Welcome to the series, Sunday Sessions, where you’ll get to meet authors from around the world, writing in different genres, sharing their writing tips, marketing adventures and much more.

Please welcome Australian author, Nene Davies.

1 – Tell us a bit about yourself?

Hi Kasia! Well – my name is Nene Davies and I’m a Welsh-Australian writer living in beautiful Brisbane. I’m married to Chris and have three grown-up children and two dogs. I started writing full-time back in 2012, when Chris’s job took us down to Melbourne for a year. I found myself in a little apartment in the middle of a new city and realised that this was my opportunity to get that book written!

2 – What inspired you to write ‘‘Distance’ and ‘Further’?

We emigrated from Wales to Queensland in 2002. It had been a dream that became a possibility, and then finally a reality. We couldn’t believe it! Emigrating was fantastically exciting and terrifying at the same time. We had never been to Queensland before, though we’d spent the Christmas and New Year of the Millennium in New South Wales, so the whole adventure was amazing! We were lucky; most people were super-supportive of our dream to emigrate and only wished us well, but I started to wonder ‘what if?’ What if my Mum had been so distraught at our leaving that she’d begged us to stay? What if I’d had cold feet about the move but my husband had not? Would we still have come? Would we be in Wales today instead of Brisbane? This little seed of an idea became the basis for my first novel ‘Distance.’ I took all the ‘what ifs’ and wrote them into my fictional family’s lives. The bones of the story are true, in that we did emigrate, we do have three children, the locations in the story are places where we lived – but I gave the Richardsons a ton of drama and angst that thankfully we didn’t encounter….but we could have! After I had finished writing ‘Distance’ I went on to the sequel, ‘Further,’ which as the name suggests is the next instalment of the story. In ‘Further’ we find the family’s problems are only just beginning and when main character Isobel’s elderly mother becomes ill, twelve thousand miles away on the other side of the world, the wheels really do start to come off!
3 – Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

‘Distance’ is a story about the nuts and bolts of starting a new life, but it’s also a story about relationships. The mother/daughter bond, a marriage, parenting. It’s about making hard decisions that you know will hurt someone you love. It’s about trying to do the right thing for everyone. It’s about strong women who care. It’s about not giving up.
I think the best way I can sum up the message of ‘Further’ would be by way of that old saying ‘Relax. Nothing is under control.’ We try and try, but oftentimes the universe has other ideas for us!

4 – What sort of research did you do before you started writing?

To be honest, I didn’t really do any. I had the Distance Series books in my head as a result of our own journey of emigrating, so all I had to do was take our story – and then put my fictional family through the wringer!

5 – What do you love/hate most about writing or being a writer?

First and foremost, I love writing! I love the feeling of completing a sentence, or chapter, or novel and knowing that I’ve created something that didn’t exist before. Getting deep into a scene and really living that argument, or feeling the sun on my face, or welling up with tears, or laughing my head off along with my characters – that’s the fun part I think. I’m also a big fan of social media. I love marketing which might sound odd, but it’s something I’ve learned over time, to enjoy. I love meeting readers and writers – whether it’s face to face or online What I dislike would be the nitty gritty bits like editing and formatting. I’m not a graphs and spreadsheets kind of person, I don’t really plan much and so keeping to required guidelines can be a struggle. Bleugh!

6 – What is your typical writing day like?

Mornings are for scooting round and getting stuff done. I’m up early and after sorting out the dogs with their breakfast, I usually grab a cup of tea and hop online. I’ll post things on my social media pages and have a look at what’s going on in the world. It’s lovely to connect with other writers and readers and I’ve made some wonderful online friends that way. After breakfast, I’ll head out to do all the bits and pieces like grocery shopping and dog walking – and there is always a coffee break in there somewhere! I usually meet a friend but if I happen to be by myself, I’ll take the chance to catch up on some reading. I start writing in the afternoons. Typically one o’clock until about five-ish. Hopefully, a lovely family member will appear with a cup of tea and /or wine at some point! Fortunately all the family are good at cooking, so we take turns to make dinner. I like to have dinner early and go to bed early too, as I’m up at the crack of dawn. I enjoy yoga and meditation – when I’ve finished writing for the day is my favourite time for that.

7 – What are you currently reading?

Oh I’m reading a book called In Conversations With Strangers by Queensland author Brenda Cheers. I have just started – and loving it so far!

8 – If you were having a dinner party and could invite five people, living or dead, who would you invite and why?

Well first and foremost – my family! It’s always a special time when we get together, which isn’t all that often as we are scattered around the country. There are usually one or two of our children around, but often not at the same time so to have us all round the table at the same time would be fab. I’d love to have met Maeve Binchy. Her books just shine with warmth and friendship and I feel that she would have been a lovely person. I’d love to meet Billy Connolly and I reckon he’d make a fantastic dinner guest! He just comes over as a genuinely nice guy, plus funny as all get-out, interesting and a brilliant storyteller. Eddie Izzard is another person I’d love to meet as again he seems like such a wonderful teller of tales and has a warmth and friendliness about him. Oh gosh, there are so many others….but I think that maybe I’ll stop there!

9 – What’s your view on social media marketing for authors?

I think that like it or not we need to embrace social media if we want to spread the word about our work. However, it can be tempting to sign up for all the various platforms and in order to post interesting content – or at least a good quote or something! – we need a ton of time. I think it’s probably better to stick to just a few and try to do those well, rather than spreading oneself too thin. I post to Facebook and Twitter every day and to Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn less frequently. Social media is a fabulous tool for writers, but it can also be a time thief. Finding that balance is sometimes not easy.

10 – Do you have any marketing tips for new authors?

If possible, I think it’s great if you can create a brand for yourself. If you can keep your voice consistent and your content in the same tone, I feel that it helps people to remember you. I’ve read blogs where the author suggests using the same profile photograph across all your social media sites and while I think this is a good idea, I do tend to use different photos for different places. I’ve also read somewhere that it’s good to change photos and headers quite often, as it doesn’t take long for a page to look tired. If a reader doesn’t think it’s changed since the last time they checked in, they are perhaps less likely to bother scrolling through.

11 – If your book was turned into a film, who would you like to play your main characters?

Oooh – this is a fun one! Well, I’d like my main character Isobel to be played by someone who I think is charismatic and relatable – and also very beautiful! Rachel Weisz would be perfect. I think that Welsh actor Rhys Ifans would make a wonderful Leo (Isobel’s husband). Helen Mirren, Judy Dench or Maggie Smith would all be fabulous as difficult grandmother, Nana Helen!

12 – Do you ever get writer’s block? How do you overcome it?

Not writing is the surest way for me to get writer’s block. I like to flex that writing muscle every day as I find that the more I write, the easier it is to avoid the dreaded writer’s block.

13 – Where is your favourite place to write? Why?

I love my little office at home. It’s blue and white and very calm. However, since my husband travels with work and I sometimes go with him, I have learned to carve out a space to write, wherever I am. Even a busy cafe can be a fab spot for writing sometimes.

14 – What do you love most about living in Queensland, Australia?

Oh goodness, there are too many things to name, but what springs to mind first, is the sea. I adore the beach and would love to live as close as possible. Brisbane is home, but I like to daydream about having a little writing shack on a pristine Queensland beach and writing bestselling novels underneath a palm tree…sigh….!

15 – How did you go about getting your books in physical bookstores?

I have found that turning up in person is the scariest way to approach this, but also the most effective. I’ve tried e-mailing (hard) and phoning (harder) but meeting a store owner or manager face to face (hardest!) is the way to go. At least – that’s what’s worked best for me so far.

16 – Can you tell us a little bit about your current project?

I have just finished writing the third and final book in the Distance Series. This one is called Surfacing and I hope to have it published over the next few months. I’m editing like mad at the moment!

Please share your social media links:
Website – http://www.nenedavies.com
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/nenedavieswrites
Twitter: – @Nene_Davies
Amazon: – Nene Davies

THE DISTANCE SERIES

in a nutshell…

Distance
Take a passionate couple, a rock-solid family and an idyllic life on the West Wales coast. Throw in an outrageous dream, a life-changing situation and a difficult grandmother. Add a teaspoon of luck and a bucketload of love, mix in a dollop of emotion, a river of conflict – and stir!

Further
Isobel Richardson is torn. With an elderly dependent mother on one side of the world and her husband and children in Australia, her priorities are drifting further and further away from one another. She tries to stretch around the globe with a hand on each household, but guess what? She can’t. If only she could be in two places at once; be everything to everyone. Perhaps then her family wouldn’t be falling apart.

Surfacing
(coming soon)
Isobel’s life has changed. All but destroyed one sunshiny day; just like that, when she wasn’t looking. She needs to wake up and realise that unless she starts swimming, the waters might close completely over her head.