A Distant Prospect – ISBN 9780987435101

Yearly Archives: 2015

A Distant Prospect paperback edition — AUTHOR OFFER: $20 per copy for signed and personally dedicated copies of A Distant Prospect, plus $10 postage for any quantity, within Australia only. If you don’t need my autograph, you can check the Booko live price checker for your best local price including postage, at https://booko.com.au/9780987435101/A-Distant-Prospect $10 postage for as many […]

SPECIAL OFFER: Signed copies $20 each plus postage

December 13, 2015 in Promotion by francis

http://eu.steinway.com/en/news-events/press-releases/steinway-sons-600000th-piano-fibonacci/ — Mathematics crops up throughout A Distant Prospect as one of the intellectual avenues which Lucy employs to make sense of life in a world that is not always as one would wish. Fibonacci numbers and leg calipers were Lucy’s first impressions on her bemused classmates at St Dominics in February […]

Lucy, Fibonacci and the Golden Mean

November 7, 2015 in Lucy Straughan / Mathematics by francis

dolphin salt shaker — Dr Annette Young delivered a version of this text as a dinner speech for the Association of Australian Women Graduates at The Newcastle Club on 26 August 2015. In the course of writing fiction, there comes a point when your story metamorphoses from being simply a story to being a […]

Inspired by motherhood: life, literature, and plastic dolphins

October 17, 2015 in Annette / Events / Motherhood / Writing by annette

Preliminary character diagram for volume 3. France. — Here’s a preliminary diagram of my characters for volume 3. I wonder where they will take me? Vienna is mostly done, now for France. Click the picture for a closer look, and sign up to my email list for updates as the sequel gets closer.

Sketching my characters for the sequel – France

September 29, 2015 in Annette / Characters / Sequel / Writing by francis

Here are ten favourite books which I always carry around in my mind, and which collectively helped me to write the story arc, the themes, the characters, the settings, and to manage the narrative voice of A Distant Prospect. I wrote the first draft of my book while doing my […]

10 books that helped me to write A Distant Prospect

July 6, 2015 in Annette / Research / Study Guide / Writing by annette

A new, one-minute book trailer captures the poignancy and beauty of Lucy’s story, with visuals of Galway and 1920s Sydney. Borodin’s beautiful Nocturne, third movement from his String Quartet No. 2 in D major, sets the mood. Paired in a program with Haydn’s “Fifths” quartet, this music features in the key climax […]

Irish-English Book Trailer for A Distant Prospect

July 3, 2015 in Book production / Borodin / Galway / Reviews / Video by francis

Diverse examples of a mother’s love play an important role in A Distant Prospect. Della Sotheby’s socialite mother seems to say some clumsy or unfeeling things, but we discover another side of her in the unselfish choices she made for her children during the war, and all of her inner […]

Mothers and daughters in A Distant Prospect

May 31, 2015 in Characters / Motherhood / Mrs Epstein by francis

Annette is delighted that Denver-based Sonlight Curriculum, which is celebrating its 25th year in 2015, has selected A Distant Prospect as one of its Summer Reader choices. She is especially pleased by the way in which Jonelle brings out the carefully woven inter-generational themes in her video review below. Thank […]

“A book my Mom and I couldn’t put down.” – ...

May 30, 2015 in Reviews / Suffering / Video by francis

A Distant Prospect is “a rare find in a sea of mediocre modern novels” according to Jacinta Woodnutt, writing at Restless Press. “I couldn’t put it down for days,” she writes, echoing the most common sentiment expressed in reader reviews. A Distant Prospect “conveys truth, goodness and beauty; but it […]

A rare find in a sea of mediocre modern novels

April 27, 2015 in Reviews by francis

Sonlight's 20th Century Literature sub-package 330 — Character, culture, plot, emotion, language. Only two or three books per hundred meet all of these tough criteria! If you ever need to choose truly memorable fiction books, whether for yourself, your children, or your school, you could do worse than add these seven benchmarks to your arsenal. Sarita Holzmann, […]

The Seven Pillars of Great Fiction, or how to choose ...

April 25, 2015 in Reviews / Writing by francis

Lest We Forget — What are the origins of the Dawn Service tradition, and why does it matter? Few were left unscathed by the Great War. We still witness many of its lasting impacts in the 1928 Sydney setting of A Distant Prospect. Indeed, the very first Dawn Service was quietly held in Sydney in […]

Anzac Day Dawn Service – Lest We Forget

April 23, 2015 in War by francis

Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) — Roderick Raye is arguably the key character in A Distant Prospect, and to quite a few readers, the most beloved. Having established himself as a violinist in the Viennese music scene before the outbreak of the Great War, Phoebe Raye’s father had returned to Ballarat and subsequently enlisted in the […]

Roderick John Raye Trooper 13th Lighthorse

April 21, 2015 in Phoebe Raye / Roderick Raye / War by francis

Calling all teachers! Annette is preparing a Teacher’s Study Guide for A Distant Prospect, and will soon be seeking some volunteers who have read the book, to take a look and offer their suggestions. Of course, A Distant Prospect is wonderful to simply read as an engaging and uplifting story […]

Study Guide for A Distant Prospect – testers needed!

April 16, 2015 in Annette / Book production / Study Guide / Writing by francis

Researching pre-Anschluss Vienna for her dramatic sequel, Annette saw something puzzling – the trams seemed to change from left to right in the same streets. How could this be? Today Vienna has about 200 km of tramways. At its peak in 1930 there were an astounding 318 km of tram […]

The day Hitler reversed Vienna’s trams

March 21, 2015 in Railways / Research / Vienna by francis

Time for a shelfie — Four notebooks full, writes Annette, and her loyal fans rejoice! A few insights into the writing process as the sequel to A Distant Prospect comes together. Lots of reading, lots of sketching, lots of typing. And, finally, here’s a “shelfie” with some of Annette’s latest research reads, focussing on Vienna […]

Here’s how Annette writes a sequel ….

January 17, 2015 in Annette / Sequel / Writing by francis