Fiona Lowe took up writing following the birth of her first child. She speaks with Ash Bolt about her writing journey and her new book, A Family of Strangers.
Escape.
That was the idea behind Geelong bestselling author Fiona Lowe’s latest book, A Family of Strangers.
Released on Wednesday, the novel tells the stories of three women living in a small Tasmanian town whose lives intersect through a community choir.
“I always start a book with an idea and the one word I wrote on my whiteboard for this book as a start was escape,” Fiona said.
“And so it’s written from the point of view of three women, who in very different ways, are all trying to escape from their lives.
“I’ve always been fascinated by people who go on holiday and they have an amazing time and they are relaxed and then they go, ‘you know what, we should move here’.
“That’s not real life, but they do pack up their life and they move.
“So Steph and Henry decide that they’re going to relocate their life from Melbourne to this tiny little town and … it’ll be great, but they turn up and it’s not like they expected.
“I wrote this from the point of view of the mental load that women carry [while] trying to organise their lives.
“A few things happen that I won’t give away but they have to reassess their entire relationship [when it] hits the wall because of what they’re dealing with.
“And so they were escaping their life and it was nothing like what they thought it was going to be.”
Fiona said the other parts of the story touch on Addy, who returned to her hometown and “stirred up memories”, and Brenda, who was trying to embrace life after her husband’s death.
The intertwined stories touch on many struggles facing the characters, including alcoholism and family relationships.
“I wanted to explore female alcoholism, because it’s rising,” Fiona said.
“Women are drinking more than they ever used to and they’re actually starting to match men. It’s become a real issue since the start of the pandemic.
“I also wanted to look at the relationship between a mother and her children … I wrote it from the point of view that when you have kids, you have unconditional love for them but sometimes they’re not the personality that you will necessarily enjoy.
“And then the choir is there to bring all three women and their stories together.”
Fiona said she often got the ideas for her books from what was happening around her.
A Family of Strangers was inspired by the desire to escape while in lockdown over the past few years.
“We’ve been locked down for a couple of years and there’s periods where you just want to escape for a little bit, or maybe you might want to turn your life completely upside down,” she said.
“Everyone always underestimates the impact that has on not only you, but those in your circle. It’s like dropping a pebble in a pond and the ripples go out.
“This book is the ripples going out within the family and the community from each character’s action.
“We can’t do anything without a consequence. That can be a positive consequence, but it can also be a negative consequence.
“In last year’s book, A Home Like Ours, I looked about the struggles of refugees settling into a community and the theme for that book was displacement,” she said.
“I took three women with three very different ways their lives had been displaced – war, homelessness, unexpected teenage pregnancy – and they all came together in a community garden.
“Another one looked at elder abuse and inheritance greed, which is a massive problem in community at the moment.
“Another was inspired by bushfires. The ideas percolate from what you’re reading in the paper and, generally just that little line I see that gives me an idea.”
Writing about social issues is a recent vocation for Fiona, who originally started writing romance novels while on maternity leave from her job in healthcare.
“I don’t fit the mould of that person who was scribbling stories as a child,” she said.
“But when I think about it, I used to all I tell myself lots of stories in my head which I didn’t necessarily jot down. And if there was an ending to a book I didn’t like, I’d rewrite it in my head to make it better.
“But I had no intention of writing.
“I was a midwife and a community health nurse and counsellor, but I had a lot of trouble having a baby and so when we finally had a child, I wasn’t super keen to rush straight back to work.
“I was sitting at home thinking, ‘well, I’m going to have to go back part-time, but what can I do? And how can I organise this around the baby?’ and I heard an interview on the radio about writing novels.
“Completely deluded, I thought ‘that’s what I’ll do, I’ll write books and stay at home’.
“I knew absolutely nothing, but I came up with a story idea, and bashed out three chapters and send it off [to publishers].
“The day I posted it, my husband said there was a job in America. And so three weeks later, we were in America, and four and a half months after that, my mother posted me a letter that had gone from London, to Melbourne, to us in America, which said they had like the first three chapters and wanted to see the rest of the book.
“I didn’t even have a computer [and] it took me another year to finish that and it got rejected. And three more books got rejected over a 10 year period.
“I gave up writing for a little bit and had another baby and moved all around. But then it became about steely determination. I’d never failed at anything so I was going to get published.
“And I did. But once you get published, they expect you to write another one.”
That led to Fiona writing almost 30 romance novels, mostly in the medical subgenre.
But a restructure within her publisher and a move back to Australia saw her step away from romance novels.
“We were living in the States, but I was still very Australian,” she said.
“I just said I want to write a book in my own back garden and I don’t want it to I don’t want to be tied into a happy ending, which you have to for a romance novel.
“Some people can get a happy ending, and some people won’t and I just wanted to explore that, so I wrote Daughter of Mine.
“HarperCollins bought it and that was the start.
“I changed direction because basically I had my job and wanted to try something different. And I like having a bigger canvas and lots of secondary characters.”
A Family of Strangers’ publication this week has capped off almost a two-year process to publish the novel, which is common within the industry.
Fiona said she first began writing the story in May 2020, not long after the pandemic began, with the early drafts taking until last April as she juggled the editing process and release of her previous book at the same time.
“I handed in at the end of April,” she said.
“Then you go through the structural edits and everything else. It was completely edited, done and dusted, sitting ready for printing by the end of November, ahead of a March release.
“That’s usually the amount of time it takes to publish a novel and then I get a letter 24 hours after it’s released from readers saying, ‘I loved your book, when’s the next one?’
“It’s an interesting process.”
However Fiona said she was already well advanced on the next book and had a contract for another after that but wasn’t sure what the future would hold for her writing career.
But she enjoyed being an author, despite its challenges.
“It can be quite a solitary career, especially over the last couple of years when you couldn’t do the fun stuff, but that’s similar to any job,” she said.
“It was fabulous for working around the children and having that flexibility in my life … but the best part is the interactions with the readers.
“I love when they get in touch … and often they’re not shy about letting you know what think about what you’ve written.
“That’s what I want to do with my books – get people thinking.
“Reading is entertainment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. So when you get one of my books, and they will be entertained, I make them laugh, I make them cry.
“But I also challenge their preconceived ideas and make them think, so that’s a good package I reckon.”
