Retreat into Paradise - Fact or Fiction?

Yea is a delightful country town set in beautiful countryside around 110km north east of Melbourne. In the late 1980s my then-husband was keen to ‘go farming’ in the district and we bought a 147 acre paddock. It contained an old boundary fence, a small dam, and a few well-established trees.

We agreed on a ‘deal’ at the start of our adventure. ‘Okay’, said this inner-urban author, ‘I’ll help you realise your farm dream, but I’ll stick to the garden. The animals are all yours.’ Famous last words. Pretty soon I was roped into chasing cows and driving the ute across steep grassy slopes.

We progressively built a shed in which we parked a caravan as temporary weekend accommodation, then a second shed for hay storage, and eventually we built a large house.

Farm at Yea

As city slickers (we both had senior full-time roles in the finance sector) we had to learn the ropes as farmers, and our patient teacher-turned-friend throughout the next 15 years was our next-door neighbour, Pat Drysdale. We were in our forties and she was considerably older. Pat and I enjoyed many laughs, often at the macho ways of men around cattle, and some years into our friendship I promised her that one day I’d write a book about her.

The real Pat Drysdale

But first I needed to expand my writing skillset beyond the non-fiction style required by the business world. As a compulsive reader I'd always been keen on the escapism of mysteries and historical romances, but as a writer I’d been imprisoned for years by the concept of the literal truth. To free myself up, I joined several romance writing groups known to provide excellent training in their craft and obtained valuable feedback by entering several competitions. In the end, for this first attempt at a novel, I compromised between fact and fiction.  

Unfortunately, by the time I had much of an inkling about 'how to write a novel', Pat Drysdale had left this world. Sadly, I’d left my run too late for us to giggle together about her proposed starring role - but it was not too late to write an actual story.

‘Retreat into Paradise’ is dedicated to Pat. But how could I create a character where she was the teacher but the story carried narrative tension? How could I shape the rather mundane if amusing events in our daily lives to create a story of possible interest to others?

I came up with the concept of a love triangle, where the characters were in their twenties and thirties. Their interactions drove the story. Settings for romances usually need to be over-the-top, so I used exaggeration and embellishment to describe the cast of characters and the physical attributes of our farm.

After the pressure of exercising my powers of imagination, it was comparatively easy to build a genuine adventure into the story - the discovery of a new world. For a start, all of the scenes with the cattle really happened. How could you not fall in love with these beautiful animals? 

Angus Cattle

What's more, we did have a tiger snake intruder under the fridge in our shed. We did run over a wombat at night on the Maroondah Highway near Yarck and wait for hours for a tow truck. I did side-swipe a kangaroo on the Melba Highway. Our tree plantings did attract koalas to our property. We did have a resident bird of prey. We did climb Mt Buller and frequent the Merrijig pub. We did walk across the cracked-dry landscape of Lake Eildon when we should have been drowning under 20 metres of water. An amazing thunderstorm did break our prolonged drought. The Black Saturday bushfire did occur (not while I lived at Yea), as did a fatal head-on collision on the bridge at Murrindindi. Later I witnessed the Westpac rescue chopper in action when it landed at a road accident scene near another home of mine. The challenge was to make these experiences relevant and meaningful within a coherent, flowing story.

Westpac Rescue Helicopter, from https://rescuehelicopter.com.au/

The idea for Philip’s internal conflict originated in the convict heritage of many Australians. My earliest forebears arrived as convicts on the First Fleet in 1788 and in the 1790s, and I was proud of their subsequent achievements. My ex-husband’s convict forebears arrived from Ireland in 1815, convicted of making base money (counterfeiting) and, although they too made good in their new homeland, he was very sensitive about this ‘stain’ on the family name. It was not something to brag about at corporate dinner parties!

Needing to dream up the names for my characters (other than Pat’s name), I went for names consistent with those in a real family. My own. Easy to do when you are a family historian, able to draw on an abundance of interesting names in earlier generations, such as my great grandfather who happened to be a bank manager named Philip Boulton.

Philip Boulton, 1852-1895

Because I was trying to disguise the farm's specific location, to make my story more generic as a rural romance yet make it sound more Australian, I named the farm after Wallumatta Road where my parents once lived at Newport in Sydney.

All that effort finally came together as my first novel, and here’s some of the reader feedback:

• An excellent story, with twists and turns that keep you guessing. I started it Christmas night and finished it Boxing Day, so easy was it to read, loved it.
• Romantic fiction is not normally what I read but I was already familiar with Louisa Valentine’s writing as Louise Wilson, author of some very acclaimed family histories, so I gave it a go and it was well worth it. It is a jolly good story.
• An enjoyable read with great descriptions of country life in rural Victoria.
• I enjoyed the characters in the book and all of the twists in the story.
• It was a great holiday read.
• I enjoyed this romance for many reasons including its wit and humour. It has the requisite amount of sexual tension as well as some very interesting aspects of life on a cattle property.
• I thought for a while - when it got to the slightly racy bits - that it was shaping up to be Fifty Shades of Yea !
• I found it very hard to put down. It is beautifully written and the story very believable.
• I am half way through your book and loving it! As a 50-year-old Yea local, I particularly enjoy the local references- Hamilton Island, Horace the fencer, the Rotary Club Art Show, a young Pat Drysdale, the local hospital with the helipad opposite and the Yea PS Skipping Team! I have recommended it to everyone!
• Termed fiction but containing so much fact! I had an idea you may kill off the hero with a twist somewhere, but he survived to ride into the sunset! Loved it all and am now about to find your next one.
• An American reader, unaware of the concept of 'outback Australia', gave the book five stars for 'clean relationship-building, working out differences, overview of cattle operations in the outback'.

Grab your paperback or digital copy of 'Retreat into Paradise' at your favourite online retailer using this link.

Then, why not try my second novel, 'Trading Secrets'? Set in Sydney's financial markets and an infertility clinic, it can be ordered here.

Or my latest novel 'Still Waters Run Deep', all about two young couples struggling with lives not going according to plan, available here.

I continue to grapple with the question - am I writing ‘romances’ or ‘women’s fiction’? With three novels completed, I’m still not sure. They are not 'girly love stories', to quote a male cousin. It’s the quality of the developing relationships between kind and loving people that interests me, and is what I focus on as a writer. But, as the heroes and heroines in my novels have a happy ending, technically my stories fit the 'romance' genre. 

If you're a Babyboomer like me (born in the years 1946-1964) or a Gen Xer (1965-1980), my daughter’s age group, you are bound to connect with the worlds portrayed in my books, but I'd be very happy to hear from younger readers who also enjoy my stories. Connect with me by following my Louisa Valentine Facebook page. Or check out my website, which I share with my alter ego Louise Wilson.