Waurn Ponds teacher Belinda Lyons-Lee is set to launch her debut novel Tussaud today, after a dozen drafts and 15 years of writing “seriously”.
She speaks to Luke Voogt about journeying into the depths of history to find the “incredible” Marie Tussaud, and how volunteering as a teen influenced her writing.
Publishing a debut novel has been a “long journey” for Waurn Ponds teacher of 20 years Belinda Lyons-Lee.
“As I grew up, I tinkered around with little poems and short stories,” she recounted, ahead of releasing her historical thriller Tussaud today.
“But about 15 years ago I thought, ‘I’m going to take this seriously and give it a red hot go’.”
During that time Lyons-Lee published short stories and articles on teaching, creativity and mental health in various metro newspapers and magazines.
“When I see things happening, an issue or read about someone’s experience, and I feel strongly enough about it, I often sit down to write to try and make sense of it.”
She also wrote a middle grade time travelling series that she came close to publishing as a young adult novel instead.
“But this has been the breakthrough,” she said of her new novel Tussaud.
While the worldwide business Madame Tussauds is universally-known, Lyons-Lee describes Marie Tussaud’s life story – which she discovered almost by accident – as a “hidden gem”.
“I came into it sideways because I was toying with another idea for a middle grade novel, set in 19th Century London, about a 12-year-boy who was an apprentice to a wax sculptor,” she said.
As she “jumped on the computer” to research for historical accuracy, “up came Madame Tussaud”.
“And then invariably I just got tied up in her life,” she said.
“I remember reading about her being in the French Revolution, and having displays of aristocracy and royalty in her windows.
“She was an artist. She didn’t take them down … and that was the basis for her being branded a royalist and arrested.
“When I began to pull out more details of her life, the middle grade novel was kicked to the kerb, effectively, and away we went with her.”
After escaping the guillotine Tussaud made death masks of the revolution’s famous victims, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, according to her memoirs.
“What an incredible woman,” Lyons-Lee said.
“I imagine having such an extreme prolonged experience of fear – as she was [imprisoned] with her head shaved ready for execution – that makes a huge indentation on your inner life.
“By reading about that experience, that’s what I wanted to explore – what would it do to a woman?
“How do you recover from that? How do you make sense of that? And how do you go on in a time when people weren’t talking about [mental health]?
“Not only did she live through that but she used her creativity as a way to survive.
“She used what had happened to her to build a thriving business that’s still happening today, and in a male-dominated society when women just had no currency at all.”
Delving deeper, Lyons-Lee discovered Tussaud’s partnership with “dubious” characters: a German stage magician and a British duke.
“That drew me in even further,” she said.
Lyons-Lee’s psychological thriller follows the story of the duke commissioning Tussaud to create a wax automaton in the likeness of a girl who mysteriously disappeared from the estate when he was a child.
Tussaud must fight for survival in a world dominated by male advantage and power, and in an estate full of locked doors and secrets, where no-one is who they seem
The novel delves into the 19th Century obsession with spirituality and life beyond death, and blurs the line between history and fiction, with a “historically-accurate scaffolding”, according to Lyons-Lee.
“I like stories with a little bit of bite,” she said.
“I’m very interested in the psychology of crime and [human behaviour], so it’s only natural that I explore them in my work.”
The novel reflects her own obsession with 19th Century history and Baker Street’s other famous, albeit fictional, resident Sherlock Holmes – the result of “being a copious reader” her entire life.
“I’ve always read obsessively since I was a little girl,” she said.
Trips to the library after school with mum Wendy were a highlight, she said.
“Like a lot of bookish kids – that I see teaching at my own school – I turned to books as a companion, as way to try to understand [myself], to try to understand the world around [me], to escape, to be entertained – all those marvellous things that reading does for you.”
At age 17 she began volunteering on Friday nights at ‘The Outpost’ in Little Malop Street mall, providing food and drinks to people struggling with homelessness and addiction.
“I was exposed to some harsh brutalities at a young age,” she said.
“I was really sensitive and had a strong sense that there were people hurting in my town.
“I loved [volunteering there] – the people that I built relationships with – I really loved that.”
Seeing firsthand the fear, isolation and misunderstanding these people faced would later help her imagine Tussaud fighting for survival, she said.
“I very quickly got attuned to who I felt comfortable being around and talking to, and seeing volatile situations happen in the mall.
“I was exposed to a variety of people with all sorts of things going on in their lives.
“And yeah, sometimes their behaviours are messy and ugly and unsafe and frightening.
“But everyone comes with a backstory. There’s a humility that comes with realising I don’t know the backstory.”
She remembered connecting with a “very well educated and interesting gentleman in his 60s or 70s” and inviting him to her family’s Christmas dinner one year.
“There was also a young man who had a raging heroin addiction, who was just such a soft-hearted soul and yet was tightly in the grip of an addiction that literally saw him wasting away,” she remembered.
“These experiences of pain and suffering, loneliness – or happiness – transcend social class and time, which is why I can bring my 19th Century characters to life.”
After completing a degree in social work, she decided her “love of literature was something I could communicate to help” teenagers, and completed a teaching degree.
Almost two decades later, in early 2018, Lyons-Lee submitted her first three chapters of Tussaud – in her fifth draft – for a nationwide initiative called Hard Copy.
She was one of 30 writers initially selected, which were whittled down into a shortlist throughout the year.
The initiative culminated in the shortlisted authors meeting agents and publishers in a weekend featuring sometimes “brutal” critique, Lyons-Lee said.
“Because I have been writing for so long, and have had so many rejections – countless rejections – I think I’ve become better able to process critique on my work,” she said.
“Sometimes I’ve just thought am I just writing this for my mother or my husband. Why am I doing this? Am I any good?”
But she had become better able to differentiate between “criticism of the product” and “criticism of the person”, she explained.
“Which can be hard when the product has so much of you in it,” she admitted.
She met representatives from publisher Transit Lounge during that weekend and in late 2018 received an email at 9pm saying that they wanted to print her book.
“I was so excited, I jumped in the car and belted down to Indented Head, where mum and dad live,” she said.
“I wanted to share it with them.”
After a dozen drafts and several hundred hours of writing, mostly at Gusto Highton, Lyons-Lee is set to officially release Tussaud today.
And the novel might just inspire some of her students to chase their dreams of becoming an author too.
The year 9 English teacher describes herself as lucky to have many students at her current school, Geelong Lutheran College, who are eager to learn and be challenged.
She hopes to teach them skills to “tell their own story” in memoirs, science fiction or whatever style interests them.
“Then they can use writing to potentially make sense of themselves, their world and what’s happening around them,” she said.
Details: blyonslee.com
