In some of my favourite Aussie YA, what really stands out to me is how authors depict the Australian landscape - whether it be physically in the city or the outback, or culturally through our resilience and ability to relate to others. A Shadow's Breath by Nicole Hayes is one of those books which does this exceptionally well, alongside providing a story which is compelling and full of suspense!
Guest Post by Nicole Hayes - Writing A Shadow's Breath
It makes sense that this competition is
about capturing a visual depiction of A Shadow’s Breath since that’s how the
first words of this novel came to me.
I generally start a story with a solid idea
of what I want to say, a big picture concept or theme I want to explore, and,
usually, the main character has already started to “speak” to me as part of
this. Not in a woo-woo way. Ha! But because I’ve already played around with her
voice, or thought about what sort of person she might be, by testing out her
words in my head even before I write anything down. This is how Shelley in The Whole of My World and Frankie in One True Thing emerged when I sat down to
write those books, seeming to leap off the page largely formed.
With A Shadow’s Breath, those early images in
my head were more visual than anything else. I could see this girl waking up
after an accident in the hot, dry Australian bush with that enormous,
cerulean-blue sky above her. I’ve collected so many pictures of the Australian
landscape and our incredible skies over the years, gathering them in my
memories, feeding them with my imagination, that they essentially forced
themselves out of me when I attempted to write Tessa’s story.
In this way, the natural world is as much a
character in A Shadow’s Breath as Tessa Gilham is. The vastness of the bush,
the history and timelessness of our amazing outback, the awesome shifts in
weather, the creatures, and always, always the heat. How incredibly powerful the
elements are when they work together to create a unique country that is
beautiful, ravaging, but also terrifying. So many ways to die here! I had a million
possibilities and challenges for Tessa and Nick to overcome – quite apart from
the problems in their relationship – and all of them so visceral and alive that
the words flew out of me.
But the thing that gripped me most, apart
from all the fabulous (from a writer’s point of view!) dangers and perils that
lurk in our landscape, was what it looked like. The colours and textures, the shapes
and edges. Once I started exploring these possibilities, I quickly found that
the language around our wilderness is rich and evocative, atmospheric and
complex in style and substance. An unpredictable! I loved the idea of that
vast, open blue of a dry summer’s day set against the purples and greys of
sudden, terrifying summer storms. And I spent a lot of time trying to capture all
this, relishing the process of finding the precise word, the ideal colour, the perfect
slant of light to match what I could see in my head.
But I knew that this in itself isn’t a story.
Story is about characters, about people,
relating – or often, not relating – and because Tessa’s story of abuse and
neglect was one I’d heard too often and witnessed at different times, it became
really clear how this almost alien, brutal landscape provided a metaphor for
Tessa’s struggle to feel safe anywhere – at school, in her small, claustrophic
town, in her own home. To Tessa, the perils of the outback were bearable
compared to what she’d survived already. Which was why the story became two
narratives running alongside each other: the Now story, of Tessa and Nick
fighting to stay alive after a car accident in the middle of nowhere,
struggling to make their way out of the bush, carrying injuries of all kinds,
physical and psychological. Their relationship as tenuous at that moment as
their grip on life. And the Then chapters, of the days leading up to the
accident, the small-town gossip surrounding a girl like Tessa whose family
history is as notorious and damaged as Tessa is. And her own struggle to
believe anything good could happen to her, but also, incredibly, beginning
those first steps toward moving on. Believing.
When I brought all these components
together, I realised I was writing something I’d always wanted to write: a
survival story set in the Australian bush, driven by a protagonist who is
smart, capable, and fiercely independent in a survival sense – socially and physically
– but also afraid to trust or believe in the simplest and most important
things: love, family, forgiveness. If it wasn’t for her best friend, Yuki, she
would have given up years ago.
But Tessa does believe in her art, in the
freedom it gives her to safely explore her darkest fears, her deepest secrets,
including the darkest of all. A secret she’s never told anyone, not even Yuki,
and definitely not her mum. And the thing that drove her and Nick into the bush
in the first place, the reason she’s afraid to go home.
Even more frightening than the harsh,
perilous Australian bush.
Extract from A Shadow's Breath
Vast sky. Blue and wide and impossibly
bright.
Tessa blinks. Blinks again. A shadow
falls, then passes. Heat like a wall presses against her. The rustle of wind in
leaves. Or something moving outside? She listens, strains towards the sound.
Now barely a whisper of noise that might not be real. And then it’s gone.
She squeezes her eyes shut. Opens them. A rushing sound fills her
head like a conch shell held to her ear. Her skin stretched taut against her
cheekbones, her lips crusty and dry as a scab.
Still. That sky. She can’t look at it for
long before the black dots appear. The feeling of life – hot and bright and
wondrous.
Overpowering.
She’ll be okay, it seems to tell her.
She’ll be okay. And she fixes on that single thing – the notion that life still
beats on inside her – before the weight of consciousness grows too heavy and
she allows herself to fall into that blessed dark, the silence a welcome
relief, knowing she’ll come out the other side.
Wherever that is.
Novels by Nicole Hayes
You can follow Nicole Hayes on:
Check out the photo comp!
Nicole Hayes has been kind enough to offer two of her books up for grabs AND a $20 voucher for an Australian bookstore to the lucky winner.
Simply post a photo of A Shadow's Breath with the hashtag #ashadowsbreathcontest on twitter or instagram to enter. If you don't own a copy of the book yourself, don't worry - your local library may have one or you may even create something on Photoshop which is inspired by the phrase 'a shadow's breath'.
Full details can be found on my instagram post here:
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