All the Beautiful Liars by Sylvia Petter
Dear
Lynn,
I
hope Ellesea won´t mind us having a chat on her blog. It´s about
books and writing and how it´s never too late to publish.
It´s
never too late – on publishing as an older writer
I
never wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a vet, but was lousy at
maths, so did languages instead – French, German – and took off
to see the world. It was halfway through an international telecoms
policy career when MBAs were just taking off, that I decided to try
out one module that happened to be Planning and Managing Change. I
was in my early 40s. I would have finished the MBA online at 50 and
would have had to retire at 60. I wanted something I could do for the
rest of my life. Write. But I didn´t think I had the right to write,
not having a clue about English literature. But since childhood I had
been a voracious reader – Mum said I ate books – anything from
horses to saints to spies and back. By this time, I was based in
Geneva via Helsinki and Vienna and Brussels, was trilingual and had
mislaid my mother tongue.
I
joined the fledgling Geneva Writers’ Group whose leader, Susan
Tiberghien,
gave me the “right to write” in that she blew away all my
hang-ups with free-writing exercises. Then I went online. This was in
the pre-web days. No photos, no chatting, just stories and reading in
a small group called Boot Camp run by what some called a madman, but
was super teacher, Alex
Keegan.
More than 50 stories came from my three years there. Reading,
reading, reading. Writing, writing, writing. Submitting, submitting,
submitting. REJECTIONS. Rejections are so important. Alex would say
they were like purple hearts.
I
was in my early forties and hooked on writing. I attended
international writing conferences and workshops, started a novel, won
a mentorship in Australia, saved up for another in Canada. Learning,
learning. The novel languished. Stories got published. A collection
won a prize, which was publication. The novel kept knocking at my
door. It ballooned to 110K, I cut it back, it went up, got cut back,
in a sort of cantilevering as taught by Peter
Carey
on 20 pages of another novel through another paid mentorship. I had
almost given up on the novel that now had become All
the Beautiful Liars,
but my Canadian mentor, Timothy
Findley,
had told me that it might take 20 years and he also had one like that
in the works (Pilgrim).
I
have a banner on my blog that really says it all: Touch just one
person and it´s all been worthwhile.
I
submitted the novel to the Yeovil Novel Prize in 2016 because the
judge, Jason
Goodwin,
had written novels set in Turkey. A long shot, but maybe he would
understand what I was trying to do. I think he did, and the novel
placed third. But the rejections started all over again.
After
having the novel looked at again by UK editor Zoe
King
and a couple of trusted beta readers in Vienna, I submitted the
manuscript to Eye
and Lightning Books
in the UK. They had brought out the work of an Australian writer,
Ryan
O´Neill,
whose work I loved, and I thought, wouldn´t it be great to be in the
same stable? If they reject it, I´ll selfpublish.
When
the email came, I was ready for another rejection.
All
the Beautiful Liars
will be launched on 16 March. I am 70 years old and still have lots
in my archives to work on.
I
hope there is something in my story that can inspire you to keep at
it. It´s the best activity in the world and you can do it forever.
How true are
the family histories that tell us who we are and where we come from?
Who knows how much all the beautiful liars have embargoed or
embellished the truth?
During a long
flight from Europe to Sydney to bury her mother, Australian expat
Katrina Klain reviews the fading narrative of her family and her long
quest to understand her true origins. This has already taken her to
Vienna, where she met her Uncle Harald who embezzled the Austrian
government out of millions, as well as Carl Sokorny, the godson of
one of Hitler's most notorious generals, and then on to Geneva and
Berlin. Not only were her family caught up with the Nazis, they also
turn out to have been involved with the Stasi in post-war East
Germany.
It's a lot to
come to terms with, but there are more revelations in store. After
the funeral, she finds letters that reveal a dramatic twist which
means her own identity must take a radical shift. Will these
discoveries enable her to complete the puzzle of her family’s past?
Inspired by
her own life story, Sylvia Petter’s enthralling fictional memoir
set between the new world and the old is a powerful tale about making
peace with the past and finding closure for the future.
For
a limited time, All the Beautiful Liars will be available for only
99p.
Sylvia
Petter was born in Vienna but grew up in Australia, which makes her
Austr(al)ian.
She
started writing fiction in 1993 and has published three story
collections, The
Past Present,
Back
Burning and
Mercury Blobs. She
has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of New South Wales.
After
living for 25 years in Switzerland, where she was a founding member
of the Geneva Writers’ Group, she now lives in Vienna once more.
Social
Media Links – @EyeAndLightning
@SylviaAPetter
