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Today for our book club I’m bringing you an intriguing new work of historical intrigue. 

Ian Kemish’s Two Islands

Ian Kemish AM is a former Australian diplomat. His first book, The Consul, offered a personal perspective on Australia’s foreign affairs challenges. Two Islands is his first work of fiction.

The background to the novel are the war crimes trials conducted in the aftermath of The Wars in The Balkans in the 1990’s. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague involved international teams, including many Australians and has been the subject of numerous books exploring their ongoing impacts. Sharp listeners may recall Gretchen Shirm’s Out of the Woods last year which explored circumstances around the trials.

The Two Islands of the title are Skarnsey and Thorkil’s Isle in Scotland’s Hebrides. It is there that Niko has fled on a desperate whim. There the residents are not unwelcoming of visitors and it is a world away from the violence he has seen and which he was due to testify about at the International Criminal Tribunal. Only now the past is threatening to catch up with Niko and he fears if he doesn’t run the violence will continue to threaten himself and his family.

Into this setting we meet Ronnie and the other villagers in Lamhraig. There is also Fergus, another stranger to the islands and seeking refuge from a different kind of threat; the one he fears he poses to himself and others.

A world away Anita has returned to Australia to see her dying father. She fears she’s neglecting her role as an investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal, but also what may happen if she fails to see her father.

The setup is deceptively simple; can Anita and the Tribunal find Niko before more sinister forces do, and will he be willing to continue to testify against the violence that continues to plague him.

Into this story we have the dueling narratives of Ronnie, Fergua and Niko. Each has seen war close up; Ronnie on the battlefields of the second world war, Fergus in Northern Ireland and Niko as a boy in his home town. Each must find a way to go on and it is through the narrative we are offered a glimpse of what that may be.

In all honesty I came to Two Islands for the scenic vistas of The Hebrides. The book evokes the peace of the islands and the way of life of the locals. It also takes pains not to romanticize it, even as it threatens to shatter the sense of isolation and peace in pursuit of Niko.

The novel does well to show us these parallel stories of war as brutal encroachments on the lives of these three men, and the toll they will carry through their lives. I might have liked to hear more of each, particularly Ronnie, to better understand and to counter the thriller aspect as a horrific consequence of ongoing tensions.

As we watch war in our world and look to how it touches our lives it can be helpful to explore narratives such as Two Islands. The Wars in the Balkans we mere decades ago and their impacts are still felt. We may hope to never feel the close up effects of conflict but must acknowledge that they are part of the world we live in. Two Islands shows us something of what that means

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Shailee Thompson is a writer and educator based in Brisbane, Australia.

How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is her debut novel.

Content Warning or Trigger Notes

Let’s put a content warning on our chat Shailee because How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a slasher slash rom-com and all sorts of messed up stuff happens in both love and murder…

Jamie needs a break from her PhD thesis, so she and her best friend Jamie are going to a speed dating event at a local nightclub. Dating is hell and the apps are cooked but this should be a laugh. At least each ‘date’ is only ten minutes.

It’s all going so-so, a few sparks from aesthetically pleasing partners when the lights go out.

When they return, Jamie finds her current date slashed ear to ear as she is thrown into a fight for her life!

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Starting with a shout out to Emily who is a publishing industry professional. I have had the chance to work with Emily setting up interviews for authors and I’m very happy to be talking about her first book.

Emily won the Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer at the Queensland Literary Awards and her debut novel, Life Drawing.

Charlie’s moved to Brisbane for uni. He feels out of place crashing on his cousin’s couch and barely knows anyone in town. He’s trying to put himself out there with uni mixers and through taking a  life drawing class. 

Maisie’s the heart of the house. People like to think they know her. Maybe too many people think they know her too well. But the parts Maisie keeps hidden are so deep most don’t even suspect they’re there.

As Maisie and Charlie circle each other’s worlds they will try to understand whether, hypothetically, they might go well together…

Life Drawing is the story of Charlie and Maisie. It’s also the story of Maisie and Maisie.

When they find themselves in the same sharehouse Charlie feels awkward; this is the girl he was drawing naked just a few weeks ago. Maisie’s not bothered though. On the surface she’s all cool indifference. To the world she has a great body and is completely comfortable in her own skin.

Maybe if she can wear that mask for long enough she might even start to believe in it.

Share house life is a recipe for implosion though, so maybe Charlie and Maisie weren’t meant to be. Except that life and the internet insist on drawing them back towards each other’s orbit.

Life Drawing is driven by the ebb and flow of Charlie and Maisie as they try to discover their own grand romance. They will continue to stumble though as Charlie struggles to be ‘not all men’, while Maisie works to love herself half as much as she pretends.

The heart of the novel is Maisie’s journey through body image and self esteem. As a cis-het male I’d be disingenuous if I pretended I was watching this part of the story as anything other than an outsider. Maisie’s struggles are unique but also part of a world where women are compelled into devil’s bargains for their own sense of worth and achievement.

Growing through the years we watch on as Maisie and Charlie try to shape lives together and apart. From the first moment Charlie tries to capture Maisie on paper we can see that who they are and how they see each other are complex entities and prone to illusion and misalignment.

Maisie’s own story is similarly fraught with confusion and miscommunication. Knowing yourself is not a foregone conclusion of living a life and Maisie must make herself in her own image, not just through the eyes of others. 

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Maria van Neerven is a Mununjali poet from the Yugambeh nation living in Meanjin. Maria was the winner of the David Unaipon Award in 2023 and was a Next Chapter Fellow in 2024. Two Tongues is her first poetry collection.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

One of my favourite parts of Final Draft is discovering debut novels that get me excited for many more books to come. That was my feeling as I devoured George Kemp’s Soft Serve (sorry pun not intended) over the holidays.

George Kemp is a writer of fiction, plays and television. After a life as an actor and producing his own scripts on the stage, George was accepted into The Faber Academy, where he wrote his debut novel SOFT SERVE.

We are taken to a small town McDonald’s where four reluctant individuals gather to remember Taz.

Pat is still mourning the son she lost too young. 

Fern, Jacob and Ethan miss their best friend.

Taz died tragically after moving to Sydney and now the four find themselves adrift and struggle with how their lives have become stuck since his death.

As fires bear down on the Maccas, the four must confront how they are trapped not just by natural disaster but by their choices since Taz died.

As I read Soft Serve I couldn’t help but wonder about how George Kemp’s dramatic training had been brought to bear in his writing. The narrative of Soft Serve is simultaneously cinematic in its race against time drama amidst the fires, with big set pieces set amidst the flames, whilst also containing the intimacy of the stage as we zoom in on the four figures in  the remote fast food restaurant worrying through their all too human problems.

The novel is spare, but effective in establishing its central group. Pat grieves in a no-nonsense sort of way as she sets up the fryers and dreads the day ahead. Jacob and Ethan skirt around their truth and try to put on a face for the world. Fern doubts herself even as she shows the most vision of them all.

Against the backdrop of an unfolding disaster these all-too-human concerns of love and desire, reconciling the past and exploring the future become overwhelming. Soft Serve shows us the moment when years of avoidance must ultimately be faced. Shown through the eyes of the characters as they face themselves and each other it makes for compelling viewing.

And there I go again, talking about Soft Serve as if it were a film I was watching, as much a novel I read. The reader has this highly imaginative and visual experience ahead as they move through a tense and emotional ride of a narrative.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Sara Haddad is an editor and writer. You first met Sara on Final Draft when we discussed he debut novella The Sunbird. Today Sara is returning with a young readers edition of The Sunbird.

The Younger Reader's Edition of the Sunbird rediscovers the story of Nabila and explores her story for a new audience.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

Shailee Thompson is a writer and educator and today we’ve got her debut novel, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates.

Right off the top I’ll let you all know that How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a horror/slasher story. It has a lot of fun playing with the genre and that’s why I’m bringing it in for you, but if that’s not your thing right now just mute the next few minutes.

Jamie needs a break from her PhD thesis on the intersection of rom coms and horror movies. Academia can be murder! So Jamie and her best friend Laurie decide to go to a speed dating event at a local nightclub. Dating is hell and the apps are cooked but this should be a laugh. At least each ‘date’ is only ten minutes.

It’s all going so-so, with a few sparks from aesthetically pleasing partners when the lights go out. Not exactly romantic but when they come back on Jamie finds her current date slashed ear to ear as she is thrown into a fight for her life!

It only gets bolder and bloodier from here in How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates but this is a narrative that knows its genre.

Jamie quickly draws on her academic experience to teach the survivors the ‘Rules’; ten vital tricks to staying alive in a slasher film. These are the group's lifeline as they search for an exit and a way to return to the real world. But their villain has their own plan and besides people never follow rules.

Like so many of us Shailee Thompson has come of age in a post Scream world where it’s not enough to simply fill the screen with vicarious gore. The horror films of the seventies and eighties gave a whole generation some freudian insight into human nature and now the post modern slashers of the nineties are spawning their own progeny that know they’re in a story and really want to flip the script.

Thus How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is part slasher, part rom com, with a protagonist who doesn’t know whether she’s a leading lady or a final girl, and really prefers not to make the choice.

The novel is filled with jump scares, meet-cutes, blood spatter, and sexual tension (not necessarily in that order. From the outset, Jamie’s thesis introduces us to the notion that both genres share a lot in common and the rest of the story goes to extreme lengths to test that theory.

This is a lot of fun…

Genre heads will enjoy the way the tropes are both respected and inverted. Literary nerds can geek out at the high concept meta narrative. Armchair sleuths can try to solve it. Film nerds will love the myriad nods and easter eggs. And we can all enjoy the vicarious pleasure of not being stuck in the story ourselves.

How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a knowing, pacy, well written look at the type of story we usually take for granted as entertainment. It reassures us it’s ok to have fun, but also the fun is part of a much more clever and dangerous world. 

Being a book nerd has never been so much fun.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Kay Kerr is an author and journalist based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia.

Kay’s latest novel, Might Cry Later, is out now.

Nora is home for Xmas, Actually she’s been home a little longer than that and will probably be staying a bit after.

At twenty-one and living in Melbourne Nora found her life imploding. What came next, well Nora’s not quite ready to face yet, but she came home with a brand new Autism diagnosis that no one in her family wants to talk about.

Holidays are hard enough, but as Nora watches all the people in her life gather round she questions whether her neurodiverse brain can regulate through all this stimulation.

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week.

The Final Draft podcast is all about books, writing and literary culture. We're dedicated to exploring Australian writing, looking into the issues that drive our storytelling to discover more from the books you love.

These are the stories that make us who we are.

Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. He is the bestselling author of titles including The Nowhere Child (2018), The Wife and the Widow (2019), and Wild Place (2021).

Christian’s joining us today with his latest The Long Night

On a quiet night in the sleepy little village of Talowin, Em sits in the Royal Oak pub waiting for her date.

Em’s convinced she’s going to die alone, but who knows maybe this date will be different.

It’s getting late and Em’s about to give up when a figure enters the pub, and what happens next will change Em’s life forever…

Final Draft is produced and presented by Andrew Pople⁠

Want more great conversations with Australian authors?

⁠Discover this and many more conversations on Final Draft every week⁠.

Summer time in the Final Draft household brings lots of new release and pre-release titles and the corresponding challenge of knowing where to start. When the titles started rolling in though it was very easy to pick up Kay Kerr’s new novel, her first aimed at adult readers because I’ve enjoyed her Young Adult writing, as well as her strong autistic characters and her approach to neurodiversity. 

Kay is an author and journalist based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She’s the author of Please Don’t Hug Me, Social Queue, and Love & Autism. Kay’s latest novel, Might Cry Later, is our book club title for today.

Nora is home for Xmas, Actually she’s been home a little longer than that and will probably be staying a bit after. 

At twenty-one and living in Melbourne Nora found her life imploding. What came next, well Nora’s not quite ready to face yet, but she came home with a brand new Autism diagnosis that no one in her family wants to talk about.

Holidays are hard enough, but as Nora watches all the people in her life gather round she questions whether her neurodiverse brain can regulate through all this stimulation.

Might Cry Later is the story of Nora and her journey through late-diagnosis of Autism. For context, and acknowledging differences in reporting, average ages for diagnosis are typically reported within childhood and females are generally diagnosed later than males.

Nora’s story of declining mental health before a diagnosis represents so many women’s experience of having their neurodiversity misunderstood or misdiagnosed on the pathway to diagnosis.

That’s the stats but what Kay Kerr gives us is the heartfelt and raw story of what that means in the real world and confronts us with the challenge that getting a diagnosis is just the beginning.

When we meet Nora at her parent’s home in the Gold Coast Hinterland it seems like she’s in paradise. Nora acknowledges how the peace and natural environment are good for her and helps her regulate a sensory system she’s learning reacts differently to other people’s. Nora’s also having to deal with how her family, and particularly her family at Xmas care little for sensory regulation if it does not fit in with a rigorous regime of decorating and social engagements.

The story weaves between Nora’s Xmas struggles and her memories of her younger, undiagnosed self and all the struggles that now make so much sense to her. These memories force her to face the ways she wasn’t supported as she needed, but also how her behaviours also hurt those closest to her, particularly her best friend Fran.

Might Cry Later flirts with a range of classic text structures including rom-com, bildungsroman and quest, whilst ultimately carving its own path through an inevitably messy world. Nora is both endearing and unlikable to the reader, as she is to herself and it’s a strength of the storytelling that we go on this journey of uncertainty with such confidence.

I found myself rooting for Nora in her everyday work to figure out her life. Her story is a wonderful look into the autistic experience, and part of a growing body of writing exploring the neurodiverse world.