Darry Fraser is the bestselling author of Daughter of the Murray, Where the Murray River Runs, and The Widow of Ballarat. We first met Darry on the podcast, here, where we talked about the research and writing of The Daughter of the Murray, and here, last Christmas, as part of our Summer Reading Series.
This week we talk about the discipline of being a writer, about learning to be present while you’re writing and how finding your own style is critical to building a successful author career.
You can learn more about Darry and her books here.
Mel: Welcome to a very special Christmas episode of Writer on the Road. I have with me today one of my favorite writers who's been with me since the beginning. I'd like to welcome Darry Fraser.
Darry: Thanks for having me once again.
Mel: We first met with Darry's first novel, Daughter of the Murray. Then there's Where the Murray River Runs and now we're celebrating the Widow of Ballarat.
Darry: Thank you. It was a wonderful experience to be writing this particular book so I'm hoping that it will do.
Mel: Dhari has a reputation of one of being very shy and retiring but the fact is your book are doing not only really really well and are some of the best sellers here in Australia at the moment.
Darry: It's wonderful news. I actually don't have a sense of how they're doing out there. I'm very grateful that people are happy for me and reading my books and contacting me about them. And as long as I'm doing what I love to do and somebody else is loving to raise them I'm more than happy.
Mel: There's another lady we have on the podcast, the beautiful Tea Cooper. She's doing very well as well.
Darry: Yes, we have very very different styles of course and very different interests in our history in the sense that she seems to focus on a happiness at a time where we might have dual timelines. She a very easy style. It's quite interesting to look at another historical fiction set in this time.
Mel: I don't think I'm giving any secrets out here that you live on the beautiful Kangaroo Island but your books are set on the Murray River. You're in a great part of the world for Australian history aren't you.
Darry: That's correct. People have asked why I don't focus on my own area a little bit more. I'll leave that to other people. There are a lot of events to draw upon here but the things that interest me about that time are relationships between people and clearly the things that affected people are the same as now, relationships between people and how events affect them such as in the bigger pilot Ballarat and the director so have been them have been the sort of thing that drives my story so I guess that's not unlike other wars is that you tend to stick yourself in the moment.
Mel: Clare Wright wrote the women of the goldfields story and she's moved on to the suffragettes in Your Daughters of Freedom, But to have these stories come alive for the rest of us and give us very strong heroines are with real problems too are must be must.
Darry: I've been glad to be able to do what does but with fiction. I think we both have books out about that particular era, in Ballarat and women on the goldfields. I think we tend to let it all slip by us that women put up with all this stuff because they had to not because they wanted to. A lot of them didn't know any...
