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Danielle Binks on writing middle grade, school refusal, and the power of sad stories | Author interview
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We were thrilled to sit down with Danielle Binks to talk all about her latest novel, Six Summers of Tash and Leopold: a big, hopeful, coming-of-age middle-grade book that features complicated families and life-changing summers. The novel follows the titular characters as they deal with difficult life transitions and school can't (a.k.a. school refusal). Danielle chats about the therapeutic nature of writing, and reflects on the different expectations we place on children and adults when it comes to facing anxieties.
Content notes for this episode: anxiety, depression, gambling addiction, agoraphobia, pet loss.
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Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naarm/Melbourne. Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
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Transcript
Interview Announcement and Book Themes
00:00:10
Speaker
Elise. Today we have a very exciting interview with author Danielle Bix, where we are going to be discussing her new book, Six Summers of Tash and Leopold. We have a lot to talk about, including gentrification, school can't, gambling addiction and anxiety.
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah, before we get started, have you noticed the makeover that we've had? Hopefully you have if you're listening in your podcast app that we have a new logo, we have new colours, we have new branding. um Yeah, everything is pretty fresh and looking pretty good, in my opinion.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yes, so Elisa's worked particularly hard on this rebrand, so please let us know what you think of the new designs. Using my limited graphic design yeah skills. Well, I had none, so... you I'm an expert compared to yours. Yeah, absolutely.
Introduction of Danielle Binks and Book Overview
00:01:01
Speaker
Uh, no, um, yeah, we thought it was about time that we sort of refreshed things and maybe sort of updated our look and feel a little bit. So yeah, good goodbye to the two cartoon people sitting on a book. Hello to the NF.
00:01:15
Speaker
yeah abstract book and our pretty mostly purple color scheme. So go check it out. If you haven't, it's been integrated across all of our socials, our website and so on. So yeah, check it out. We're really happy and proud with how it's turned out. Yeah. But in case you don't know who our author is today, let us introduce you a little bit.
00:01:35
Speaker
Daniel Binks is a Melbourne-based writer and and literary agent. She is the author of best-selling middle grade book, The Year the Maps Change, one of my favourites, and the award-winning young adult books. Begin and begin a hashtag, loveosya, anthology, as well as the monster of her age.
00:01:54
Speaker
and a little bit about the book. Alitash and Leopold, Tash and Leo are neighbours who used to be best friends but aren't anymore for reasons that Leo doesn't entirely understand. But now it's the last week of year six and Tash is standing in Leo's front yard with a misdelivered letter and a favour to ask. It's a request that will set off a chain of events in their little crescent in Noble Park, a suburb that is changing and fast.
00:02:17
Speaker
As they solve an unfolding neighbourhood mystery and help Mrs Shepperson, a reclusive neighbour with a tragic past, Tash and Leo each has to confront fault lines in their own and recent histories and families. Thank you to Hatchet Australia for linking us together. Just a very quick note that we have two very good friends called Tash and Leo and it has been difficult whenever I see the characters names written as Tash and Leo to visualise these child characters as opposed to our good like married couple friends who we do trivia with on a regular basis. so So that's why we keep calling this character Leopold and not Leo. To not visualize our friends, you know.
Building Real Connections in Writing
00:02:55
Speaker
Tash and Leo as 11 year olds. Can you imagine? um Yes, that is a slight and ah mental shift that we have to keep doing. Anyway, ah just a reminder to check out our show notes through our disclaimers and content notes. And let's get started with our non-spoiler questions first.
00:03:15
Speaker
We are here with Danielle Binks. Danielle, we are so excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Before we hit record, we were just sort of talking about how we've been in each other's spheres for a while and ah following each other on social. So yeah, it's just nice to to be in the same chat with you, put a full face in the name or be face to face. Yeah, it's it's great to have you here. I believe the words you use were parasocial relationship, which I love. I love that for us. Thank you so much.
00:03:43
Speaker
Well, turn this parasocial relationship into and an actual working relationship, right? Let's, please. This is much healthier than the parasocial relationship I had with Joshua Jackson growing up. So that's great. That's fabulous. I love it already. Good. All right. Well, we're here to discuss ah your latest novel, Six Summers of Tash and Leopold. So this is your second middle grade novel. What draws you to writing for this audience?
Therapeutic Writing and Middle-Grade Influence
00:04:08
Speaker
I think I'm one of those weird people who can very clearly remember my middle grade days, my my ages in primary school, some memories I have of primary school that I swear are more crystal clear than what I had for dinner last night. And I think for that reason, it it also means it's the good and the bad. I remember struggling with friendships
00:04:30
Speaker
in primary school, I remember feeling very discombobulated, not knowing what other people were thinking about me and being kind of hypersensitive to the assumptions that people were talking about me or they hated me. I feel like I went through those waves of emotion a lot more in primary school than high school even. So for some reason, maybe it's because I was bruised a bit more emotionally in primary school that it's just a bit closer to the surface. So it's kind of easy for me to tap into being that age again and Certainly, when I started reading middle grade books, it was like everything just sort of clicked into place. Because it wasn't for me, oh, this is so childish. These are childish, you know, situations and things. For me, it was, oh, I remember this age. Oh, I remember these feelings.
00:05:15
Speaker
So because i when I was reading it, it was very easy to get back into it. And then the transition to writing it was even easier to the point that I can, when I'm writing middle grade, I can get very emotional because all of those feelings, I feel like kind of a bruise that hasn't quite healed and they're very easy to just squeeze and tap and prod out and kind of leak out of me a little bit, which just makes it sound like it's got like a staph infection. um Maybe that's true of writing for me potentially, hopefully not, but there you go.
00:05:44
Speaker
Well it sounds like writing is quite therapeutic for you, we'll put it that way. It can be quite therapeutic and I do equip my young characters with far more emotional intelligence than I had at that age and they do their character arcs are far more fulfilling. I feel like I really didn't kind of hit my stride and realize that I have to sort of look for my tribe and find people that make me happy. I feel like i was I was trying to make other people happy for so long and it wasn't until kind of towards the end of high school that I just started finding my people, having a bit of an online personality as
YA vs Middle-Grade Writing Insights
00:06:19
Speaker
well. I got really into writing online via writing fan fiction and that was a great outlet for me as well. But I feel like in primary school in particular, it was a much more, I had to put a mask on.
00:06:29
Speaker
it's It's such a potluck when you're in school, the people that you end up with. It's kind of like family and that you can't really choose them. um you know In hindsight, you can switch schools if it gets really abysmally bad, but for the most part, most kids just kind of put up with it. And I feel like that was me. I feel like I just had some kind of toxic friends and I was just kind of you know subject to their whims.
00:06:51
Speaker
So I went through that a lot more in primary school. And yes, I do think writing for this age group now is a lot more therapeutic because I can kind of navigate my characters through the safe harbour of young adulthood, you know, a little bit easier than I did. Yeah, wonderful. It's such a big transition period as well. That's the focus of the story with the transition from primary to secondary school, which I think can be hard for Obviously, it can be hard for kids even if they are going to the same school as the people that they went to primary school with. and you know we'll We'll touch a little bit more on friendships as we go through. that
00:07:25
Speaker
ah yeah I just felt the Leo so much during this story. yeah That was a big part of me as well. i I got a scholarship to a private school and I was the only kid from my primary school going to that high school, so I was all alone. and I remember that was such a weight on my shoulders because I'd had so many traumatic ups and downs with friendships in primary school.
00:07:47
Speaker
My fear was I would have that replicated in high school, but I would be by myself. I wouldn't have any kind of anchorage of friends take coming with me, but actually that ended up being a great thing for me. I got a completely clean slate. I got to kind of be myself a little bit more because I wasn't anchored by all those friends and all the toxic.
00:08:05
Speaker
history that we had. But I remember at the time, it was so scary thinking I was the only one from my entire primary school going to this high school. It was really frightening. So I kind of put a lot of that, the neuroses and the nervousness into Leo. That's what I felt. It's big burden for Leo to bear. I'm so sorry, Leo. It is. I do that a lot with my characters, stuff that I went through, I give to them, but they figure it out a lot better and quicker than I did. But it is still very much like a cleansing ritual, I guess. Absolutely.
00:08:33
Speaker
And ah of course, you've also written a YA book, The Monsters of Her Age. So for you, what are some of the differences between writing YA versus writing middle grade? I think for me it is that idea of family. I think for middle grade, kids and child characters still need that safe harbour of guardians or parents, someone to still look after them who's an adult. They can't really go off on their own. But I think with teenagers and YA, you start to experience a little bit more of teenagers realising
00:09:05
Speaker
my family doesn't have to be my forever family, I can go and start creating my own family of friends maybe. And that's kind of beautiful because as you become a teenager, you're becoming more of yourself. And not every teenager has the luxury of a family who understands and accepts them.
00:09:22
Speaker
And there were genuinely some toxic families out there where you would just say to a ah teenager, you don't have to be tied to them forever. You can actually go and choose who you want to hang out with and live with and you know who gets your time and your peace to a degree.
00:09:38
Speaker
But kids don't really have that luxury anymore, even if their family is toxic. And certainly some really beautiful ah middle grade novels have have explored the foster care system, for instance, but they still need an anchoring adult of some description in their life. They can't go it alone, whereas teenagers can go it a little bit alone. I mean, I wouldn't want to see a teenager being truly solo. When I say alone, I mean, choosing to discover a found family is kind of going off on your own and and cutting those apron strings.
00:10:05
Speaker
and I feel independence as well. Yes, yeah it's it's an encouragement of independence, whereas I think child characters have to learn when they need to ask for help a little bit more as well. And that often involves you know speaking to an adult. ah So I think that's a big focus of middle grade is articulating when you do need help and who can help you finding that safety. But when you're a teenager, you can start articulating a little bit more
Cultivating Empathy Through Literature
00:10:29
Speaker
that you want to leave a bad situation and go it alone and start to be a bit more independent. That's such an interesting um and and's such a distinction between the two that I haven't really thought about before because in you know middle grade, we've got it's more about learning when you need to
00:10:46
Speaker
talk to someone else for the purpose of problem solving. Whereas for those older characters, it's more about problem solving independently. Like obviously it's not a clear delineation and something that, you know, we can't always solve solve all our own problems. But yeah, I think the the key arc that a lot of middle grade books focus on is like, when when is it time to reach out and talk to an adult and get that support versus trying to solve things yourself?
00:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, because you would never ask a kid to take on the entire burden of whatever situation they're going through, nor would you ask that of a young adult and a teenager. But I think with teenagers a little bit more, I mean, I was very, and I didn't realise this until I started writing, but one of the kind of formative books that I read as ah as a young person was John Steinbeck's East of Eden. And there's a line in that that goes, it is an aching kind of growing.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I think that's what I always write. I always write in that space of it's an aching kind of growing. And whether that's in a middle grade capacity, having to learn a few things about yourself, having to improve your own empathy, having to realise that you do have a community around you that you can pull upon and get help from, or if it's the aching kind of growing of a teenager and realising that, hey, you don't have to stay in a bad situation, you have the ability and capability to leave now if it's not working out for you.
00:12:03
Speaker
And maybe that's a reflection of the sort of YA that I read as well, which tends to be a lot of queer fiction. And for a lot of young queer teenagers, it is the reality that their family, their immediate family relations don't always accept them. But there is always a beauty in them finding a friendship group or a community outside of family. So I think it's also the difference between and like middle grade readers and kids as well.
00:12:27
Speaker
I feel like they need to be reminded that they do have a community beyond their family a little bit, but it's kind of a smaller. It's, you know, their immediate school community or their neighbourhood, etc. But teenagers, you get a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's kind of beautiful when you see a teenage character, for instance, decide to move away from home or maybe move countries, go to a boarding school, experience some true freedom for the first time. So, yeah, that's kind of the difference. It's kind of an onion, I guess. aren't we all just onions? all away the layer yes absolutely A lot of the things that you mentioned there definitely are present in Tash and Leo Paul and Leo's having to learn to work out his own feelings and ask for help when he needs them and same with Tash as well.
00:13:11
Speaker
um But let's chat about one of the main themes of the book. So the main characters, Hash and Leopold, are in a transition period as we talked about before. ah They're graduating primary school and they're heading into high school and for different reasons that we'll discuss in the spoiler section. They're both experiencing school refusal in quotation marks or to use the more fitting term, school can't.
00:13:36
Speaker
um This topic is currently relevant to so many children and families in Australia. Can you talk a bit about your approach to writing about it? I it came on my radar during COVID and the lockdown years, and I was Melbourne, so this was you know a very big deal. And my first book came out in 2020, right when lockdown's kind of hit. So I ended up doing quite a lot of school visits online. And so my first hint of this was actually being an outside observer, occasionally invited into an online environment, learning environment and classroom, and just
00:14:11
Speaker
visually seeing kids clearly sort of checked out, really struggling with online learning. and you know You only see them in a little box, a full classroom landscape, but it was kids spinning around on their chair in front of the screen, or just a blank screen, or a teacher calling out their name, saying, have they attended, scrolling through the glass lists, saying, no, they're not here again. That was the first hint of, oh, this is bad this is and it was getting progressively worse from 2020 to 2021 when I was invited into those online classrooms you could see there was a big switch that there was more kids spinning in their chair there was more kids playing with the background as I or the teacher was talking more kids tapping away or just off screen doing something else you could just really see that there was a disconnect and this was really hard for them
00:14:57
Speaker
and um And as many people did, i I kind of kept thinking, how would i I have gone when I was in primary school or high school with online learning? And just imagining, gosh, that would have been so hard. And then I got really...
00:15:09
Speaker
steampunk almost about it. And I was sort of like, what would we have done pre-internet? Would it have been on national television? Like would the ABC have done an hour for grade one, an hour for grade two when you had to like log in ah old school way on the television? So that was all kind of scary for me imagining myself in their position and thinking, yeah, I would have really struggled. That would have been really hard. i As much as it was tricky for me to have those friendship relationships in school that was also kind of what fed me as well to a degree. i was I could be a very lonely kid and school was kind of what pushed me to become more social. If I didn't have that, I feel like I would have really struggled um with into relations with other people. I would have been very retrograde. I think I would have regressed quite a lot. And then I have about five teachers in my family, various teaching roles, ah you know, primary school and high school and and a couple of principals. And they started talking to us a lot more about the difficulties they were experiencing in the classroom.
00:16:09
Speaker
with school refusal, school can't. And they were kind of the canary in the coal mine saying this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. And of course recently, this year especially, we're seeing the repercussions of it and we're seeing it discussed a lot more at the national level and amongst government even. But also it was kind of fertile ground for me to say that's an interesting character point.
00:16:30
Speaker
if you for various reasons, because a lot of middle grade is centered around the school environment. And if you take that away, what do you have character wise? And how can you make stuff hard for them? How can they have to go really inward to a degree? Because like I said, that was one of the things that would have really scared me had I been one of those kids doing online school learning would have been how much I was in my own head, how much I would have just like I said, regressed and not been very social. So what do you do with that? So all of those became complications and complications are good things in stories. So yeah, that was all kind of fascinating to me, but it was more complications make for good stories. Absolutely. And I think you've captured that so well.
00:17:10
Speaker
ah paralysis almost in Leo, because there's a mo the there's a moment in the book where he talks about how it didn't matter how much mom cried or how dad was screaming down the phone, he just couldn't do it. And it's clearly not a choice for him. And it was so, yeah, paralyzing, I think is the word I keep coming back to. Yeah. And i I included his parents' reactions to a large degree as well because I'm an adult and I was hearing from other adults how they were experiencing this with their kids. So I was in the i was in the head of my child character but I was getting a lot of the background to it from my friends and colleagues who were themselves adults and who were experiencing, you know, they kind of let their mask drop a lot more with me about how hard it was for them. It's hard to see your kid in distress and it's hard to know that the thing that's causing them distress is the thing that they can't,
00:18:00
Speaker
not do, right? and and And it's something where you want them to have resilience to get over it, which is why resilience is a big topic in the story as well. What is the point of resilience? and We ask a lot of kids. We ask kids to do a lot of stuff that we as adults wouldn't stand for, and that's really, really tough. And it was just so interesting getting all those sides from adult adults in my life that I was sympathizing with my with my kid character and I was very much in their head and I was trying to show all facets to it. And I think at the end of the day, my conclusion was there's no right or wrong answers to this. There's no easy cures to this, but it's one of those things where I think I heard it once.
00:18:40
Speaker
that you can acknowledge your emotions, but you can't let them take the wheel and drive. you really have to They have to take a backseat sometimes. um So that was really hard to portray because there is no easy fix to this. By the end of the book, there is no, hey, this was the thing that cured me. It is just conversation and acknowledgement and not belittling.
00:19:01
Speaker
And not pushing and assuming that they can just flip a switch and do it. That was the hardest thing was there was not going to be any neat bow at the end of this. And I just had to sort of show all the complications to it. And I really did enjoy how you sort of delved into that complexity within the story. And also the reflections of how the expectations we put on children versus adults that are in toxic or anxiety provoking situations, right? Like if a friend of mine is in a toxic workplace and is having panic attacks about going,
00:19:31
Speaker
I would be encouraging that friend to you know resign probably, um or at least try to try to do something to make it better. I would not be saying keep going, you have to go. It's an expectation that you keep going, but with children.
00:19:42
Speaker
you know that There's so much of that push. Again, it's so interesting how many of my friends and colleagues opted to do homeschooling, because the distress that their children were in was having so many ramifications on their health, on their mental health, and also their physical health, that it was coming out in various ways, that they were just so stressed, breaking out in hives and eczema, etc. and yeah I was thinking, if you're having drinks with a friend and they're talking about their their romantic relationship and there's so many red flags being discussed, you wouldn't say to them, oh, stay. Just stay the course. You'd be like, please dump them. My God, get out of there. But with kids, and I know we're better about talking about bullying, but even with bullying, it's never a
00:20:25
Speaker
the the first recourse is is very rarely get them out of school. It's we have to sit down and mediate and talk to them. But for some kids, it's that immediate fight or flight. And some of them do just want to fly, they just want to leave. But kids, of course, do not have the ability to and we very rarely give them outs to, you know, from the catchments, etc. But because that old way of thinking of just getting to school, if they just get over this hump, and it'll be fine, just push through the anxiety, they'll be okay.
00:20:52
Speaker
So much of how we deal with kids is is treating everything about them as though we're just force feeding them vegetables. Like this is good for you, just do it. And that's just not that's such a reductive, simplistic way of thinking. And the stuff that you experience as a kid, I mean, I'm saying this to someone who, like I said, I'm getting my therapy by writing about the kind of stuff that I was going through as a kid. The stuff that you experience as a child stays with you.
00:21:15
Speaker
You may not always know it. It may be just below the surface, but it's right there. And if you don't treat this stuff empathetically, and I hear that a lot of it is is coming from the position of kids have very complex worlds. They have very complex inner worlds and very complex social worlds. And if you just go in trampling over everything and saying, no, this it's my way or the highway. this is the only thing This is the only solution. You could do a lot of damage to them.
00:21:40
Speaker
that may not even be seen or known for a few years. So that is incredibly complex. And like I said, there's no easy answer at the end of my book. But I think the main thing I wanted to do was portray that these kids exist and to show some empathy and heart for them because I did i wasn't seeing a lot of these sort of characters in pop culture or fiction anywhere else really.
Setting and Story Authenticity
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, which is interesting because, you know, other than teachers, I certainly see a lot of these kids ah in my work as well. And happy to say that, well, most of us at least try not to do the tough love and just, you know, just get them there yeah no matter what sort of thing. And, you know, a lot of schools are really good about trying to adjust and modify things to try and help make make things a lot easier. But it is a learning process for a lot of people. It totally is a learning process for a lot of people and and I think until those kids are a little bit older and perhaps articulate and help us out with maybe how we approach this as well, it's just a good idea to come with more empathy. I generally think more empathy is generally the way to go. Yeah precisely because I was probably the only place that you hear about these kids is in the newspapers whenever there's a Royal Commission talk um speaking about how school refuges should be discussed by politicians and it's always very dire and scary but also there's some kind of
00:22:59
Speaker
beautiful outcomes of kids who've had school refusal and then have figured out, hey, I need a different learning environment. I need to go into a different stream of of education. I've heard of kids who've gone into education streams where it's more um outside focus. So they, you know, they are integrated into like a farming and agriculture line, of course, or it is those students who've decided to do homeschooling. So, yeah, that's why I kind of wanted to do it as well.
00:23:26
Speaker
Well, we'll definitely talk a bit more about the ah the the individual characters' experiences of school can't and the different anxieties that are faced by both the children and the adults in the spoiler section. um But before we do that, we also wanted to chat about the setting of the story. So, Tash and Leo's neighborhood is almost another character in the story. How did you come to choose Noble Park as the setting?
00:23:50
Speaker
Noble Park. I was taking the Cranburn Line quite a lot. I live out in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and my first book, The Year the Maps Changed, was set out on the Wellington Peninsula, Sorrento, Point of Pien, etc. But I was taking the Cranburn Line quite a lot and Noble Park, I just kept looking out the window, looking around, looking for a setting for my new book. And I quite like the name of Noble Park, And I did that thing of just googling and realizing, oh, it has a really interesting background. It's it's named after Alfred Nobel in homage to him because they used dynamite to flatten the area, which was ah an invention ah of Alfred Nobel of the Nobel Peace Prize. And I kind of thought that was also funny. that ironic They used his invention of dynamite without realising that he was the Nobel of the yeah Peace Prize. And it was originally spelt in, like his name, N-O-B-E-L. But over time, evidently, people forgot that he invented dynamite and was and was used to explode the place and flatten the land. So they ended up just going, well, Noble it's noble Park. And just something about that name I think is quite quirky and cute.
00:24:54
Speaker
but um my nephews were also going to the waterslide park there quite a lot. And that kind of triggered a few ideas for me. ah So yeah, it is just kind of being out in the environment. I generally set my stories places where I've been, places that are tangible, that I can touch, that I can walk around in. And that's very much what I did for Noble Park. I walked around and I found the place where Tash and Leo live. I found the connecting bridge. I noticed the waterways that triggered ideas for me. So it's it's very much I have to be centered in the place So you're not going to catch me probably setting anything in like Omaha, Nebraska. i haven't I haven't been there. And Google Images and Google Street View will only do so much for me. I need to have my two feet on the ground. That's it. I remember maybe it was Will Kastakis who was talking about how more and more non-American authors have to set their books in nondescript American small town in order to break into that market. Is that something that's ever on your mind at all?
00:25:52
Speaker
I speaking as because I'm also a literary agent, so I do get the submissions from people where it is kind of anywhere's will. And I've got to say personally, I hate that I think I'm of the belief that the specific is universal, that you can always find something that you connect with and then there's a beauty and realizing, oh my gosh, I'm Australian, you're American, we have this in common, even though I've set this in a very Melbourne, eastern suburbs, Noble Park, but you still get it as somebody from Chicago and you can see variations. I mean, that's kind of beautiful. And I don't think it's a bad thing to teach people about where you live and to take kind of a pride in where you live. But I also think as an author of books for young people, I think it's really important and kind of revolutionary to show kids, hey, where you live matters.
00:26:38
Speaker
You don't have to aspire to be American to feel like your stories matter. You can be a kid from Noble Park and see your suburb portrayed in fiction. And that's kind of beautiful. I would have given anything to see where I grew up portrayed in fiction. And it's why I so glommed on to those books that were set in places that I recognized, even if it was mostly Sydney set. I feel like one of the reasons I loved Melina Maqueta growing up was because it was all set around Sydney and I had friends from Sydney and I'd been to Sydney and I knew the places where she set things.
00:27:05
Speaker
And that grounding, even though I'm not from Sydney, I'm very much a Melbourne gal, and I will talk until I'm blue in the face that Melbourne's better than Sydney. but But reading her books, I would feel such a sense of pride of that set in Australia that somewhere, you know, that I recognize. And then even more so when she's when she did her book, like on the Jellicoe Road set in an outback Australian town. And I'd never been to a boarding school in the outback, but parts of that were just so beautiful to me to see portrayed.
00:27:33
Speaker
and to see elevated the Australian setting and scenery. I thought that was so beautiful. And I've since found it very funny to hear Melinda Mike in a talk about when she goes to America. on book tours. And she does a reading from her book. Americans will come up to her and say, it's so funny to hear Josie Ella Brandi's accent in an Australian accent, because she's American. And Melina will say, oh, no, she's not. I promise you, she's not. The setting may change. But she that is that is an Aussie girl. I mean, that's so funny. um But yeah, and and i and I generally think we're getting away from that idea of Anywhere'sville. And I think partly what did that
00:28:11
Speaker
One of the plus sides, perhaps, but not really, of COVID and lockdowns was people did get more curious beyond their bubble. They did get more curious about other people, other countries, other lands. So I think people are a lot more willing to be taught about where somebody specifically comes from. And I think that the specific is universal. So I am somebody who will always champion and say, when you try to please everyone, you may just please nobody. And when you try to be universal, you may just lose everything that makes something wonderful and unique and your perspective so grounded. So have a go at writing it in your hometown.
00:28:49
Speaker
don't pretend that you're a New Yorker if you've never set foot in the Big Apple. yeah Just see what happens if you embrace the fact that you're from Dandenong or wherever it may be and hope that somebody from New York can read your story and say, hey, we have that in common. Even though I've never been to Dandenong and that side of the burbs, I can read this and really appreciate that we are all just human beings. You take pride in your town, I have pride in my town. That's kind of amazing. I think that's far more beautiful.
00:29:15
Speaker
Very cool. um And our final question for the non-spoiler section. um Do you have any book or author recommendations to share with our listeners?
Book Recommendations and Adaptations
00:29:24
Speaker
Yes, I actually had them ah sitting right next to me so that I wouldn't do that thing of of being stumped and saying, oh, I can't think of anything. No, so I've been reading Siobhan Plaza's middle grade book, Summer of Shipwrecks, which I think is just beautiful and gorgeous and also delves into friendship trials and tribulations. And Siobhan and I have spoken about, we should do an event together because we think that our two books together would be such a good partner read. they They're kind of similar in what they're discussing in terms of the emotional upheavals that kids go through. And then on the um adult side of things, I've got Nadi Simpson's new book, The Bellbird. Bellbird spout B-E-L-L-B-U-R-D, which is just fabulous and wonderful. I really enjoyed her song of the crocodile and this is her ah new book, so I'm really excited to begin that one. So that's what I'm doing. Very much Aussie fare.
00:30:12
Speaker
again yeah I I crave Australian fiction. Sometimes I think we all do it. Sometimes we you just end up going, gosh, I'm so sick of the Americanization in my pop culture. I just need something that's homegrown and and speaks to my soul. and And that's what I'm going through clearly at the moment. and Yeah. That's me with like oh any Leigh Ann Moriarty's adaptation. I'm like, make it Sydney. wasn't that so funny? And what was that one with Melissa McCarthy in the adaptation? That was Nine Perfect Strangers. Yes, it was written to be set in Bondi. But then they were going to film it overseas in Hawaii, but then the COVID pandemic hit and they couldn't film there. So they ended up filming it in Bondi by saying it was Hawaii.
00:30:58
Speaker
I was like, I never have a bunch of Australian actors putting on American accents. I'm like, just make it Australian. It's okay. Why don't you just cut out that middleman of pretending it's Hawaii and just as it was intended, say it's Bondi because you're telling us it's that in Hawaii, even though we as Australians go, that's help Bondi. That's very far from Hawaii. You can't even believe it. That ah that particular actor was in Home and a Away last week. What are you doing? That was so maddening to me. It was all I could focus on all that's in that TV show, even though I i really enjoyed the book and and all that sort of stuff. but All I could focus on was the Bondi, Hawaii Bondi. It was so frustrating.
00:31:36
Speaker
I couldn't get through that show, but that that will be too much of a tangent if I go, love the book, to not a fan of the show. Yeah, same, same. Agree wholeheartedly. Okay, hot takes aside. ah We will put the links to your recommendations in our show notes. Thank you for those. So listeners go and check those out. Let's dive into some spoilers and talk a little bit more about some of the individual characters in the book and what they go through as the story progresses.
00:32:05
Speaker
Just as an overarching observation, um as I was looking at sort of our questions and thinking
Mental Health Themes in Parallel Arcs
00:32:10
Speaker
about it, I did really think about how a lot of our characters have these kind of parallel ah parallels with their mental health as the book goes on, um including both adult and child characters, so different forms of anxiety,
00:32:24
Speaker
um different you know, stresses contributing towards their anxiety, of course, but also like avoidance and struggling to not talk about their problems or confront the problems and just sort of sitting with it internalizing a lot of what's going on. um So there are kind of these parallel character arts for Tash and Leo and Leo's dad and Mrs. Jefferson, the neighbor. So we do have some questions about most of those individual characters, but I just wanted to throw that out there. And I assume that was quite intentional. Yes, it was. And it is that thing of again, showing the way that adults react when they're in a bad situation, how they take themselves out of it or go very insular. And kids don't have that same luxury. And we put so much pressure on kids to behave a certain way to, you know, stay the course. But adults in their lives are going wildly off course as their kind of fight or flight response.
00:33:16
Speaker
So I found that really interesting. And there's kind of a motif in a theme throughout the book of of Bridge in that liminal space, the the kind of concrete spillway waterway. And I kind of imagined it as the two characters on opposite sides of land with a bridge between them. And they have to both kind of cross over and meet in the middle or see from each other's perspective.
00:33:35
Speaker
So that was very good, yes, parallels. And the fact that oftentimes adults will tell children to behave a certain way when they themselves are not behaving in the best possible way. That's perfect mental health and perfect response. So I kind of wanted to highlight that hypocrisy a little bit. Yes. yeah And well, one of those characters is Ms. Jefferson's who sort of starts out as a rumor, which, which is, I think also a common trope, perhaps the best way to put it. It's like that.
00:34:04
Speaker
I love the neighborhood witch group. The single woman um must be the witch. ah ah But we quickly discovered that there's more to her. Can you tell us a bit more about her character? She is someone who's had profound loss and grief. Her son died quite tragically in an accident many years ago. And she has in response to that become very insular. She's become quite agoraphobic, can't handle crowds. And her house is her safe haven. um She has her dog called Rosie, who's her closest companion. But apart from that, she's kind of blocked out the rest of the world, which is probably where the witch
00:34:41
Speaker
I think the idea of the witch for me was the distortion of history, how something that really happened gets passed down as a story to different generations and it just gets warped and manipulated. And for most of that, the warp and the manipulation will generally not favour women.
00:34:57
Speaker
their roles in those kind of ah lies, histories that get told, passed down, get the most warped and manipulated. But yeah, she's somebody who has profound grief in her life. And she has reacted by going very insular, kind of rejecting the world and relying on herself and her surrounds in her home as her only comforts. So when something happens to her, that she's kind of kicked out of her home, not by any choice of her own.
00:35:27
Speaker
it kind of puts her into a complete panic and she doesn't know how to regulate or how to deal with anything because she's allowed herself to be shut shutted away for so long um and speaking in parallels her probably her life really parallels a little bit Tasha's life who's someone else who's going very insular, unless her friend Leo can pull her out a little bit and say, you can't hide away from this, you can't put your head underneath the underneath the blanket and hope that it goes away, because probably he's seen Mr Shepperson and how she reacted, and how that was perhaps the healthiest reaction to have to grief and to loss.
00:36:05
Speaker
yeah And Tash has a cancer diagnosis and that's, which has understandably caused a lot of upheaval in her life. And that anxiety stems from all the changes, I suppose that's happened to her. Yeah. A tough year of what's going to happen to her as well, which just sounds like a parent her parents are probably not helping with that to a degree, which is understandable.
00:36:29
Speaker
So Tash as a child had cancer ah and as she's about to transition into year six, she gets a kind of scary diagnosis of we're just going to monitor this because you've got a few health concerns that we're just you know going to going to keep an eye on. But she interprets that as a kid who's already dealt with catastrophe once.
00:36:48
Speaker
as she kind of internalizes that as things are going to go wrong again. And I just want to stem it before it gets too far out of hand. I'm just going to shut myself away. And she is somebody, like I said, having given my character some of my neuroses that I had as a kid, she kind of projects and thinks, what will other people think of me? So she doesn't want to be the cancer kid again. So she wants to take herself out of that environment and just be shuttered away. And she's also becoming much more anxious thinking about how her parents will deal with it if she is sick again and worst case scenario, what if she does die this time? What if she doesn't beat cancer this time? She's just going to hurt so many people. So her response to that is, well, I'll just take myself away. I'll just take myself out of the equation, which is not a healthy response at all.
00:37:34
Speaker
But there really is you know medical trauma. There is medical PTSD. there are I've got people in my life who've been in and out of hospital or who've had awful diagnoses. And your body does kind of stop and stall and say, how do I limit and you know stop this from hurting any anymore? And one of the responses is to kind of tuck yourself away, which is not an ideal or healthy response. But as a kid especially, who's just kind of bracing for impact,
00:38:02
Speaker
that is her response is, I'm just going to pretend that this isn't happening. I'm just going to lie in bed. And she does say that she has kind of ah she's in a depressive episode. She does just want to stay in bed all day. And I can relate when you have scary health diagnoses and stuff like that part of you does think that is safety. Home is safety. I'm just going to stay here and and not think about the outside world. Not a healthier response, but I think it's a true one for kids who go through this.
00:38:29
Speaker
It's an understandable way of coping, even if it isn't a healthy coping mechanism. It's so interesting how Tash and Leo are both going through these similar internalizing journeys with what's going on for both of them individually.
00:38:46
Speaker
but then to see their friendship rekindle as the story goes on and actually gradually learning to talk about it, scream about it at times. I love those scenes, the scene under the bridge, um under the when the train is going over and then screaming and then you know when they're alone in the park and just like actually letting out what they're going through is so yeah cathartic and I think something they both really needed.
00:39:08
Speaker
Well, that's them kind of taking up space, being loud, being angry, having any kind of outward emotion that's kind of healthier than what they have been doing previously, which is going smaller and smaller and smaller, trying not to upset anyone, but that also puts you in kind of a, you know, stagnating space. So that is, I very much enjoyed writing those scenes to see them actually unleash a little bit and then it's okay to have emotion and big emotion is completely fine.
00:39:33
Speaker
Absolutely. And as the story goes on as well, we learn a little bit more about ah the factors contributing to Leo's anxiety, including his father who's been wrestling with a gambling addiction, which sort of reached its peak before the story started. Can you tell us about your approach to writing Leo's father's experiences?
00:39:54
Speaker
Well, that was another one, looking at school can't slash school refusal, which was very much ah fast-tracked because of the pandemic for a lot of kids. I was also looking at what's the equivalent for adults. However, they have had negative impacting by COVID and lockdown. And one of those was gambling. A lot of people turned to gambling as a coping mechanism. And a lot of people went really out of hand with their online gambling, the gambling addictions in particular. We were so much more on devices. And as soon as I started thinking this, I did think, yeah,
00:40:22
Speaker
I was getting a lot of gambling ads during COVID and lockdowns and you know your device becomes kind of toxic ah because the algorithm is designed to hook you and and we have terrible gaming, gambling rules and regulations in this country and the government seems less and less inclined to to pull them into line. So I did think, wow, that is another way that people could have gone wildly off kilter during a time when everything was very influx, you didn't have grounded ways to cope with these things. So that's what happened to Leo's dad. And he got the family into quite a lot of financial trouble, which then triggers a need for him to go interstate to get a job in the mines, both to get more more money. But as a very typical adult reaction of I've done a bad thing, I'm just going to leave.
00:41:10
Speaker
I don't want to ah don't want to live in the fallout of my mistakes. That's really hard to confront them on a daily basis. So I'm going to hit two birds with one stone, go into state and get away from my mess and a lot of the shame that he feels about it. And I'm going to go into state and make some money to recoup the funds that I've lost and the hole that I put my family into. So that is a classic thing of an adult can leave a situation that's causing them shame and discomfort, maybe for the best reasons, but also for the worst reasons.
00:41:40
Speaker
yeah So that's what I wanted to kind of explore with Leo's dad. And as a result of this, it means Leo's family life is very much in flux. He doesn't know if it's going to recalibrate, if it's going to go back to normal. And then the transition into high school is another thing that's very different. And another part of losing a friend, he he already lost Tash as a child for reasons unbeknownst to him. But the transition to high school is seeing him lose more friends and be even more discombobulated when his dad's not there as well. So his response kind of similar to Tash is I just want everything to stay the same, so I'm just going to stay still. I don't want to participate. ah ah And the school environment that he's transitioning into isn't great for him. It's not ideal for his learning environment. So he's just going to stop. I'm just going to stand still. His dad has reacted by going far away. But Leo's response is, I don't want any more change. Everyone just stop. Just do frozen statues. Stay the exact same, please.
00:42:36
Speaker
And as soon as people don't react that way, he starts to go a bit off-kilter as well. You know, once they don't react the way that is accommodating to how he wants everyone to behave to sort of soothe him, that's when he goes wildly off-kilter as well. And of course, important to note that it's not, I suppose, a choice that he makes explicitly though, is it? like No. One of the things that really struck me as I was reading is how Leo sort of understands a lot of the things that are contributing towards his anxiety, but it's not to the degree where he sort of is able to reflect on like
00:43:10
Speaker
this happened to me, therefore I'm experiencing disbelief and therefore I'm anxious and therefore I'm having a panic attack on the water side. you know it's It's more just like this general unease and sense that everything's changing around me and I can't cope and just shutting down as a result. Very much so. It handled quite well considering Leo's age in the story. He's not going to have that insight to sort of go into more of that you know psychology framework that I'm looking at when I'm reading the book.
00:43:37
Speaker
and And I feel like in talking about school can't and and kids who don't want to attend school, I feel like they get very typecast as being a particular type of kid. But Leo was arguably a really good student, he's really smart, whatever you want to qualify and quantify smart as. And he's able to articulate, hey, I do have to go to school, but I just can't do it. So he's he it's it's kind of like being like I said, a statue, you can see everything moving around you, you can um verbalize, you can have, you can be so clever about this stuff, but you still can't make the body do it. So I sometimes sometimes call this, you know, the soul is willing, but the body's not able, um which
00:44:14
Speaker
you know that's something that my mum says a lot because she has arthritis and there are some days where she just can't do all the physical stuff that she would love to do. Go out and go for a walk because she's just too sore and it's that thing of logically out and saying I'd like to do this but I physically can't and that's kind of similar to Leo. His emotions kind of stopping him and his anxiety is physically stopping him from being able to participate in life and school the way that he wants to and the way he knows he needs to. But you can be the most emotionally intelligent person and still the body sometimes just won't do it. Sometimes that fight or flight will kick in without your full contribution in your brain and that's completely okay as well. Lots of people have that response. You're not you're not strange, you're not weird, you're not a freak. Lots of people have this response as well.
00:44:57
Speaker
And I think we call it the third option now, it's fight or flight or freeze. You just, as you say, you're a frozen statue and you know what you have to do, but you just can't do it. Yeah. And everyone can tell you, you've got to go to school, but you physically, your body can also react as it does for Leo, who sometimes is physically ill at the thought of having to attend and just the sort of all the mechanisms having to get to school, the train he's got to take, the tram he's got to catch, the being in a school situation where nobody talks to him, nobody can even pronounce his surname, he's got a Polish surname and nobody pronounces it right and all the teachers are pushing him to participate in sports.
00:45:34
Speaker
And that's another thing when he starts to sort of rack up all the mechanisms and all the steps he's got to go through. And then thinking about that makes him freeze even more. You know, oh i I just, and it, and it makes you panic even more. And it and it is kind of like a a neurotypical response of I just can't unstutter this. I can't get past this. It's like a locking mechanism. Hmm.
00:45:56
Speaker
Oh Leo, I really felt for him when he had that moment where he was like, is it me? That's so easy to leave? And I was like, oh no. Yeah, because that this is something that he's trying to find patterns. Again, he's a really logical smart. He's trying to find the pattern. And one of the few things that he can connect is, am I the thing that that pushes people away? Tash didn't want to be my friend when we were kids. My dad's left. um Friends that he made in primary school are reaching out to him now that he's in a different high school. And he starts to really think, it's me, it's me, it's me, it's me, which also racks up his anxiety and also has a physical effect on his emotions as well.
Impact of Loss and Storytelling's Role
00:46:33
Speaker
um And again, i I feel like I probably gave him my anxieties as a kid. That thing of assuming that you've done something wrong or it's up to you to fix it. And of course you can't, it's an impossible, there's no easy fix. So the more that you start thinking, I can't fix this, why can't I fix this? What's wrong with me? And it becomes a spiral and a spiral and a spiral and very, very scary. And it is good to say of course that all of these characters do manage to reverse those spirals at at least to it to a degree as the book goes on. um yeah But unfortunately one character whose fate is not so good in the book is poor Rosie, the the staffy hybrid. I think I messaged you Priscilla after I got to the fire scene and said, oh, thank God Rosie's okay. And then the next day I'm like, Rosie's not okay.
00:47:24
Speaker
um So we have to talk about the poor dog. What led you to making the decision about Rosie's fate? i'm goingnna I'll hold up for you who I envisioned Rosie was. It's not an exact, but this is ah my dog Murray, who's still with us. ah But this is my aunt and uncle's dog Bella, who was not with us.
00:47:47
Speaker
And I was with her when she passed away. My aunt and uncle were overseas and I was minding Bella. And I swear she was my heart dog. She just could not get closer to me if she tried. There was one time when my aunt and uncle left their garage door open and she walked to my house.
00:48:02
Speaker
just from memory. ah She was just the best dog ever and she was with me when she passed. She had blood clots in her brain and I had to rush her to the hospital, ah the veterinary hospital and we had to put her down. So it was all on me. I was there with her in the end, which I think is the way that it weirdly works out when that's like the dog of your heart. So i I had experienced pet loss and I was honestly thinking, I wish I had something to help me cope with this. Like I'd never um I never really, I was someone who would avoid these kind of stories in film and television. ah But I've sort of once it happened, I was like, I wish I actually had a story that had prepared me a little bit for it. So it was me kind of doing that a little bit of resilience, unfortunately, for my readers, in the hopes that this will help.
00:48:48
Speaker
But it is that thing of I genuinely think Rosie in the story is the true hero. She is the kind of perfect character. um And it's people who are more fallible around her that kind of let her down. But really, the the main reason I wrote it was because I lost a dog and it really hurt. And I kind of wish that I had prepared myself mentally, emotionally via that kind of practice of empathy and story, which I think is what I try to give to a lot of kids. I tend to write sad stories to a degree. So in the year the map changed, there was infant loss, um ah siblings who've who've who don't get to bring their third sibling home. And the number of kids I've had who asked me, why did you write that?
00:49:32
Speaker
and they're really sad and I say it's okay to be sad and I can kind of see them have like a load off of oh it's a good thing that that made me feel. It's ah it's not a bad thing that I was really invested in that story and that it really affected me. That's a good that's what stories can do for us and then the number of kids I've also had have come up to me afterwards when I'm signing their book and they've said I gave this book to my mum to read because we experienced that as a family And it kind of helped them talk about it as a family, you know, through a book. So I was like, well, that's a good practice. That's what empathy does as well. So I was kind of taking it as I think I'll always write these kind of big things in my books. And, you know, arguably in the monster of her age, there's a grandparent character who portrays a kid and they have to articulate that they forgive them, but they're not going to forget. And that forgiveness is multi-layed and it's not a game slate necessarily. It's not an I'm going to forget that you did this, you know, so I do.
00:50:27
Speaker
touch on complex issues, don't have exact binaries. But I think my ultimate goal at the end is to make you feel something and to ultimately make you feel empathy. And it's that little practice of if it happens in fiction, you can remember this feeling and carry it with you into the real world. Maybe it will help you a little bit.
00:50:45
Speaker
Yeah, speaks to the power of stories. Yes, precisely. And um because I just think back to all the books I read growing up, that was that, you know, that we're Charlotte's Web, The Velveteen Rabbit, British Eteribithia, I read these books, and they totally imprinted on my heart. And I didn't read them all in one particular year. That was just at a really impressionable age. It was scattered throughout primary school and high school, but they just stuck with me because it was that heart song, that heart imprint of This Matters. and it's the realisation that, oh my gosh, stories do matter. This can feel real to me. These characters mattered to me. And once you've had that realisation and you kind of go, oh, this is very human, that's uncomfortable, but it's not a bad thing at all, I don't think. So I think I'll always write slightly sad stories because I think it's a beautiful thing to be hurt by them.
00:51:40
Speaker
is it's fiction and it shouldn't hurt you, but it does. And the reason it does is because we're human and we are moved by stories.
Concluding Remarks and Relationships
00:51:47
Speaker
And I always say art changes people and people change the world. So I kind of think that having more empathy in the world is not a bad thing. And I think that's what these kinds of sad stories bring out in people, I hope a little bit more. Yeah. Well, I think that's a really beautiful note to end our interview on. i think Thank you so much for having me. I'm such a huge fan of the podcast. And like I said, this is a very good parasocial relationship now, being fully realised, coming full circle. It's gone beyond parasocial, so there you go.
00:52:18
Speaker
And that wraps up our interview. As usual, our detailed show notes are available on novelfeelings.com, including Danielle's social media handles and book recommendations. Six Summers of Tasha Meepold is out now. Please go and pick it up at your local bookshop. Thank you so much for listening today. If you like us, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find us online on Instagram, YouTube and the Storygraph through novel underscore feelings. If we have entertained you or taught you something, please consider buying us a coffee to show your thanks. Link in the show notes. All proceeds go towards making the show stronger and more sustainable. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to Danielle for joining us today. All right, see you next time. Bye.
00:53:04
Speaker
Our podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri Land, which is home to both of us in Naam, Melbourne. We also acknowledge the role of storytelling in First Nations communities. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.