always and I am really loving it. After all we read authors to see their vision of life in a way through the characters and circumstances.

Anyway, it is a rich story with humour, joy, love and pain, just like life is. I am so happy that on New Year’s day and today, I spent it writing my third novel I have written, in totality. I hope once it is ready to go out into the world, people gain something valuable out of it and enjoy reading it. Thanks for reading now, and I hope and pray it is a beautiful year for you, full goodness, light and joy and in the hard times, that you have loving people around you.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🙂