Janet Gover’s fictional country town of Coorah Creek is Robyn Carr’s Virgin River set in The Outback – with the stories of love and loss, flights and fights, that fans love.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny
wheeler, and today on the Joys of Binge Reading
Janet talks about her latest book, The Lawson Sisters, a contemporary
story of family guilt and estranged siblings, and exciting new projects – like
her recreation of Bronte stories in the 20th century.
Six
things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:
Why Australia appeals as a settingWarm & uplifting? Or angry and dark?Real people who inspired storiesHeathcliff? Fascinating but not a heroTwo writers she binge readsWhy she loves where she is right now
Where to find Janet Gover:
Website: www.janetgover.com
Twitter: @janet_gover
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janetgoverbooks/
Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/janetgoverauthor/
What
follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for
word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Jenny: But now, here’s Janet. . Hello there Janet and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.
Janet Gover: Well. Thank you, Jenny. It's lovely to be here. Thank you so much
for inviting me.
Jenny Wheeler: You've had an outstanding career as a journalist, and we'll get to
that a little later in the chat, but the obvious question for us is, what drew
you to fiction? Was that something you always had there simmering under the
surface, or was there a sort of Once Upon A Time moment, an epiphany when you
thought, I just got to write some make believe?
Janet Gover - Australian Coorah Creek series a winner
Janet Gover: Well, I think it came out of being a successful journalist. When I started in journalism I was writing stories every day and there were a lot of them. They were stories about people, factual stories, true stories, new stories. But then I got promoted and I became more management and I wasn't actually writing stories anymore about people, and that was not good.
Nostalgia for Australia
I think there's something in me that really
wants to write. So I thought, well, if I'm not writing factual stories, maybe I
could write a bit of fiction. And I've always been a big reader since I was
very young, so I thought I might have a go at this. "It can't be that
hard." I was wrong.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You've been based in
England for quite a few years now, but a lot of your books are set in
Australia. Is there a sort of nostalgia for the past operating there?
Janet Gover: Oh, definitely. It's a strange thing. I came to England because - I
was actually living in Hong Kong at the time, and I fell in love with an
Englishman was green eyes and a guitar. And a very, very cute bum. Am I allowed
to say that? When I came to England, I
expected England and Australia to be very similar because there are obviously
historic ties between the two countries.
'Rose-Colored Glasses'
And in fact, I found that they are very,
very different. I think to a large extent, being away from Australia, I was
looking at it from the outside and seeing things that I had thought were every
day, that that's what the world is like, but I started to realize that actually
that's not true. Some of those things are just what Australia is like, and
nowhere else in the world is quite like that.
So yes, I might have had a certain amount
of "rose colored glasses," I'm sure, but it does help me stay
connected with my roots back there.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, sure. And do you find that internationally readers enjoy that
Australian regionalism?
Janet Gover: I think they do. I've got quite a lot of readers here in the UK who
send me messages saying things like, 'Oh, I've always wanted to go to Australia
and now I want to go even more.'
Coorah Creek favorite fantasy
And I had one lovely email from someone who
said, "please tell me the Coorah Creek,
