A Chateau Marmont Vacation (Really!), and a Book Giveaway!

I don’t know where the last month went! Well, I do actually. It vanished in a series of final events for THE MADEMOISELLE ALLIANCE here in Perth, then I caught a virus and laid low for a couple of weeks. As well as that, I finished my structural edit for the 2026 book, THE CHATEAU ON SUNSET, found a rental for us to move to while we build our new house in beautiful Cottesloe, and started packing everything into boxes. We’ve also been hosting a 14 year old French exchange student since mid-May; regular readers will remember that my son went to France for 8 weeks earlier in the year, lived with a French family and went to French school. Now it’s our turn to host the boy he stayed with. So yes, it’s been busy!!

A Book Giveaway

While packing everything into boxes, I discovered, to nobody’s surprise, that I have far too many books. I need to clear a few out, so I thought one way to do that would be to do a giveaway here. I have one advance copy of the Australian edition of THE MADEMOISELLE ALLIANCE and one advance copy of the American edition to give away. (An advance copy usually has a few typos as it’s printed before the final proofread, but is otherwise the same as the final version).

If you’d like to be in the running to win one of those 2 books, then all you have to do is leave me a comment below and tell me what you’re reading right now! Paid subscribers get an extra entry into the giveaway if they leave a comment. I’ll draw the winners’ names via random name generator on Friday June 20 at 9am AWST and notify them via email.

I’m Going Overseas Next Week!

Because I clearly don’t have enough going on in my life right now, I’m also going overseas next week. I’m very excited to be speaking at the Historical Novel Society Conference, which is being held in Las Vegas of all places! I’ve never been to Vegas, so I’m approaching it with the mindset that I’m going to a big amusement park for a few days and I might as well throw myself into the spirit and enjoy it, despite the fact that I don’t gamble! The conference is being held at Caesar’s Palace, so it’s definitely going to be the full Vegas experience.

I’m also spending a few days in Los Angeles before the conference, which I’m looking forward to as well. Some of that time will be spent at the Chateau Marmont, the titular chateau of my 2026 book, for some final research! There’s no photography allowed, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to post any pics, but I am definitely going to have some fun—and take lots of notes!

If you want to know a little more about THE CHATEAU ON SUNSET, I published a post last month about the structural edit process.

The Thing That Makes All Writers Crawl Under Their Desks and Weep

In the meantime, if you have any restaurant tips for LA, or great vintage shopping suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

And I’ve Started Another Book …

I’m in the very early stages of starting work on another book! I wrote a two page synopsis about a month ago that my agent loved (phew!) and now that I’ve let that sit in my mind and develop a bit further, it’s time to get some words on the page. The central idea is very ambitious, so I’m crossing my fingers that I can pull it off.

Starting a new book is, for me, the hardest part of the entire process. I always feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. Forcing myself to sit down and get some words on the page is almost impossible. I much prefer it when I have at least 20,000 words behind me, but of course I’ll only get to that point if I actually sit down and write the thing!

So far I have a grand total of 500 words. So yes, there’s a long, long way to go!

The Highs and Lows of Author Life

Most of you will have already seen the Time article about Taylor Jenkins Reid that was published a month ago. She made the cover, and the title of the article is “How Taylor Jenkins Reid Became a Publishing Powerhouse”. The article says, although it also notes this is unconfirmed, that her latest 5-book deal will earn her $8 million per book. As her agent puts it, “She has earned the right to be as certain about what she’s getting out of the next 10 years of her career as any CEO with their benefit packages.”

I’m sure you would have heard me cheering over on the other side of the world when I read that. How incredible that a female author not only made the cover of a magazine like Time, but that she is being recognised as the CEO of a business, which is exactly what every author is. And yes—authors do deserve to be certain of what they are earning and it’s wonderful that both Taylor and her agent are unashamedly asking for this.

Yes, it’s a lot of money. But in the world of CEO’s who are the best in their business, that kind of salary package would be the norm. Publishing is about art, yes; but it’s also about business. And I love that Taylor Jenkins Reid is being a trailblazer in marrying the two so admirably. And that she’s not apologising for either her ambition, her earnings, or her success.

But there’s another side to the business …

I recently received an email from an author about their debut novel, which had been published several weeks before. They wanted advice about what they could do reach more readers; they were feeling discouraged that their novel wasn’t available in some bookstores, and that they were having to push hard to get their publicity and marketing people to promote the book widely. Overall, they were worried that the book they had worked so hard on was going to die a quick death and that their writing career would be over.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had authors reach out to me with a very similar email. And I can also say that I’ve definitely felt all those things at different points in my writing journey. Building a writing career is hard, hard work. I hope that TJR’s success helps to shift and expand the industry to allow for more stories like hers and less like my author friend’s. But right now, stories like my author friend’s are by far the most common.

If any shift does occur—and I want to be optimistic that it will, that TJR will help drive that shift, and that other successful authors will too—it will undoubtedly take some time. So what should a debut and/or mid-career novelist do to sustain their career while they’re waiting for that shift to happen? I realised, as I was talking to my writer friend, that maybe I should share more widely the kinds of things I talked about with her. So look out for a post from me some time in July about what to do if you’re a writer who’s feeling a little discouraged right now.

Reading Recommendations

The Safekeep

I was very excited to see that Yael van der Wouden won The Women’s Prize for Fiction just last week for The Safekeep. I reviewed the book in May’s newsletter and loved it. Definitely a worthy winner of the prize, so if my review didn’t tempt you to read it, maybe the prize will!

All the Colors of the Dark

I’ve just finished Chris Whitaker’s masterpiece, All the Colors of the Dark, and I’m speechless at his brilliance. I loved Whitaker's previous novel, We Begin At the End, so I went into this with high expectations and he completely surpassed them.

Like We Begin At the End, this book is concerned with how a traumatic event in childhood combined with unorthodox or even careless parenting can push a “good” person into doing “bad” things. But Whitaker picks away at the meaning of good and bad until all you have are characters you’re rooting for, no matter what they do; as well as other characters who are sucked into the vortex of those traumatic events and who don’t stand a chance of ever having a normal life thereafter.

Saint and Patch are the two main characters in the story. They become best friends at around age twelve. We follow them over many years, into their thirties, always doggedly loyal both to one another and their own definition of justice. Trouble is, as adults, their definitions of justice are in direct opposition. But they never stop being friends.

They’re so real. Probably some of the most real characters I’ve ever read. You spend the whole book alternating between wanting to hug them and wanting to stop them from destroying what could be a good life for both of them, if only they let go of the past. But pasts cling like spider webs; no matter how hard you try to brush them off, there’s always a piece left behind.

Whitaker is probably classified as a crime writer, but I find his books to be more like extraordinarily tender and often heartbreaking studies of human behaviour. I can’t read any very gruesome or confronting crime novels as I have nightmares, but his books never cross that line. And his descriptions of Missouri are gorgeous.

Easily the best book I've read this year and it's also going straight into my list of favourite books of all time. I absolutely adored it and was slowing myself down towards the end because I didn't want to let it go. Go and read it right now, everyone! And if you have read it, let me know in the comments what you thought.

Trust

I’m currently listening to Trust by Hernan Diaz, which won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s four books within one book and while that might make it sound complicated, it isn’t. Each of the four books is about a husband and wife in New York during the early twentieth century. And each book, despite being about the same couple, tells a very different story depending on whose perspective we’re seeing the characters through.

It’s very clever and I’m really enjoying it. It seems to me that it’s about storytelling and how we construct novels out of lives, as well as how women get reshaped and reduced by history and narrative, which is obviously a theme I’m drawn to! I’ll review it properly once I’m finished but, so far, it’s another one I can recommend reading. Has anyone read this one?

And I’ve Just Started …

A debut novel by fellow West Australian Stefanie Koens called Daughters of Batavia. It’s a dual narrative telling the story of some of the passengers on the doomed Batavia, which was wrecked centuries ago on the stunning Abrolhos Islands in WA. I’m only a few chapters in but I’m hooked. This one is out in August.

What I’ve Been Watching

As a lover of Mad Men, I was very excited to see that Jon Hamm was getting another starring role in a series called Your Friends and Neighbours. The premise is fantastic; Coop, a wealthy executive, loses his job and starts stealing from his rich neighbours—who are also his friends—to make ends meet. Throw in a dead body and you have a series that I thought was super fun.

The supporting cast of women are also fantastic, especially Amanda Peet as Coop’s ex-wife and Olivia Munn as Coop’s booty-call—of course she’s much more than that! My only complaint was how they handled the Olivia Munn-character’s actions towards the end—I wanted the writers to rise above the tropes, and they didn’t.

Speaking of how to rise above the tropes, have you seen Sirens on Netflix? It was so, so good! Meghann Fahy is downright fabulous in this series about two estranged sisters whose lives collide on a stunning island paradise over how best to care for their ailing father. Every time I thought I recognised the trope that the series was playing into, the series turned it on its head and went in a completely different direction.

Julianne Moore is also in the cast and she’s as good as always. The scenery is gorgeous, the clothes deliberately questionable, the jewels enormous, the mood a little gothic and the character development exceptional.

Have you been watching either of these? What did you think?

Where You Can Catch Me Over the Next Couple of Months

• Las Vegas: If you live near Las Vegas, I’m participating in the big author signing session at the Historical Novel Society conference, which is open to the public. Come to Caesar’s Palace Hotel on Saturday, June 28th from 5:30-7:00 pm. The signing will take place in the Pompeian III & IV rooms, adjacent to the bookstore where you can purchase copies of my books, or bring your own for me to sign. Hope I see you there!

• Gertrude & Alice Bookstore: Join me on July 24 at 7pm at one of Sydney’s most beautiful bookshops to hear me talk about The Mademoiselle Alliance over wine and snacks. Book your tickets here.

• Bannisters Long Table Lunch, Mollymook: This event is always divine. Come and have lunch with me at lovely Bannisters and listen to me talk about The Mademoiselle Alliance. July 25 at 12.30pm. Book your tickets here.

• Come to Paris and Lisbon with me!: There are still places available for this incredible tour in April next year where you get to come along and see some of the amazing places that I’ve visited in Paris to research my novels. More info here.

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As you can see, it’s been a big month so far and is only going to get bigger next week once I fly out to Los Angeles. I’ll be sure to post some pics so you can see what I get up to!

And don’t forget to let me know in the comments what you’re reading right now to be in the running to win one of the two advance copies of The Mademoiselle Alliance!