"Don't give up your day job," I was advised by my friends and colleagues after announcing my intention to write novels. Now, with four books completed but unpublished, I am grateful for that advice. Even though I am a well known journalist with regular columns in several respected publications, I have finally realised that even with that background it is extremely difficult to sell a first novel to a publisher.
Hoping the ambience may rub off on my writing, I bought Thomas Hallewell's little house after he died. While generally regarded as an Australian author, Hallewell was born in England and never became an Australian citizen. He arrived in Sydney in 1949 as a £10 migrant after spending a couple of years at Cambridge where, if the potted biographies on the dust jackets of his later novels can be believed, he majored in the extra-curricular.
Australia was at the height of its cultural cringe and to have even set foot in Cambridge conferred an aura which must have helped him immensely in having his first book published. Not that Golden Sunset wasn't worthy of publication but there were many equally worthy novels by Australian authors which would never get within cooee of a printing press.
Hallewell never married and his younger brother in England, who is his sole beneficiary, just wanted to sell up everything -- house, furniture, contents, the lot. When this was mentioned by my agent, who had also been Hallewell's agent, I put in a bid to the lawyers who accepted it as the easy way out.
During my preliminary inspection of the property, I noticed what appeared to be the manuscript of a completed novel in his workroom. Consequently, I made sure that the contract for my purchase of the house and contents included assigning to me the copyright of any unpublished work I found there.
It took me almost three weeks, what with meeting the deadlines for my regular columns, to pack up the contents of my small, rented flat and organise them the way I wanted in the house. I decided to leave Hallewell's workroom as it was, at least for the time being, and set up my own study in the spare bedroom.
However, after I finally settled in, my innate curiosity got the better of me and I booted up his computer and was surprised to find my fingers dancing over the keyboard at a remarkable speed without any thought or guidance from me.
At last! Thought you were never going to turn this damn thing on. So, now can we please get on with revising The Grieving Lovers. There's only about two days work to do on it before it can go off to the publisher.
That is how, since his death, the manuscript of a new Thomas Hallewell novel is discovered and published each year. Every time one is needed, I just boot up his old computer and let my fingers do his writing.
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Letter to the Author: Lincoln Donald at lincolndonald@hotmail.com