On Wednesday night I was fortunate enough to attend an author event at one of my local libraries featuring Tea Cooper and Sarah Barrie. Umina library hosted the pair for a wonderful evening of conversation. The event was remarkably well coordinated and run and it’s hard to imagine this was the library’s first time hosting this type of event.
Tea Cooper
Tea Cooper is the author of contemporary and historical fiction writing stories predominately set in regency and Victorian eras. Originally from England, she has found a new home in Australia and writes stories set in the Hunter Valley including Maitland and Wollombi. Her latest book is The Woman in the Green Dress which is due for publication 17 Dec this year. Sarah Barrie on the hand writes rural suspense and her latest book, Bloodtree River, follows on from the successful Hunters Ridge series and is available now. Listening to them discuss their writing styles and their experiences was such an enlightening time, and like most writing events makes me walk away inspired to return to my own works in progress.
The event began with nibblies and drinks before we all gathered inside for the talk. From the start it was presented as a casual conversation and Tea was quick to welcome people to interrupt and make it more of a joint conversation between them and the audience. This worked incredibly well because the audience questions prompted a variety of stories and insights from the writers.
Sarah Barrie
Questions ranged from how long does it take to create a book? And where do ideas come from? To discussing the historical research process for Tea’s stories and Sarah’s inspiration for ideas. One thing I found interesting was Tea’s answer about her research. She mentioned she never takes the historical stories from people who are living in the area, as many families still remain. All of her characters are fictional, but come from snippets of stories, Tea not liking the idea of putting words into the mouth of people who actually existed.
Through audience inquiry we learnt more about Tea and Sarah’s friendship and their relationship as writing partners. Another great audience question was about structuring writing time. Sarah gave a wise answer saying that stricture is great, but life doesn’t go to plan. She has to make the time but instead of daily goals or set times to write, she aims for writing a set amount of words per month. I quite liked this approach because it releases the constraint of daily writing, 4am writing (though it works for some quite successfully), and panicking when none of those this happen for weeks at a time.
Having a conversational style event also allowed for a lot of unexpected questions to be asked and it steered the conversation into educational and humorous avenues. There were personal stories exploring friendship and work histories together, and their own stories about getting started in publishing as well as a few tricks of the trade.
In the end the night seemed to fly by and even in the short time the women spoke a lot of ground was covered as the conversation flowed seamlessly from one question and topic to another. Local bookseller Book Bazaar was there as well so people could purchase both Tea and Sarah’s books and have them signed. It was wonderful to see people lining up to buy books both before and after the talk, the line for signings a great proportion of those who attended.
The informal and communal nature of the night was highly enjoyable and it was fantastic to hear from two local Aussie authors. Combine that with sitting in a library surrounded by books made it a very cosy night indeed.
You can find out more about each of these authors via the following
Tea Cooper
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Goodreads
Sarah Barrie
Website
Facebook
Goodreads
Lost in a Good Book 