July's Monthly Digest - A Brand New Book Club, A Boost of Confidence, and a Giveaway of Astrid Bricard!!

I'm giving away an advance reading copy of The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard! And I'm starting a new online book club! Scroll down to find out more.

Jul 28, 2023

Sinking Into a Book

If you follow me on social media, you’ll notice it’s been pretty quiet around here lately. Yes, I’m still alive! But we’ve had school holidays here in WA and we went down to our new beach house for two whole weeks of bliss!

While I was there, I used the experience of being in a fresh environment to try to come up with ways of reimagining The Secret Life of Marie-Madeleine so that I could figure out a way to reduce the next draft substantially from its current length of 153,000 words. Did I succeed? Sort of!

As I mentioned in July’s Bijoux List a couple of weeks ago, I embarked upon Julia Cameron’s famous The Artist’s Way. It’s definitely shaking a few things loose and making me feel more of the confidence I used to feel about my writing, which I think I lost a little of over the past year or so. You need to be feeling confident when you’re cutting a manuscript, rather than doubting every move you make, so the timing is excellent!

I also started reading John Truby’s The Anatomy of a Story. I don’t tend to read a lot of “how-to” books when it comes to writing as I generally find their approaches to plot simplistic, reductive and not reflective of how my mind works. But Truby is my kind of guy!

A lot of what he’s talking about is what I teach in my Plotting Masterclass. I know it, but I’d been relying on my intuition to apply it to my manuscript. And my intuition had been applying it – but it’s just that I also need to really focus on some of those elements with my conscious mind too.

So I haven’t actually written anything for over three weeks. I’ve been redesigning the shape of my story and digging deep into my characters and working through Truby’s outline. Finally I can see what I need to cut and what I need to expand too. And I’m very excited to begin this week, and hopefully make this book into the kind of story Marie-Madeleine Fourcade deserves.

If you’re a writer – I recommend checking out Truby’s book. You should see my Scrivener binder now – colours galore! I might even turn into a planner rather than a pantser! It’s definitely the best “how-to” I’ve come across. I’m going to dive into it a bit more deeply in next week’s First Friday Thread, which my paid subscribers receive once a month, so look out for that.

A Brand New Book Club!

Author Belinda Alexandra (from

Glamour comes from the word Grammar

) and I are starting a new online book club! Each month, we’ll be choosing a book for everyone to read, and hosting a live event with the author on Facebook and Instagram. The theme of the club is ‘History, and other beautiful and fascinating things’ – I hope that sounds like something you’ll enjoy too!

The book club will be hosted in a Facebook group. There is absolutely no obligation to read every book each month; we want this to be fun, inspiring, and something you enjoy. You can find out more and join the club here. It’s open to everyone! Hope to see you there!

Book Tour For The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard

Yes, I’ll be touring Australia this year and I can’t wait!

We’re still finalising details, but it’s a jam-packed schedule full of fabulous events. Make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter as, next month, I’ll likely have many more details and hopefully even some booking links for you. We’ve got gin events, we’ve got lunches and lots more. And I’m even visiting some states I’ve never toured to before, so stay tuned!

Who’d Like to Win an Early Copy of The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard?!

That’s right – I have one advance copy of The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard to give away to one lucky subscriber! If you’d like to be in the running, here’s what you have to do:

be a subscriber to this newsletter (you can have a free or a paid subscription; it’s open to all subscribers)
leave a comment on this post letting me know which is your favourite of my books or, if you haven’t read any yet, which one you think you’ll start with (find the comments at the end or, if you’re reading this via email, click the “Leave a Comment” button)

Preorder Offer - Win Some Divine Diptyque Products!

QBD Books have a great preorder offer happening right now for The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard. If you preorder the book from them online or in store, you can go in the running to win $500 worth of Diptyque products. Diptyque make the most heavenly candles and I adore them, so I almost wish I could enter!

You can find more information about the offer here. (I think this is likely to be open to Australian residents only, but you can check with QBD Books if you live elsewhere).

Some Book Recommendations For You!

I’ve just started Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and I can already tell it’s going to be one of my favourite books of the year. I’ve read and loved all of Kingsolver’s books, so I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to pick this one up!

I suppose the description of the book as being about a boy who endures life with a drug-addicted mother, foster care, child labour etc made it sound unbelievably grim. Yes, it’s sad. But the voice of the book is sparkling. Kingsolver is a genius. Go read a copy!

And I recently finished R.F. Huang’s Yellowface, which has certainly had everyone talking. I tore through the first third, thinking this was also going to make my best books of the year list. But I found the middle section less engaging and, while I enjoyed the book overall, I don’t think it will make my Top 10 after all. Have you read it? What did you think?

And that’s it for this month! How was your July? What are you reading right now? Will I see you over in my book club? Let’s chat in the comments!