Get Booked – Eliza Henry – Jones, Salt & Skin 170723

Welcome to today's Get Booked. I'm Hazel Butterfield and a huge book fan, so I absolutely love doing this show. Get Booked is all about talking to authors chatting about anything and everything books related and all the joy, enlightenment, and escape that good books can provide. Sit back and let us entertain you with a different guest each week, sharing who they are, what they do, and what inspires them. Today on the show, we are going to be chatting to the author Eliza Henry-Jones about her book Salt and Skin. Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, photographer Luda Mannigan leaves Australia for a commission, bringing her two teenage children to a remote, weather-ravaged, but beautiful Scottish island. Luda, isolated from her two resentful teenagers, turns her attention to the records from the 17th-century island witch hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women. Min, her daughter, restless and strong, tries to fill up the space in their family left by her father. She soon finds comfort in both the sea and an unlikely friendship. But the only thing that beautifully and gifted Darcy cares about is getting marks high enough for entry into university, one very, very far away from his mother. Until he meets the wild Findling Theo, who's slowly self-destructing in a community that is both protective and violent towards him. But when a tragic accident unleashes ghosts and the echoes of long-ago violence and betrayal in their lives, the Mannigans must confront their unspoken histories in order to survive. Luminously written, Salt and Skin is a compelling modern family drama threaded with folklore, and building to an incredible climactic ending. It's a story of wild landscapes, incomers, outsiders, and changelings, and a meditation on the absence of women's voices in stories and history. And like a hymn to the sea, it is unpredictable, startling, and beautiful. Oh, so incredibly beautiful. Eliza Henry-Jones is a writer and academic based on a little flower farm in Victoria, Australia. Her previous novels have been listed for multiple literary awards, including the ABIA, NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and QLD Literary Awards. Her work has also been published widely, appearing in places such as The Guardian, Country Style, The Big Issue, and The Age. Eliza has qualifications in psychology as well as grief, loss, and trauma counseling. These are all evident in her writings in Salt and Skin. It's an absolutely fantastic read. You can find out more about Eliza at Eliza Henry Jones. I love what we do here at GetBooked, and it's making a difference. Opening conversations on mental health and well-being. It's good to talk, say what's going on and how you feel, to engage with people about what you've experienced, dissolve the stigma, not feel as if a part of your life is a no-go zone. Please do check out previous shows at womensradiostation.com/shows/getbooked and on our SoundCloud where you can find the many other incredible shows at Women's and men's radio station. Right, now on to today's guest on Get Booked. For, um, for someone who doesn't normally veer towards books of a kind of fairy or magical nature, the blurb of Salt and Skin got me intrigued and totally didn't disappoint. The way Eliza writes idiosyncrasies is intoxicatingly addictive regardless of a genre proclivity. Salt and Skin is a story of love and connectedness, grief, fitting in and finding your way. Exploring the topic of the damage of global warming and what it's doing to a world of mystical connections with nature, the power of nature and its undiscovered, unexplainable, and incredible healing qualities, as well as appreciating its immense interchangeability. When Luda and her two children emigrate from Australia to help document the decay in the northern Scottish Isles and increase awareness of global warming, What unfolds is a journey of past and present woes of humanity, understanding ourselves, each other, finding strength, connection, and who we are and who we want to be with each other. It was fantastic. I was completely hooked right from the beginning. Um, thank you so much to Eliza Henry-Jones for joining us on Get Booked. How are you? I'm really good, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, you're very welcome. Do you know what I've been— this is one of those books where I've literally had it everywhere with me waiting to go in for a yoga session or waiting at the bus stop or whatever. And people keep on stopping me and asking what it's about. It was very— just the title, Salt and Skin, you— it could be anything and it just really gets people intrigued. And when I told people, they were just like, right, okay, let me know how I can get hold of this. And I love this because I read books all the time for my work. And I love it when a book just really piques people's interest immediately, and, and I'm sure you've been getting that response. Um, it's always lovely to hear that people are intrigued by it, by the COVID and the title. Um, that's awesome. Yeah, it's, um, it's been out for about a year in Australia, and it's been— it's, it's so exciting to have it coming out in the UK. I'm absolutely wrapped. Yeah, I gather you're going to be coming over as well and doing a launch party in Scotland, obviously. Yes, um, I'll be launching it in Glasgow, and I'll also be doing some other events sort of scattered, scattered around the UK. So, um, there's details about them on my website if anyone's interested. Yeah, just a quick reminder to everybody, they can pop on to elizahenryjones.com.au where they can find out a little bit more about you. Uh, why don't we kick off by just telling us a little bit more about yourself, who you are. Well, I'm Eliza. I live in the Yarra Valley, which is about an hour outside of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. I am currently very, very chilly. We're in the middle of winter, and, um, I think people just don't think of Australia as being quite a chilly place, but, um, we, we get chilly. We get chilly in winter. And, um, yeah, I think my, my background's in psychology and grief, loss, and trauma counseling. And I kind of thought that people didn't make a living from writing. I thought that— I knew that, you know, there was some, you know, mystical, mystical kind of magical people that were writing books somewhere, but I had no idea how to actually make it across the line. Um, so I— yeah, I did psychology, I did counseling, I worked in drug rehab for quite a few years, and I just sort of kept writing on the side. And, um, Salt and Skin is my fifth novel, so third novel for adults. And my— I've also done two novels for young adults. And, um, yeah, all of my work kind of circles issues around grief and trauma and connection and families. Um, and yeah, maybe, maybe one day I'll write something that has a bit lighter and has a different focus, but that's sort of so far Yeah, I just— that's what I keep coming back to. Well, you've got a quite, as I said, kind of intoxicating way that you write where it just draws people in. And just because it is about grief and— yeah, I've seen what your other books are about as well. Just because they're about grief and finding connection where there's been trauma, It doesn't mean that the books are depressing in any way. It's quite uplifting because it's, it's understanding that we all go through stuff. And also sometimes it's nice to find some connectedness, understanding that other people just go through craziness and we don't all have to follow a particular line and be this picture-perfect Instagram world where everything's just dandy because it's not. But it, it's I thought the way you wrote was kind of beautiful. I just thought it was fantastic. And I mean, as I said as well, normally books of a kind of magical nature, I'm like, yeah, that doesn't wash with me normally. I just, I loved it. I really loved it. You really brought a kind of modern twist to a fairy nature. Thank you so much. And can I say you can do all of my book intros from now on? Yeah. The thing is, as well, I've got a friend, one of my works where she loves anything like this, and she was just like, "Wait, how come you're reading this kind of genre?" And I was like, "Oh my God, it's fantastic." She goes, "If you think this is fantastic as well, right, I'm having this next." I'm like, "Go buy the book, buy the book." But no, I just thought, yeah, absolutely fantastic. And I just, I'm intrigued to know where the inspiration came from because it's The research alone must have been immense. It was immense, and I actually ended up turning it into a PhD. So Salt and Skin, the novel, was sort of the creative part of a PhD because I just really wanted that structure, and I felt so daunted by, by, by the immensity of this work because all of my other books had really already been in an area that I was really familiar with. That was set solely in Australia. They were around issues that I already had existing knowledge. And Salt and Skin is really— it's right from the very start, it was its own beast, and it was, it was a lot. Um, you know, it's set on a very, very much fictionalized version of the Orkneys, and I don't call them the Orkneys in the book because, um, I've just taken far too many, um, oh, what would that word be, I've just, I've gone my own way. I've really, really gone my own way with it. So I didn't want to actually say that it was the Orkney Islands. And, um, I think for me it was around visiting St. Magnus Cathedral on a trip in 2017. And for those of you who might not be familiar, St. Magnus is this absolutely beautiful kirk in the capital of the Orkneys, Kirkwall. And they began constructing it in 1137. And back then, you know, the Orkneys were still under Norse rule, and it was a very, very different place. But, um, what really captured my interest was the fact that during the 17th century witch hunts, the Kirk was where those, um, where those accused of witchcraft were actually incarcerated. So you can actually still see this hole up in the wall You can still see the hangman's ladder. You can still actually see the physicality of these really traumatic histories. And I just couldn't let that idea go. And the fact that these women— and I do, I do say women, and I say women even though 10% of those accused of witchcraft on the Orkneys were men from the fragmented records that have been pieced together. But my focus was the women that were accused, so that's why I'm talking about the women. And I was just really shocked but kind of, kind of fascinated by how, how often they were sort of quite marginalized members of the community. And that definitely wasn't the story for all people accused of witchcraft. It really was quite, um, quite cross-sectional. Um, but you often had these very marginalized women, and they were assumed to have these huge powers over raising the dead and promising fruitfulness in nature and calling in storms and ruining crops. And I just found that juxtaposition really interesting. And also, obviously, um, based on just oppressing people who had showed any strength of a female nature. Yes, exactly. And I think we collectively like to think that we've evolved far beyond those sorts of collective acts of violence and oppression. And, you know, like, there's— like to think so, right? I think we like to think it. And with Salt and Skin, I actually really wanted to explore the fact that no, we haven't. These patterns of violence, they're, they're still being exemplified in so many different ways. Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, as I was reading it, I was just seeing like Yes, you were talking about 17th century kind of witch hunts, but you know, we're still living in 21st century witch hunts where if women don't do what keeps them in their lane, they are, they are classed as being harpies, you know, they're not, they're not doing as they're supposed to do. They are either sluts or they are wanting too much. And it's the same with men as well. If men aren't doing things that— if they're not staying in their lane, then they are belittled for being not masculine enough. Or, you know, people throw all these different accusations out to try and keep people in their lane. And so much of what you talk about in Salt and Skin just kind of transferred to so many elements of modern life as well. And indeed with the stories that were actually happening, especially with the daughter Min. Sorry, I very nearly forgot her name then. You know, she was expecting— people wanted to try and ridicule her and shame her for just being who she wanted to be and for having strength. Absolutely. And with Min, I, I really didn't want her to have kind of this romantic arc. In the story because I think, you know, you've got sort of this very young, very physical, very vital woman, you know, young woman, um, which is, I think, well, teenager at the start of the book. And I wanted her arc and her focus to be about finding her place and existing in her skin. And yeah, and, um, and that was part of it, just not not following all those kind of tropes. And that's, that's another thing that I think we're really bad at, is, is our capacity to hold space for difficult women characters in fiction. I think we will accept a lot more rubbish from male characters. You know, we can have absolutely atrocious male characters and we'll be like, I'm still, I'm still intrigued, he's all right, he's a good lad. But as soon as you have a woman who has that, that really flawed character and who does morally ambiguous things, suddenly we were kind of— we're very easily gotten offside, I think. And that fascinated me. And Luda, the mother in Salt and Skin, she's, she's a very, um, she's a difficult woman. She's quite flawed, she's quite complex. And trying to strike that balance with her was really difficult because I wanted her to be flawed and complex and to do these morally questionable things, but I still want to there to be this element to her that you still connected with, so you were still kind of, you know, engaged with her and invested. Um, yeah, and that was really hard. I can imagine, because you— the more we have these flawed characters that have good intentions that are female, the more we get used to it and we normalize it and we stop trying to make such a big thing of it because alternatively, if it was a male character, we wouldn't be as bothered. And I think it's important for, you know, in the same way there was lots of incredibly strong male characters who were flawed but supportive. And the thing is, we need to point out there were lots of really supportive men out there, and you just gently did it, and I liked that. It was a really nice mixture of the two and a kind of devil-may-care attitude. And also the element of the priest and the position he took and kind of the twist at the end just had me kind of going, oh my God, history! Um, and I think it's a lot harder, I think Obviously having it situated on an island where sometimes things can be a little bit more backwards as well, I think it really helped bring the story together. Yeah, he's a bit villainous, the priest. Yeah, I did have a bit of fun. I did have a bit of fun with him. He's almost a little bit of a stereotype, but I did enjoy writing him. I kind of had visions of you sitting there maybe with a glass of wine just going, right, let's go to town on the priest. Again. It was because it's nice to write bad characters. Although, I mean, it was quite cathartic. And, um, although I have to say, um, I wish it was wine. It was— I wrote a lot of those scenes during lockdown when I was hitting the Baileys really hard, so not quite as dignified as the wine. Well, you know, Baileys, it's got its place in writing, I do believe. Well, to be honest, also when you're writing, you need to maximize your time as well, and Bailey's is basically like a meal and a drink in one. It's an alcoholic milkshake. So do you think that was your favorite part to write, maybe writing the priest? Because I know that, you know, it's fun to write the worst characters, or was there a different part that you loved? I really love Tristan. So he's this archaeologist that kind of befriends this family and kind of connects with them all. And, and he came into the piece fairly late, um, and I just, I needed more levity, I needed more humor, I needed more light in the narrative. I just find it really hard to exist in story worlds that are unrelentingly dark. Yeah. And so I think that's something that I always do, even though my novels are quite serious and they do deal with dark themes. I do try to balance that out with humor and connection and, you know, I guess the humanness of the human side of those experiences. And, um, yeah, Tristan's just— I really enjoyed writing him. He was just an effortless character. He just strode on in fully formed and just ingratiated himself into all these scenes, and he I didn't really have to do much thinking. He was just there and he just did it all himself. It's quite lovely. Wow, I like that. Do you know what? That's not the character I would have picked, but it's nice to hear that. And, um, yeah, um, I mean, there's not really a sequel to this book, is there? No, although my neighbor, when she got to the end— she was reading the ebook version, so she didn't know the end was coming— she texted me at about, oh, in the wee hours of the morning, all in caps, and said that I had ruined her life and that she demanded an epilogue. Yep, the ending. I've also had people email me and just say, to tell me that they love the ending of the book, which has never happened to me before. And I've also had people like my neighbor get in touch to say, what was that? And yeah. I do know what I completely get where they're coming from because it was, it was a, it was a fantastic ending, but I was like, have 4 or 5 pages been ripped out of the back? You can't leave it there. But sometimes that's the, that's the sign of a good book when you've got to go and sit somewhere for an hour and just pontificate over the next, what the next few pages would be for you. It's, um, yeah, it's been, it's been really interesting getting people's responses to the ending. But for me, it was always going to end at that point. I, um, started this book when my son was a newborn, and I couldn't actually get to my laptop and type, so I was just thinking and daydreaming and thinking and thinking and thinking about all the scenes I wanted to write and all the things I wanted to explore. And it eventually just became so big that I was too intimidated to actually start it. So Gloriously. It is, it's a lot. And, um, yeah, deliriously in the wee hours one morning, got my phone out and just cranked out about 3 or 4,000 words of verse, just to— just little scenes, little snippets. And for some reason that was less scary, and that, that was my foothold into the story. And, um, most of that ended up, um, getting deleted, you know, sort of like scaffolding. And as I built the walls and the roof of the story, the scaffolding was able to be removed. But that ending, that last paragraph, it's almost word for word what I wrote in that first poem. So that was always the point I was headed to. That was kind of a real guiding touchstone. Um, do you know what though, it's interesting that you say that about just find— just actually getting started, because so many people have a book in them that they just can't comprehend how to get started, but the point is just start scribbling and it will flow if it's meant to. And sometimes it doesn't and you have to come back to it. And, you know, out of maybe 100,000 words that you write, only maybe 30% of it is going to be anywhere in there, but you just have to start, let it flow. Some of it you'll love, some of it you won't. That's what editing is all about, but just start, right? Absolutely. And I mean, Salt and Skin was a, it was a pretty violent writing and editing process. It ended up being just over 100,000 words and I threw out 250,000 words during the editing process. It was savage. Yeah, I was underestimating. Yeah. Wow. I mean, it's interesting to hear because this is what, like, is this your 5th book? Yes. So yeah, you'd think I would have worked it out a bit better by now, but apparently not. Well, it'd be very boring if you suddenly just sat down and went, right, this is the story, quick grammar check, bang, send it over to the publisher. It just doesn't function. Can you imagine? I know, I actually can't. So, um, you've written You write a lot about young adults. They're the main focus point. Is there a reason for that? Um, I just really like writing about young adults. I, I'm— I find that— I found that period in my own life quite fascinating when you're sort of on the cusp of adulthood and everything's kind of— I don't know, there's all this tension between, you know, the patterns of your childhood and your adult self and finding yourself and, and how you kind of make sense of that. And, you know, the terror and the thrill and the excitement of all the possibilities. And just making mistakes and learning from being scared to make mistakes. And I just, you know, as I say to my own kids, I'm like, God, make mistakes, otherwise how are you going to learn? Can you imagine if you went through life never making mistakes or never even trying? And and having a bit of— it teaches you humility and understanding of other people and the mistakes they make as well. But, you know, I thought I knew everything when I was 16, 17. I definitely thought I knew more at 16 and 17 than I do now at 41. Mhm. And it's just, yeah, you're, you're kind of shackled by what you can do, but you have these immense hopes of what you could do and could be. And it's such an interesting time in our lives. I mean, my kids are 13 and 16, very nearly 17, and I just sit there sometimes and just go, oh God, that's been wild. Must be wild having kids that age. My child's 4 and I'm still stunned on a daily basis that he's actually this little, little person that hasn't whole interior world and thoughts and feelings and all that complexity. And it's like, when did that happen? Like, I just gave birth to you last week. This is weird. Yeah, I'm very much the same. Like, with even with my nearly 17-year-old, he comes out with things and I'm like, dude, like, I remember when I could tell you something and you'd just believe it. And, um, and I'll just, just wait, right? Fast forward 10 years. Where they think you're in your 80s and you've never actually lived a day on Earth, and they're teaching you the basics. Like, literally, they think that they've created the science of understanding the world. It's brilliant. You, you're going to really enjoy that, and you're probably going to write about it. Looking forward to it. Yeah, well, um, get back to me on that in about 10 years. Oh, bless him. So I guess your son, he knows what you do for a living. Does he ever want you to read out to him a little bit from your books? Um, he's got a copy of a couple of my books that he has on his little special shelf in his room. Um, he hasn't asked me to read out anything, but he'll often come into my office and start typing away on my laptop doing his work. Um, once he sat there for 10 minutes and told me he'd finished his PhD thesis, and it's like, oh, okay, that looks— that looked pretty easy. Yeah, well done, mate. Well done. Um, but he's not— maybe it'll— the penny will drop a little bit more when he starts reading himself. He's just, he's just on the edge now. He's starting to write, he's starting to recognize a lot of letters and words. Um, so he's 4, so I think next few years he'll probably— next couple of years he'll probably kind of go, oh, that's what Mum does. Yeah, brilliant. And then, and in the meantime, you're just someone there to kind of pick up after him and make sure he's fed 23 times a day. Yeah, that's exactly, that's, that's exactly right. Parenting. Now, are you a huge reader yourself? I read everything I can get my hands on, really. Yeah, I'm, I'm looking now as we chat over Zoom, and in the background I can just see hundreds of books So I kind of— it was either that or it was just a really dodgy wallpaper that you'd put on. My little books. Oh, there's even more. There's even more. Yeah. And I love it. I do that as well, where I have my plants kind of cascading down as well, just to shove a little bit of nature in there. Um, is there something that you've read recently that you'd love to recommend? Oh goodness. Oh no, I need to actually turn and look at my shelf now. Um, what have I read recently? Oh, oh, I read this, um, A Horse at Night. Um, I actually picked this up when I was in London earlier this year, and it absolutely knocked my socks off. So it's A Horse at Night on writing by Amina Cain, and it's just incredible. I'm Googling it right now. Yes, Google it. It's, it's an essay collection and it's kind of on, on writing and being and creativity and just existing in the world. And she has this uncanny ability to just, in the most simple language, just drill down to these feelings and thoughts that I've always had but never really been able to articulate. It's, um, well, yeah, one of those books. Yeah, I love those, that sometimes you read a sentence and even though you're not even through the paragraph, you have to stop because you have to think those thoughts over and justify it in your head as to that's what you've been trying to decipher and kind of— yeah, one of those ones. Oh, I love those ones. And, um, I know, you know, no one will be able to see except you, but, um, I, I fold down the corners of Sorry about that. I fold down the corners of my pages when, when something particularly strikes me. And I'd say some books I'll go through and there'll be like 2 folded pages. I'd say in this one there'd be more folded pages than unfolded pages because she's just incredible. Oh, that's so good. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that, um, actually on my list. There you go. Amazon, the ebook has just been put into my basket. I like the COVID as well. Amazing. So retro, isn't it? It's beautiful. Yeah, so there we go, and I've just done it. Brilliant. Wow. Um, so something that I do like to ask all my guests here on Get Booked are, and this should be quite interesting with your psychological background, um, and your knowledge on grief and so many different areas of trauma, um, what would be your 3 top tips on just trying to keep a good level of mental health and well-being? I think the first one for me is getting outside and just— I also grow flowers on my farm. I've got horses. So when I'm not tapping away very aggressively, I only type with 2 fingers. So I type very aggressively with my two little fingers. So when I'm not doing that inside hunched up on the couch, um, I really try to get outside in the dirt and with my horses and, you know, squint up at the sun and just get outside. Um, I think that that is a really important counterbalance for how much writing forces you to be in your head. And I think I'm keeping this kind of writer, writer's specific. But, um, the other thing I think is really important is to really prioritize cultivating the joy in the process, because I think there's so much uncertainty with writing anything, let alone a book. And the thing that you can control, and the thing that has the capacity, I think, to give you the most back, is through the process itself. So writing the book that you want to pick up off the shelf that isn't there writing about things that excite you and thrill you and engage you, you know, writing in a way that makes it as enjoyable as possible for you. And that doesn't mean, you know, you just sit there grinning at the screen, you know, with possibly more than two fingers on the keyboard, but just prioritizing that because, you know, time's so precious. And I think, and I do honestly believe that the more you find ways to engage with your own writing process, the more that's going to shine through in the actual work, and the more it's going to breathe, and the more resonance it's going to have. You can sense when someone's got joy from doing something. I mean, I had an absolute— I mean, I, I struggled with it. It was the hardest book I've written, Salt and Skin, by far. But I absolutely loved it, you know. I, I found that process incredibly thrilling and exciting, and you know, the characters felt very real to me, and I almost went through a bit of a grieving process when I finished writing it because it dies in a way because you're not constantly thinking of, you know, little scenes that you're going to add in and how you're going to tweak a certain character, or, you know, funny, funny snappy little line that you're going to get one of them to say. But it takes on this new life where suddenly people are coming up to you and saying, oh, I loved how you did this, or I noticed so-and-so, or, you know, all these things that you'd never considered. So it sort of takes on this other life. Um, so it's a little bit of a tangent, but my final, final thought on that would probably be having non-writer friends as well as writer friends. Yeah. Um, I think that I absolutely adore my writing friends. I've got just the most beautiful, talented, passionate people, um, and I'm so grateful for that. But I think you need writer friends and then you need You need people that just don't ever pick up books, people that remind you that there's this whole world outside of publishing and reading and books. I found, I found that really important. Do you know what? It's interesting because I'm so heavily embedded in a writing community, especially with doing this show. But being a huge reader means that you tend to gravitate, especially on social media, with people who just love books and want to chat about them. And the majority of my close friends that I see on a day-to-day basis could possibly read a book a year, and that's at a push. And it's so interesting where you suddenly just go, you have, you have some people you speak to all the time, say on Instagram or Twitter, bizarrely, people you do actually meet at book launches and things like that, who, you know, can read 3 books a week. And then all of a sudden you just got someone saying, yeah, reading's just not my thing. And you're like, huh? And then you get reminded that actually it isn't the be-all and end-all, and you need to come out of that little world sometimes. Because it's, you know, it's a very dazzling, glorious, very supportive world. But, um, yeah, I think it's just healthy to be reminded that there are, you know, all these other things existing there too. Yeah, I love the fact that your life consists of— and I'm very jealous that you've got a 4-year-old Um, but you, you know, you live on a flower farm and you, and you write and you kind of hang out with horses. I think that's just absolutely brilliant. And you live— do you live in quite a kind of remote part of Melbourne? Because I kind of see that at the bottom of your website says, I live and work on the unceded lands of the— and I'm probably going to pronounce this incorrectly— Wurundjeri people. And you pay respect to elders past. Is that— did I say it right? Yes, um, the Wurundjeri people, and that's just kind of, um, that's probably half of Melbourne. Um, the suburb that I live in is called Sylvan, and it's about an hour and a bit out of the city, so it's fairly country. Like, I think we've got a grocery store, a tractor shop, and a post office. Wow, COVID must have been great for you guys. Oh, we, we, we got to go out of our, um, 5K. We had to go out of our 5K bubble to actually get to the grocery shop, like to get to the supermarket, the closest supermarket in the next town. So, um, yeah, so it's where I think too remote to commute into Melbourne, not for a 9-to-5 job every day, but we're close enough that I can pop in there for like book launches and events and little bits and pieces to stay feeling connected, which is really lovely. But you, you kind of have that, that distance and you can kind of just chill in your own space and the craziness, get away from the craziness. I love that. I do know certain parts of, um, Victoria, and I've got family who, after finally giving up with the 40-odd degree heat of Queensland, Townsville area, they suddenly just went, right, we're off to Victoria, we're gonna hang on the outskirts of Melbourne and just kind of sit there with a jumper on for half the year. Brilliant, bring it on. But yeah, oh yeah, the heat up in the heat up around town, the humidity up around Townsville, oh, just kills me. So beautiful up there, but oh, they managed a good 20 years there and I absolutely loved it. I mean, as Brits love the heat, you know, temporarily, uh, and then we come back and go, oh well, there we go. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, I do love it around where you are, but haven't seen enough of the outer areas, but my, my uncle lives kind of on the border of, near Adelaide, I do believe. But, um, oh yeah, yeah, so he absolutely loves it. Um, so finally, we're kind of racing through. I really wanted to talk about some of your other novels, but we're going to run out of time. But just a quick reminder to all of our listeners to pop on to elizahenryjones.com.au and pop on the novels and young adult novels section to find out a little bit more about you, so that when they're buying Salt and Skin, they fall in love with it, they know they've got another 4 books that they can sink their teeth into. But I do like to ask all my guests who they admire in the public eye, because there's a lot of incredibly boring people out there that we don't want to be taking on board what they have to say. But it's nice to hear about good people out there. Oh goodness, there are so, so many public figures that I admire. I think I'll have to go with Florence Welch just because I recently saw her concert when she was touring down in Australia, and I absolutely love her music. I listen to it a lot when I write, and I just, I love her concerts, um, and I just think she's very talented. And yeah, I wish I could write the book versions of her songs. Wow, I like that. What a cracking answer. Well, thank you so much for joining us on Get Booked, the women's and men's radio station. I genuinely, absolutely, thoroughly love Soul and Skin, and all the best of luck with the launch in the UK and doing your launch parties here, there, and everywhere, predominantly up in Glasgow. Um, and I'm sure you're gonna get equally fantastic praise for the book. Oh, thank you so much, and thanks so much for having me. You're very welcome. When you release the next book, please do give us a shout and send me a copy. I'll buy it, obviously. Thank you so much. No, thank you. Eliza has very kindly done an author-read extract of Salt and Skin. Here it is now. I'm sure you're going to absolutely love it. Chapter 1. February, their first year. The boat had seemed large at the dock, but now that they're rumbling away from Big Island, it seems flimsy and ludicrously small. Luda tries to think of the last time she'd been on a boat before coming to the islands. Years ago, someone's 30th birthday on the thick marshy water of the Hope Turn River back home in Australia. Even back then the river's level had been low, and the unpleasant smell of wet things made dry had permeated the boat, making people drink more than they should have. Ewan whistles under his breath, doing whatever a seafarer does in the cabin of their boat. Luda's two children, Darcy and Min, are out on the deck with her. Darcy, the eldest, is slouched against the gunwale, looking as though he's waiting for a late bus that's going to take him from one bland place to another. Min, 2 years younger, clutches at a pile of rope. Luda notices, but does not point out, that it's not fastened to anything. Min is pale and looks almost bewildered by the world viewed from the small and rumbling fishing boat. When she notices Luda's gaze, she scowls. Fierce, fractious little Min, who is not so little anymore. 14, Luda thinks, with the usual jolt of shock. She's 14. Yuan cuts the engine and the boat immediately begins a slow spin in the currents. The intimate sound of water against the side of the boat. Yuan comes out of the cabin, he's bending low over his eyes. "You can really see the erosion of the cliffs from here," he says and points. Of course. Lyra has almost forgotten why she's here. Almost. They have been here a week. Yuan is trying to help her find her feet as quickly as possible, so that she can get on with the work of documenting the damage climate change is doing to these islands. Taking photos, writing funding applications. It is, she knows, not a particularly popular topic in the local fishing circles. Through his subcontracting to the council for these sorts of climate change adjacent projects, Ewan has made himself something of a pariah. Still, he smiles at him now. Smelling of coffee and brine, he looks far older than 27. Luda studies the shoreline that Ewan's pointing to. It's low tide now, the sea pulled back to reveal a short sloped skirt of rippling sand up to the base of the overhanging rock. Figures walk along the sand leaving silvery footprints, their pants rolled up, shoes in hand, now cavorting, chasing each other, a mother and child, Luda thinks, but the shore's a bit too far away to be sure. She cocks her digital SLR camera, focuses on the cliff face, the beach, the figures which, with her camera's zoom, she can now make out more clearly. Yes, a little girl with curling bronze-red hair, she looks 6, or 7 or 8. She's with a muscular woman who is perhaps in her mid-thirties. Luda follows them for a moment with her lens. What she sees is the easy intimacy of a parent and child at this age, the way the child's body still touches the parent's without thought, the mindless automatic easiness of it, had Luda ever appreciated it the way she should have? She misses it now. She feels like a voyeur. They'd have no reason to imagine a camera trained on them from the fishing boat. The eye gives her a little thrill, shivery and darting. "Sandstone," Ewan says. "You can make out the bands of it, see?" Luda has noticed that Ewan engages in quick, heavy bursts of interaction and then retreats back into himself. He continues to talk about erosion and deposition behind her, further along on the deck. He will be talking to Min but it is Darcy who will be listening closely, storing the information up in that terrifying vault of a brain he has. Min tends to let information trickle over her, off her, like water. She remembers the broad strokes of things and how they fit together, while Darcy has always been preoccupied with the finest details. Luda snaps a few frames. She inspects them and is impressed by the mood of the midwinter light. She had expected it to be perhaps glaring or dull. She lifts the camera back to her eye, trains it back on the cliffs, and then the world collapses. A cracking sound, a flurry of movement as sheets of rock fall onto the narrow sloping beach. Stillness, and then the awful keening of a woman parted from her child. "Ali! Ali! Ali!" Swearing, Ewan hurtles into the cabin, fires up the engine, and begins making calls on his phone. For a moment, the three mannequins are alone on the deck. Min and Darcy watch their mother, still peering through the lens of her camera. "Jesus," Darcy says over the throb of the engine. "Mum, put it down." Luda looks up. Her face is bright, almost feverish. Her horror has twisted itself into something that makes Darcy show his teeth. Ewan eases the boat as close as he can to the shore, and then he drops the anchor and throws himself off the side into the water. He swims until he can touch the sandy bottom, then he begins an awkward lunging. Darcy follows, his freestyle strokes unpracticed but still somehow graceful. Min, who has never swum more than a few strokes here and there, hangs over the water's edge, white-faced. Luda, who can swim better than either of her children, stands up. Min spins around. "Don't! Don't go!" Min has always been the bolder of her children. The sort who insisted on dressing herself from before she was 2, who used to scream until Luda unhitched the leading line from her pony's bridle. The panic in her voice is new, and so Luda sits down on the deck, holding her camera in both hands. On the shore, Ewan helps the woman dig frantically through the rubble. Darcy stands in the shallows, staring up at the cliff face from which stones still trickle. "Move!" he yells, his voice carrying over the water. Ewan looks up at the woman, bloody-fingered from scrape of the rocks does not. Ewan grunts and pulls the woman away from the rubble. She fights him, fingernails and teeth. "Let me go! Let me go, ali!" Darcy moves quickly to the beach where he wraps a long arm around the woman's waist. He continues to writhe, to kick, to scream. It takes both Darcy and Ewan to pull her away from the cliff face. Min sits down, shuts her eyes and covers her ears. Luda thinks unbidden of red hair tangled under rocks, Blood. No. She can't. She cannot. Luda has long known that the world is full of awful things and that if you let them inside you, if you let yourself linger or think, they'll damage you, these things, as surely as a gun or poison or the flash of a man's fist. ISO. Shutter speed. Aperture. Luda squeezes the camera like she's holding someone's hand. She raises her camera. Takes another photo, then another. Nobody sees. It's just skin. That's all she can capture of a person. Skin. Luda feels like a ghost. Quicksilver. She thinks that this is her power. Chapter 4. February. Their first year. Everyone on the islands knows about Theo. The foundling child. The selkie. Stories of him are passed from person to person, sometimes with words and sometimes without. The knowing is this: Theo runs like he can't quite believe that he has legs. He roars and rages on the wailing cliffs, flinging rocks out into the sea. He collects old shells and rocks and sea glass from the disappearing shorelines. He stores them in his room, piles and piles of rubbish left by the ebbing tides. It makes the whole house smell like salt and rot and damp stone. Iris wrinkles her nose but never comments. He works on a couple of small farms south of the town. He likes the animals and they seem to like him. Cows mostly, a few sheep. They stay close to him if he's mending a fence or pipe in the fields, nibbling at his jumper and snuffling at his hair. The knowing is this: he has webbing between his fingers. Scales too, probably. His fingers are green, they're silver, they're brown and furred like the hide of a seal. The knowing is this: Theo seems calmer with animals than he is with people, soothed by the feel of their warm breath, the sound of them grazing, the cows chewing their cud, the way they drink from the trough or pick their way through the mud near the gates. He was found 10 years ago. His age on that day was estimated to be 7 years old. It is therefore generally accepted that he is now 17. He lives with Iris, who is far too old to have raised a child, who is too old now to be parenting a teenage foundling. He cannot read. He pissed himself until he was 13 years old. He creates strange artworks, all pulsing curling greens and blues. The knowing is this: he hates the Kirk. That he is drawn to the shore of Shawnee. That he will sit there, webbed hands in his lap, looking out at the ever-encroaching sea, trying, everyone says, to find his way home. Please feel free to send me book recommendations, ask to come on the show for a chat. Maybe you're releasing your own book or just want to say hi. Why not? We do have a little bit of time at the end of today's show to just give you sneaky peek on a previous show just to whet your appetite. And as I've mentioned before, please do pop on to the Women's Radio Station SoundCloud to catch up on all the full shows of Get Booked. Thank you so much for joining me for today's Get Booked. Enjoy the rest of your day. Right, it is time to welcome Laura to the show. I'm so happy to have you on the show and discuss not only the book Single Bold Female and so much more. Being a huge book fan yourself and a foodie, such a great combo in my eyes. Let's kick off with you. At the beginning, I described you as an author journalist, podcaster, and a foodie, but there is so much more. You obviously like to keep busy, Laura. Oh, I really do. I'm exceptionally busy, especially also reading all those books. Like, reading takes a lot of time, and I really love it, but I'm just always trying to get through a massive pile of books. Yeah, the TBRs. But do you, like myself, do you sit there reading the books and saying, this is work, I have to do this, this is not me just having time off? I do a little bit, yeah. I also really enjoy it, and I do, I do, I have taught myself to speed read if I'm not enjoying a book. Yes, I've done something vaguely similar as well, because occasionally you kind of know you need to read something, but it's not always as much of a page-turner. Yeah. As you thought it may be. And slightly off air, I was saying that, you know, I quite often have to do a lot of traipsing around for football with my kids, And although I whinge about it, it means that I get to sit in a car for a couple of hours at a time and just read. And I quite like it. Lovely. Yeah. I have to say my top tip is Audible speeding up the play of a book. Because if you're not enjoying it, I will put mine to 1.5 speed and then just, or sometimes I'll even go higher than that. And you've just got the narrator just going blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub blub. But I can still say that I've read that book. Do you ever feel that sometimes it has an effect on your— how you're chatting and you end up talking a little bit at a higher tempo? I don't think so, because usually when I'm listening to an audiobook, it's when I'm spending loads of time by myself, so I don't— I don't then start speaking after it, really. I did, um, I did a show recently with Judy May Murphy, who is a poet, and we were talking about how she embarks set on reading all the classics since the first day of lockdown just to get through it, and even if she just read a page a day. And I've never read Pride and Prejudice. I said, I really feel like I should do it, being, you know, a book fan. And she said, yeah, cool, but get it on Audible and speed it up. Yeah, I like that. There's so many different ways that you can get into books, whether, you know, I think especially in lockdown there's been a lot more people going back to reading because they had the time and realized the mental health benefits and also just the escape and how much better your brain feels for spending an hour reading instead of Candy Crush. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And instead of Instagram. Yes, because Instagram makes us feel so much better about ourselves. So let's jump straight in with Single Bold Female. Um, congratulations, it's absolutely fantastic. A bit of a reminder to all of our listeners that it was released in hardcover and Kindle 14th of April, and it's coming out in paperback on the 19th of January of next year. Uh, fantastic book. It's getting some really good reviews. You must be so happy. Yeah, it's had amazing reviews. I, I was, um, as a debut author, I told myself at the beginning that I was not going to read any reviews because I think I saw some stuff on Goodreads where you can see reviews before it comes out. And I was like, oh, I don't think I can handle that. Like, you would— there would be a review where someone said loads of good things, but they might have said one little bad thing, and then, um, or one little minor criticism, and I'd be like, oh, I don't know. And that would make me think about it. So I said, I'm not going to read any reviews. And then my partner was reading them for me, and he would tell me when there was a good one, he would read it out or screenshot it for me. And after a while, I was like, Do you know what? All the reviews are good, so I'm okay. I can read them. So now I actually do go on and look at the reviews, but sort of with caution, and when I'm feeling okay that day. I wouldn't do it when I was feeling particularly fragile. Yeah, it's about understanding our mindset in that present moment. I think we're such bizarre creatures because we can have 100 people saying nice things to us and then one person says something rubbish or not as positive, and we're crushed. Absolutely. Yeah, the— it's like the weighting of criticism is so much heavier than the weighting of positive feedback. But I heard, I think it was Dolly Alderton said years ago that if you're feeling down on yourself or you've read a bad review of your own book or a criticism of your own work, go to the page online of a book that you really, really love, or an author you really, really love, and, and have a look through their reviews and read a 1-star review of their book that you would give 5 stars, and you'll see that it's just such a subjective thing, and nobody ever gets fully 5 stars from everyone, and there's no single book in the world that everyone loves. Well, that's because we're all, we're all different. Um, that's such a great tip. I remember I wrote a blog post once about why it bothers us so much when someone says something negative to us, because it's, it's incredibly easy to just be nice, but it takes a lot more effort to go out of your way to say something negative to somebody. And I think that's why it affects us, because somebody's gone out of their way to do it. Yeah, I suppose so. But then in the world of reviews, and when you're putting a product out in the world, you're inviting feedback, both good and bad, because you're trying to help other people decide whether they like that book or whether they like that slow cooker or whatever. So when you put yourself out there in the world with either a blog or music or a book or a TV show or whatever it is you're doing in the public eye, unfortunately you invite that criticism and feedback on yourself, on your person. And we do tend to take these things personally, even though my book is not— a criticism of my book is not necessarily a criticism of me as a person, but you can't help taking it that way because our work is so creative and so personal. But, um, yeah, unfortunately it's what comes with doing a public product. And also I think especially when it's a debut, because So you get to a stage— I've spoken to authors when they're like 4th, 5th book in, and they're just— it's like water off a duck's back. They've kind of honed their, their talent and their technique, and they're just so used to it. And also, if you get to the stage where you're releasing 4 or 5 books, you're like, "Enough people like it, I'm good." Yeah, it really depends on the person. So I think, so, you know, some people can be 10 books in, 20 books in, and they still really feel wounded by criticism. So I think it just depends. I don't have a thick skin, unfortunately. I have a thick skin depending on the minutes of the day. Hmm. It really can change. Um, but yeah, sometimes— I mean, this is the power of affirmations, which I used to think a couple of years ago was very woo-woo, but you know, we need to speak more positive— positively to ourselves, and it can rewire our brains and what we're capable of and capable of receiving.