Welcome to my tour stop for Striking Out by Scarlet Bennett! The tour runs August 17 - September 11 with reviews, interviews, guest posts, excerpts and giveaways. Striking Out is an adult Australian contemporary. The dialogue and and characterizations are distinctly Australian. Check out the tour page for more information.
About the Book:
Sparkling with distinctive Australian humour, this action-packed novel follows one small-town girl’s fight to reach the top.
Sharon Jackson is a small-town girl with big-city dreams. Forced out of her home in regional Western Australia with her singing career in ruins, she hits the big smoke in search of stardom. After signing with a sleazy agent who wants more than a ten percent cut of her earnings, she struggles to earn a place in the macho world of rock-‘n-roll, encountering a series of colourful characters along the way – like Todd, the sexy, brooding muso with a dragon tattoo and Kevin, the whip-smart fighter with some hidden demons of his own.But when her troubled past follows her to the city, Shazza’s dreams begin to unravel. With no home to go back to and a past that won’t stay buried, everything she has worked for is on the line. Shazza must make a decision that will define the course of her future, and time is running out.
About the Author:
Scarlet Bennett spent her formative years in regional Western Australia, and it shows. Years of city living have softened her broad accent, but the slang she’s stuck with. After earning a Masters degree in Psychology, the colourful characters of her childhood – and that irrepressible Aussie spirit – found their way onto the page. She is a graduate of Allaboutwriting’s mentoring program, and lives in Canberra with her husband, kids, and far more animals than can reasonably fit on a suburban plot.
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***Author Interview***
Do you have any
advice for other writers?
Write! Seriously. There’s no substitute for sitting down in front
of a blank page and doing the hard yards. Be the person who does it, rather
than the person who talks or dreams about it.
Be kind to yourself. No one’s first draft is a masterpiece (well,
maybe someone’s might be, but certainly no one I know!). Just
keep going with your writing, even if you think what you’ve written is flawed.
You’ll fix the flaws when you redraft, so keep moving. New ideas might arise as
you progress with your work that would require a different ‘fix’ than the one
you might choose early, in any case.
Find your own style. Some people plot everything out in advance.
Others make things up as they go along. And plenty of people sit somewhere in
the middle. There are pros and cons to every approach, so don’t let anyone tell
you there’s only one right way. The right way is the way that works for you.
Finally, write what you’d like to read, not what you think might
sell or impress. That way the process will be intrinsically rewarding, and that
makes all the difference when the going gets tough – and the going always gets
tough somewhere on the journey.
What was the
hardest part of writing your book?
The hardest part for me is always the redrafting process. I have
more ideas than time, and I get real pleasure from sitting down in front of a
blank page when I’m writing the first draft. It gives me an opportunity to play
with some of the ideas I’ve been entertaining in my head, and I enjoy that
process more than I can say. I particularly love it when I’m surprised by what
shows up.
I find the redrafting process more tedious. There are a few key
reasons for this. Firstly, by some quirk of fate (rather than some virtue I’m
claiming credit for), I have a very good memory. This means that I quickly
memorise the flow of words and that makes it hard for me to see new
opportunities and improvements once I have a specific sequence in my head. I
also enjoy big picture thinking much more than detail, so scrabbling around in
the minutiae is never the fun part for me. The final challenge for me is that
I’m easily bored. I like playing with new ideas, not tinkering endlessly with
old ones that don’t seem as shiny anymore. I remind myself that my job is to
maximise the shine for my readers, and that motivates me – until I start
thinking about chocolate, and then I find myself all too easily distracted. I
always gain weight when I’m revising!
Do you have a
specific writing style?
I do have a specific writing style, but the guidelines I follow
aren’t easy to explain. I don’t enjoy pretentious writing. It gets between me
and the story, and I’m not interested in reading a book just so someone can
admire themselves in the mirror and say ‘look how clever I am’. So one of my
key rules is to make my style as invisible as possible. My writing is a vehicle
for the story and I try to keep myself as far out of the way as I can. That
means using the right words rather than the most impressive words I know. It
means making sure that particular words don’t jump out, because they’re not
quite right for some reason. It means ensuring that the flow of words is smooth
and fluent so the reader is not pulled out of the story by a clumsy rhythm. I
try to wear a cloak of invisibility, and if people say my novel is an ‘easy
read’ (as a number of reviewers have), then I feel I’ve done my job.
While you were
writing, did you ever feel as if you were one of the characters?
No. And that’s a good thing. There were some unsavoury types in
Striking Out! I did feel, though, as if my characters were real people. For me,
they have to be alive in my head before I can do them justice on the page. I
need to know what they look like, how they talk, how they move, how they think,
what they wear. This is not so I can describe them to my readers, although it
certainly helps with that, but because I only know what they’re going to do and
say next once I can actually see them in my head. Scenes run through my mind
like movies, and when I’m not sure what should happen next, I close my eyes and
run the scene from the start. Once a mental movie is rolling, the flow is
usually smooth and easy. Funnily enough, once the movie has revealed the answer,
there’s a strange sense of inevitability about it – ‘of course, that’s what
should happen!’ Why didn’t I think of that?
Is there a
message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I like to draw my own messages from novels
– which may or may not be the ones the author intended – and I assume my
readers like to do the same, so I never write with an agenda. I’m happy for
people to take what they want from my work, and grateful that they’ve taken the
time to do so. Having said that, there’s enough darkness in the world without
me adding to it, so I try not to depress anybody. Life can be incredibly hard
at times. I like books that offer some respite.
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GIVEAWAY:
10 sets of earrings handmade by the author (INT)
Ends September 2nd
Prizing provided by the author, hosts are in no way responsible.
All earrings are made with sterling silver and semi-precious gemstones. The gemstones included are turquoise, rose quartz, red agate, freshwater pearls and amethyst.
This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions
I would love to check out this book with the Australian humour. I always love humor, even if you life is in shambles.
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