Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 The Fremantle press podcast. My name is Maria Pappas and today Mel hall is joining us to chat about her novel, the little boat on trusting lane, which follows a Motley crew of characters, each looking for connection or each somehow involved in some kind of spiritual pursuit. Before we begin, let me introduce Mel hall. Mel is a writer and musician whose fiction has been long listed for several awards, including the Peter Carey short story prize, the foggerty literary award and the Carmel bird digital literary award in 2016, her novella choir's of Greg diggers was published by the Ginninderra press and her stories have appeared in westerly. The sleepers are Monique and other Australian journals. Welcome Maui. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Mel. Will you tell us what the little boat on trusting lane is about and what inspired it?
Speaker 2 00:01:08 Sure. I feel like that's a hard question to answer. There's a lot of things going on in the book, but I think maybe the easiest thing I can say is that it's about a really small spiritual community. I like to think of it as a bit of a religion made up by a couple of people. And I think, uh, what led to me writing, it was kind of a bit of a, an experience of a melting pot feeling in my life where I, I was living in Fremantle and I was pretty, which I still am. And I was pretty curious and a bit questioning about some kind of wellness stuff that I was around. I was also experiencing a lot of chronic pain and I was also having a lot of good talks with a close friend. Who's a massive skeptic. And I grew up in the church and with faith. So we were having really good conversations about what faith and belief are and what community and church and things are. And it really made me question those things and what they mean to me and all at the same time as that, I was having this chronic pain and I'm imagining different therapies about pain management that I was, I thought my work and it all just started to become fiction.
Speaker 1 00:02:19 The little boat on trusting lane was originally long listed in the 2019 foggerty literary award. Tell us about your journey from being long listed for this award to having your work published.
Speaker 2 00:02:34 So I was long listed for that award in, I think April or May, 2019, I think within the next couple of months, everyone that was long listed, came in separately and met with a publisher or editor at Frio press. And so I had a meeting with ML Davies and Georgia Richter, and they talked me through a lot of different things about my book. And then it was, I think within the next few weeks I did a bit of a rewrite. I don't know how that happened, but it did. And then, um, I resubmitted it. And so it was within the next few months and it was accepted to be published. So it was pretty short timeframe between being long listed and being accepted was probably within six months. And then there was a process of re uh, revisions and editing, and then now it's being published. So it's two years on, pretty much exactly it's being published. So it's been pretty amazing really
Speaker 1 00:03:23 Back then when it was long listed, the name of the manuscript you entered was the shapes. Yeah, that's right. And I read somewhere that at some point it also had the name invisible exit wounds anonymous.
Speaker 2 00:03:37 Yeah. I feel like it had a lot of different names. I don't know how that happened.
Speaker 1 00:03:41 What happened to make you change the title and decide on this final title?
Speaker 2 00:03:47 Uh, it's interesting. I think the name changes reflect me trying to find what the focus of the book was. I think originally being called the shapes, I was quite focused on the idea that the book was really about strange things happening to people's bodies and kind of pain management and things. And I think that is part of the book, but as it went on, I started to realize, especially working closely with, um, Georgia, who was my editor on the book, Satish realize more that the book was about friendship and community. And those, those things led to, uh, realizing that with a slightly different title and different emphasis, the book had a different shape. I suppose, the,
Speaker 1 00:04:27 The book has one of the prettiest covers I have ever seen. I teach and I was reading it, um, in the staff room at school and people were commenting on the cover. Oh, what a lovely cover? What a, what a nice book. That's lovely for listeners who are not aware of the little boat on trusting lane is a Powell blue book picturing a wooden houseboat as if it is floating in midair. The boat is wrapped in little yellow flowers and as readers immerse themselves in the book, they soon learn this boat is one of the primary settings that the characters interact with. Mel, can you tell us what went into choosing that cover and where did the idea for a rickety old houseboat set on an empty block of land come from?
Speaker 2 00:05:19 I was obsessed with boats. I don't even know why. I think I went on the Lewin when I was 19. So I think I was already obsessed with boats then. Um, I, this something about living spaces on boats that fascinates me. I also remember as a kid, um, saying the <inaudible> the little, the little boat that is, I don't know if it's always around Fremantle, but I remember seeing it as a kid and looking in the windows at the living quarters and kind of being enchanted by the tiny space that people lived in and things like that. Um, also you still live in my lands in the peninsula and there's an, a boat building yard there. And I used to just go and look at the boats a lot. And I started to realize this over years that I'm really interested in boats that are not working or that are on land, you know, just being able to see the whole boat, you know, there's that part of the boat that usually you wouldn't see when it's on the water.
Speaker 2 00:06:09 And I, there's something that I just find fascinating about seeing that. And I think when I moved to Fremantle, which is about eight years ago, there are a few, um, boats, there were a few boats around to see. And then, um, around white gum valley, I think just boats in different yards that people are probably working on our own. And I think it just started happening. Um, I didn't, I don't think I put too much thought into what it might symbolize, but I just wanted to hang out on a boat, I suppose. And I was looking at lots of pictures of houseboats while I was riding. But th the, the funny thing is that I didn't actually choose the cover or anything like that. And, um, but I loved it so much as soon as I saw it. I just thought that is, that is the boat. That is that's, that's what it is. And the fact that it's kind of floating in space is kind of special to me too. I think because it's a sense that the boats, you know, it's not in water, but maybe it's who knows where it's going and who knows where the people on this boat floating off.
Speaker 1 00:07:01 So the boat functions as one of the main settings that the characters interact in, and there are three main characters that you follow throughout this book. So there's Richard, there's Finn and there's August. And you tell the story through each of their perspectives. What made you decide to do this as opposed to telling the story through one person's point of view?
Speaker 2 00:07:24 I wanted to write from one perspective in the beginning, it was very much more about fin in the beginning, and I'm also, I love writing in first person. So when I started, it was really more first person, mostly fin. And then I started to realize I wanted all these strange things to happen in the book. I wanted all these people to be there and to be talking and to be preaching at each other. And, um, I never let go of that. And so I realized that over time with different help from people that I might need some other perspectives to get that going, and that might need to write in third person to enable all this activity that I was very certain would be happening on the page. So that's really how that happened. And I think Finn stayed as the central character, but as I kept writing August and Richard kept getting more and more important,
Speaker 1 00:08:12 You have a strong eye for detail. And a few times I found myself laughing because of some dry, yet relatable observation. One of your characters made it's actually such a good skill to have as a writer. I found myself quite jealous or the things you were noticing, how did you develop this skill?
Speaker 2 00:08:29 I actually think maybe I'm a detail oriented person. What I had to learn was how to reign it in a bit, because if I was left to my own devices and didn't learn about writing, I'd probably just write lots of lists of things I notice. But I think I tend to notice lots and lots of little things all the time to the point of being distracted from maybe what I was supposed to be doing. But yeah, what I feel like I had to learn and what I did learn through a lot of help from other people was how to help those become part of something bigger. So a part of a plot or a story. Yeah. That's a backwards way of answering that question. Sorry.
Speaker 1 00:09:03 Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. There is quite a lot of lightheartedness to the book and I noticed that through those details, but then even though you have a lot of humorous observations about the way people interact, you also have embedded in the narrative very deep and serious undertones. One of the characters that most stands out for me is August at first August didn't seem as central to the narrative as Richard or, or Finn, but once August opens up, we learned she's harboring terrible trauma. What does August represent for you? And tell me a little about how you came to create her pretty much
Speaker 2 00:09:42 Watch the way you describe reading her and that you didn't realize that she became more important as, as you went along reading. That's kind of how she formed to me as well. I feel that in the beginning, I thought she's just seen that she's just in the background somewhere, but she kept growing and I kept becoming more curious about her. And it's as though, you know, you have conversations with the characters and you think, oh, no, I like you a bit more than I thought I did, or I'm learning a bit more about you than I thought I would. I was thinking about this recently because I grew up in the country and as a teenager went through a Christian conversion and, um, it's, it's quite hard to think about even, and it's quite hard to write or talk about, you know, I, I realized I started talking about those kinds of things through August and, um, she goes through a lot of other things that I haven't gone through that are completely fictional, but yeah, I think maybe for me, it was a, it was a chance to look at what it was like to go through a conversion as, as a young person and to, you know, to be uprooted and to move from the country to the city as a, as a young person.
Speaker 2 00:10:42 And just to make sense of that a bit. So I think that, I think maybe that's what was happening for me with August and I I'm really attached to her now. Like I, I really care for her as a character and yeah,
Speaker 1 00:10:51 She's a good character. I feel quite attached as a reader to her as well when I know more about her. And I want to imagine what happens to her next today, we've spoken quite a bit about spiritual belief. And one of the things that I noticed was that every character in this book seems to be looking for bigger meaning or connection, and each seems to be searching for this through some kind of spiritual system. And you explore nearly everything from Christianity to alien experience, and you do so with such empathy and without judgment, even while your characters are questioning their beliefs, what research did you have to do to be able to help you write about all these spiritual beliefs?
Speaker 2 00:11:37 So we grew up in the Anglican church and I was walking to church as a kid and things like I was quite, uh, a religious kid. Um, and then somehow strangely went through a conversion as well when I was already a Christian. So I went through like a interdenominational from Anglican to a church of Christ. And then, um, when I moved to Perth, it was just always kind of the same. Like I had a really good friend who is Jewish, and we used to go to the cafe and read the Bible and the Torah and compare them. And yeah, I think that was my idea of a good time. So part of me is wondering about what we're here for and trying not to be judgmental about what people experience and what they believe, how they make their world work. Really. I also have had chronic pain issues for a long time. So I was looking for a lot of reason or a sense of explanation for that stuff. And then you end up meeting a lot of other people who wonder about why we're here and what this all means and how to, how to, how to make sense of pain or loss and things like that. So maybe that's research too, I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1 00:12:43 Yeah. That, that's the research. What can readers expect next from you?
Speaker 2 00:12:48 Well, I've been writing another book. That's called Judas bones and it's a coming of age kind of book. And it's in the first person. I got to go back to writing in the first person, which is exciting for me, but it's about two teenage girls in the weight boat. And they're trying to make their way in the world, impersonating men and assuming men's names, they can feel confident in themselves. So that's where I'm at
Speaker 1 00:13:11 The moment. We're going to finish the day with a passage from the little boat on trusting lane.
Speaker 2 00:13:20 She was also organics was the go-to store for organic papaya green smoothies for the beach and the perfect supplement. So building up cartilage in the knees, occasionally sensitive customers, coughed, complaining that someone had been testing the Sage deodorant. They would need to be given a glass of filtered water to help counter their reaction. At least there was only one customer who was allergic to tusk and kale. This customer always made sure before buying a green smoothie that only the curly variety would be involved. Vegans came in, declaring meat is murder before snatching up their to a Curry pies. Some would not sit at the tables outside to drink their long bucks with coconut oil. They said no way. I'm sitting out there too many heavy metals blowing in the breeze. Last week. One shopper asked if the bottled water was reptilian whilst another brought in a Geiger counter, checking the seaweed for radiation lately.
Speaker 2 00:14:11 Everyone was talking about the speaker Vashti, tenacity, her upcoming workshops, how to quantify a vitality. We're almost booked out in the workshop. She would be teaching a range of intuitive tests to perform on fruit and vegetables in order to determine their nutrient density. Every day bird-like women stocked up on frozen bone broth. Every other day, a Polish grandmother purchased on-hold sunflower kernels for her Canary, but only for special occasions, only for a trait. And every Saturday, there were those people who hugged for 20 minutes. And I all three, if you had always wanted to find a place like this, when she was young, Finn was the kid with the allergies, the one with a dollop of cold or cream on her lip, pulling cashew paste from my lunchbox, closing our eyes to imagine that KU water Sutra bubbler was real milk in the beginning. Pure source was a safe Haven where her special dietary requirements might be taken seriously, but the longer feeding work there, the more the place frustrated her. And it took a while to realize why
Speaker 1 00:15:08 Mel, thank you for reading and thank you for taking the time to join us. Thanks for having me. No worries, listeners. You can find the little boat on trusting lane in all good bookstores and online at Fremantle, press.com.edu. If you enjoyed our chat today, subscribe to our podcast on apple podcasts, Google play, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Maria Pappas, and I have been your host today in 2020. I won the city of Fremantle Hungerford award and my novel, which now has a name skimming stones will be out in November. Join me next time as we continue our journey into everything
Speaker 2 00:15:50 Books, <inaudible>.
