An Australian in the ranks

I am Peter Macinnis, and to save you delving into the profile, I write mainly about science or history, though there are no promises there. Basically, I write about whatever happens to be my temporary obsession. I live on Sydney's northern beaches, we have three grown children (one of them still at home), and we travel quite a bit: around the world, across Australia, or just disappearing into the local bush to photograph the wild life. (My wife of 43 years and I are both biologists by training.)

Including textbooks (where I started) I have something over 40 titles to my name. This level of productivity is assisted by having the right sort of family and paper-work to show that I am retired. The Australian Tax Office accepts it when I spend all my income from writing on work-related travel. I also do a certain amount of radio and magazine work.

While I think of myself as a general/adult market writer, my books for younger readers win prizes, and in spite of Martin Amis, I happen to think that writing for the young is both more challenging and more socially useful.

Right now, I am in the midst of a new project: a set of YA historical fiction which starts in Cornwall and moves to Australia. My aim is to offer meticulously correct historical insights, so as to educate by stealth, and I will be backing this up with a web site so the curious can hunt down chapter and verse on things like old lags smoking clay pipes with a death mask of Jack Donahoo on them. Or teenagers going out with most explorers' parties.

This sort of thing is a trap for young players, because it's all too easy to lapse into po-faced didactic horrorism (that's like terrorism only more horrible). If I can find somebody to chew the fat with about that, well, I'd be happy, but otherwise, I'll just sit and chat.

Hi Peter,

Welcome to the forum! Your writing sounds interesting and very much in line with my approach to writng for children.

Hello, Peter. I also have been thinking of having a website, companion book and/or endnotes for the novel I'm writing since it will also refer to much that some are not familiar with. Are you thinking of setting up your site so it is similar to endnotes/footnotes in an academic article, making it interactive or a little bit of both?

Interactive end notes. I have one already online as a testbed that is not listed anywhere on the web that spiders can find, and I want to keep it that way. This is for a book coming out in October through the National Library of Australia, and they aren't sure they want me to do this.

If you Google "Early print instances of Australian language" you will fall on an example of the way it would operate, with columns headed page, section, quotation and source, where the last is generally a hyperlink.

I use spreadsheets to generate tables like this, because they are far easier to edit, but as a result, my web pages reveal that design is neither my forte nor my priority.

If you want to see the testbed, contact me off the list and I will send you the URL: I rather suspect that as a new member, I couldn't post a link here, even if I wished, and I definitely don't wish! I'm willing to share, but not to publish.

Welcome - I really like the idea of your book.

People here can tell you I have a thing for Aussies, one or two in particular:


Ann

Check my mugshot--I'm not in the same league as those two young whippersnappers :-)

It's going to be interesting: I have 250,000 words of first draft, 55,000 of that now dragged into second draft, miles of notes, plot lines and more, and either four BIG books or between 6 and 8 smaller ones.

I actually found this forum when I was running a check on word counts on a few best-selling YA series. My mind is wrapped around two formats: the 2000-word article/essay/talk and the 55,000-word paperback, but it seems I should not worry too much about size if the yarns are good and the writing flows.

Check my age - it's listed under my avatar. I' not in their league either
But when one is writing a work of historical/romantic/western/fantasy fiction, it's good to have few sources for developing heroic characters.

I am really serious about your concepts. Looking forward to hearing more.

Ann

Hey, we're a match--I'm a 1944 baby as well! And I have been in your town, just over a year ago. We stopped there overnight before heading up to Burnet (with a stop-off at the Marble Falls Walmart as an education for my wife, Chris). I belong to a gang known informally as the Axe-Murderers' Dating Society (it was coined by a member's child, but we don't date, and we only rarely murder an axe, and even then, only if the axe really asked for it). Anyhow, we AMDS people met on an emu farm outside of Burnet for several days of hilarity before hitting Boston, Morocco, Barcelona, Bilbao and the Camino.

My age doesn't seem to show: this may be because I only gave a year. (addendum: it does now, because I fixed it.)

I will say more of the Cornish Boy in due course, but today I have to write a radio talk that will help plug the next serious (Big People) book.

Wow, you were right in the area where my books are set. In one of the last chapters, Daniel takes a herd of longhorns to market. They cross the Llano River near Marble Falls, and spend the next night near Burnet. It would have looked a lot different in 1867, though. There was no dam at that time, and there really was a falls - only it's now at the bottom of the lake, I think.

The Enchanted Rock that I mention all through the books - you can see part of it in the cover pic for the book in my signature, is supposed to be a "sister rock" to Uluru, according to the sources I've read. Uluru is several times larger, of course.

That trip must have been some walkabout.

Ann

The question of belonging to a place is one of those slightly mystical concepts that seems to be real. The folk out at Uluru (and thanks for not using the offensive whitefella name) definitely have a sense of belonging that is only now starting to impinge on white consciousness.

That is probably because we also have a sense of belonging. I'm a practical scientist with a mind like that of an engineer, and while I have a master's in psychometrics, most anything else that starts with psych- tends to make me shy away. Yet the fact remains that people DO have a sense of place and belonging, and this is one of the minor underlying themes that I will explore in Cornish Boy.

It comes from small things like knowing that I'm still trying to define. Christmas is hot, you carry plenty of water, certain birds tell you where water is, certain types of tree provide good firewood, that scorpions circle a campfire. That's a part of it, but the feel of a particular wind on the face is in there as well. It's a puzzle.

I haven't yet decided how far it will emerge. In time, I guess, the characters will tell me.

It's going to be an interesting ride.

BTW, I haven't yet been to Uluru. I have worked the arid zones to the south of it, on foot, by camel and by vehicle, but the Cornish Boy won't be penetrating that deeply, not in his time. The only white man who claimed to have been there before the 1860s was a con man called Calvert. He's in another book, because he also claimed to have discovered lots of gold--I have even found somebody who denounced him in his early 20s as a Munchausen.

Hello Peter. Welcome to this forum. I like what I read about you from your posts. I think there's a little bit of you in many of us.

Good morning Abe. And of you in me, I suspect. Don't call me Peter, call me Pizza, perhaps?

Welcome, Peter!

I'll second what Abe said and look forward to reading your posts.

Victor