'I lay there paralysed, mouth full of silver and every nerve ablaze. Stuck in a hospital bed. No memory. No identity. And it's funny, in a macabre kind of way...I knew I'd been through this before.'
Heck from The Wack and Kira the Menace. Two against the world and each other. They're about to find that love can hit like lightning.
The Marowack Two is my second book in the "young adult" market with Penguin, and it was a complete breeze to write from beginning to end. I've developed a great working relationship with my editor there - we spend more time talking movies than books and editing - and they're happy to sit back and let me do my thing. I guess it's an enviable kind of position for a writer to be in.
This was written in the comfortable, multicultural Melbourne suburb of Preston during 2000-2001 - a far cry from the culturally deficient town portrayed in the story. But I KNOW Marowack, and the hundreds of small towns just like it throughout Australia - towns that have been clinging on for dear life for decades, or more: towns that sprang up around some kind of industry, and when that industry died, just kept clinging to life, hoping, one day to be 'discovered': towns that, despite all the indications, are incredibly, indelliby optimistic. This story probably reflects my real love of smalltown Australia, and the people who battle to form a community, often in the face of rampant opposition.
The limitations of writing for the YOUNG ADULT market persist, and I guess I'm slightly more adept now at self-censorship. Adept, but not at all comfortable with it - how can I be, when I have to depict a deisel mechanic hardly ever swearing? Authentic dialogue is really important to me, and as we all know, a country mechanic calls everyone and everything a CUNT OF A THING - and yet I could really only slip one in. At one stage in the editing process, during a particularly dramatic scene where Johnny the mechanic was swearing his head off, and I had him mouthing off, saying FUCKING a couple of times, the editing notes came back -
'CAN WE HAVE A LITTLE LESS FUCKING, PLEASE? THE YA MARKET IS EVEN MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN IT WAS TWO YEARS AGO, WHEN EAT WELL CAME OUT'.