Interview with Paula J. Beavan (Author of ‘Daughter of the Hunter Valley’)
Interview with Paula J. Beavan for release of Daughter of the Hunter Valley
Novel due out September 29, 2021
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What sparked your imagination to write Daughter of the Hunter Valley? Please provide a glimpse of the story?
Daughter of the Hunter Valley is the story of Maddy, who moves from England to the colony of New South Wales in 1831, and finds it very different to anything she could have imagined. Soon after she arrives her father dies in mysterious circumstances and she must decide what to do next.
The story of how I came to write Daughter of the Hunter Valley is a bit convoluted. I’d originally tried to write a YA timeslip novel set in Scotland, and found I couldn’t progress until I’d ‘walked in my character’s footsteps’, I couldn’t afford a trip to Scotland, so I decided to try my hand at something set in Australia. A few years before this I’d heard that my father had been contacted by someone tracing our family tree, and Dad was told that we were related to an early settler to the region. When I started researching the colonisation of the Hunter river, I came across the name William Harper, sometimes recorded as William Harpur, which is how my maiden name is spelled, the same man we were told was a distant relation. William went blind relatively young, and his wife Catherine ran the huge Oswald Estate in his stead. That sent me off looking for more accounts of women running properties in the early 1800’s. When I began to write, I wondered what would happen if my character arrived to find the descriptions her father had written in his letters turned out to be all lies. I wrote Daughter of the Hunter Valley to find out.
What was the most emotional or difficult scene to write in Daughter of the Hunter Valley?
Well, it’s funny, there were several scenes that made me cry, but the first draft of Daughter of the Hunter Valley was written about ten years before the final draft that made it to print. I’d written about Maddy’s reaction to her father dying, and when I came back to it, after my husband died, I was surprised how well her emotions lined up with how I’d reacted to hearing of Dave’s death. That scene still has the power to undo me when I read through it, and I reckon I’ve read it about 347 times, and it’s changed very little from the very rough first draft.
What interesting historical fact(s) did you learn from your research during the writing of Daughter of the Hunter Valley?
Oh-my-goodness, there were so many. I guess the one I found most amusing didn’t make it into the story, but when people were travelling through the outlying areas there were no inns, so they would stay overnight at various homesteads along the way. Some houses had a room that opened off the veranda called the stranger’s room. It was somewhere for strangers to stay, with a warm bed, but the room had no access to the house.
Which character in your novel was the most fun to create and why?
I loved Tida Garrick, she was such a funny kid, and I could so see her flouncing about as I wrote. But I think my absolute favourite was Jane, a great companion for Maddy, and a fun person to get to know. She is just so pragmatic and very much like my niece Hayley, who inspired her.
What are the key themes of Daughter of the Hunter Valley?
I guess resilience would be one, Maddy refuses to give up. But when I read about so many women running agricultural business in their husband’s place, I really wanted to share their untold history, Her story, the role women played in the expansion into the wilderness of the colony.
Name a few obstacles women encountered in colonial Australia in the 1830’s?
Where to start? A lot of the free settlers came from relatively comfortable situations in England and the UK, so just the heat, flies, snakes, and bugs, not to mention the environment was enough to knock them for a six. Their accommodation was often bark huts or even tents, with dirt floors; many cooking outside, and doing a lot of manual labour to get the properties established. There was convict labour, but that could be a bit hit and miss with finding ones that were honest and reliable workers.
What do you hope your readers take away from their reading of your debut novel?
I’d love people to enjoy being taken on an adventure, to learn a bit, and appreciate what some of our early settlers endured in order to establish a new colony.
When did you decide to become a writer? Please share the highlights of your publishing journey.
I’ve been a reader since I was quite young, I think at six or seven I read Charlotte’s Web and have been reading ever since. My best subject in primary school was composition, and history in high school. I got into a lot of trouble as a kid for making up an entire alternate life and inviting my school friends to my imaginary family property to ride all my horses and go swimming in the creek. All made up. So, I don’t remember not making up stories, but at around ten years old, I just decided to write them instead of deceiving people. I have lots of handwritten and badly typed pages still in storage from my teens onwards, eventually I saved up and purchased a typewriter so I could write properly.
I was extremely lucky, in that I had good feedback from a publisher when I submitted via their monthly email submissions, and though my YA timeslip wasn’t what they were looking for, they did like my writing. I told them a bit about Maddy’s story and they were interested, but my husband died and so I wasn’t able to pursue it at the time. A few years later a writer friend asked me about my Australian Historical story, told me to rewrite it, and then suggested I send it to Harper Collins Harlequin publishers. I did and they said it was ‘very much their cup of tea’.
Did you take any research excursions that helped with the writing of your novel?
I have visited quite a few historical homes, including Tocal Homestead, Paterson NSW; Rouse Hill House & Farm, Rouse Hill; Tahlee Homestead, Table (NSW)
Have you taken any particular courses that helped with the writing of your novel?
I’ve done a lot of writing courses, everything from free local courses at the library, to online courses, weekend courses with the Australian Writer’s Centre in Sydney, travelling to the UK to attend Kate Forsyth’s History, Mystery, and Magic in the beautiful Cotswolds. I was very blessed to have a wonderful husband who supported my passion, and was willing to foot the bill.
If you could spend a day with a popular author, whom would you choose and why?
I have a varied taste in books, and adore so many authors, but I think Australian authors Tea Cooper and Kate Forsyth, both whom I’m privileged to know would be my first choices; Jodi Taylor who writes the amazingly funny and captivating Chronicles of Saint Mary’s series; and Peter Grainger, who writes the DC Smith Investigation series. I also adore JK Rowling’s Cormoran Strike novels and would love to meet her. Sorry, that’s not one, but I’m greedy when it comes to favourite authors.
Have any teachers/authors nurtured your writing craft? If so, how did they help?
At her course in the Cotswolds, Kate Forsyth pulled me up when I was lazily trying to mash up several periods in history and palm it off as an alternate universe for my YA Scottish story. She told me that most readers learn their history from fiction. That hit me like a tonne of bricks and has informed my research ever since, and I think my writing is richer for that hard earned, and embarrassing, lesson.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you have been given about writing?
Write the story you want to read, because you will have to read it about 75 times, and that is the truest thing I’ve ever been told.
You write historical fiction. What other genre would like to try if you had the chance?
I’ve been fortunate to find a publisher for my lovely historical novel, but I’ve written a lot of practice stories, probably ten in all, and all full-length novels, and most of them contemporary romance with a bit of mystery or crime thrown in. However, I’d love to write crime, I love reading cosy mysteries and crime, but I’m not sure I have what it takes.
What are your current top five favourite books that you would recommend to readers?I love series, and connected books, and think I’ve pretty much mentioned my favourite series in the question about my favourite author[s], but if I really have to pick my favourite books, On Eden Street – Peter Grainger; Troubled Blood – Robert Galbraith; An Argumentation of Historians – Jodi Taylor; The Cartographer’s Secret - Tea Cooper; Worst Idea Ever - Jane Fallon. But I also love Kate Forsyth’s books; and I can’t not mention Sarah Barrie’s and Lee Christine’s crime series.
If you could be transported back in time for one month to gather research for a novel, what year or time period would you choose? And what setting/country?
For research it would have to be Colonial Australia, probably the 1840s, because that’s what I’m writing about now. But for just for fun, I’d love to jump back to Jacobite Scotland, because who isn’t a little bit in love with Jamie Fraser?
Are you presently working on a new project? If so, can you give your readers a hint?
I have just written ‘the end’ on the first draft of Highland on the Hunter (working title), set in 1840 and inspired by the true story of an experiment by Rev John Lang to bring a community of displaced highlanders from the Isle of Skye, consisting of twenty-three families to his brother’s Hunter Valley property, Dunmore Estate, in 1837. A few years later, a petition with 100 signatures was sent to the Scottish Presbyterian Church for a Gaelic speaking minister to be sent to the community. This snippet of little known local history inspired me to base my story in a fictionalised version of the township and is told from the perspective of Charity, who reluctantly accompanies her brother, my story’s Gaelic speaking minister, from Skye to the fictional community of Skeabost Estate on the Hunter River.
Many thanks to Paula for the interview and to her publisher HarperCollins Australia. We wish her much success on her maiden voyage into the book world!
