Episode Details

I thought I’d send through a bit of background to give a sense of where I’m coming from at the moment. A lot of what I’ve been working on sits around recovery, place, narrative, and independent publishing, particularly how those shift once you’re outside the metro centres.

Living up here in Far North Queensland has been a big part of that. The move north, out of the craziness that is Sydney, and into a quieter, more isolated environment really changed how I approached writing, and what I was able to finish. Moving here has been one of the best decisions I’ve made, the weather’s lifted recently and it’s looking pretty stunning up here. If you even come up, drop in. I’m in a cottage in the rainforest near Kuranda, about 40 minutes outside of Cairns on the range.

I originally came up to write Melted, which is more explicitly about recovery and rebuilding, but being here, brought me back to The Bike, which had been sitting unfinished for about twenty years.

Btw - I got it back 1 year to the day I left Sydney.

Part of that shift came through an accident not long after I arrived. I ended up laid up for weeks in the cottage, recovering in the rainy season on painkillers, with a fan pushing humid air around, and not much else to do but sit still. I started going back through old manuscripts, and I couldn’t start Melted while The Bike was still unfinished. It felt like I’d ignored part of myself and it played on me, until I had to complete before I could move start anything new.

The book comes out of lived experience, but what mattered to me in finishing it was how to represent that world from within, rather than stepping outside it twenty years on and sober. The structure, rhythm, and language follow that logic, it unfolds continuously over three days, with no real pause or release, staying close to action and dialogue with very little reflective distance. The aim was to let the form mirror the internal logic of that world, cyclical, procedural, and always moving, so the reader feels the pressure of it, rather than being told about it.

I wasn’t interested in explaining that world from the outside or framing it morally. I wanted to build it from within where violence, addiction, and movement aren’t themes, they’re the system itself. A huge part was also about giving voice to lives that are often misrepresented, moralised, or simply ignored in Australian literature, and allowing those experiences to exist with some level of dignity, because those voices matter.

I’ve also been thinking more broadly about publishing. I’ve recently set up an independent press, initially around recovery and transformation, but increasingly focused on regional writing up here in FNQ, voices that sit outside the Sydney/Melbourne centres and don’t always find a natural path to publication.

I’ve attached a headshot and the book cover for context. Happy to send copies of The Bike through as well, and keen to hear how you’d like to approach promoting it via Banned Books. I’m very happy to sign or inscribe copies if that’s useful.

A few pieces are here if helpful:

https://www.bluemariposapress.com/stories

Happy to let the conversation go where it goes, but I imagine we might end up somewhere around writing, publishing, regional life, questions of voice, and censorship, particularly how it operates indirectly in what does and doesn’t find a path to publication. If there’s anything you’d like to focus on, or anything else you need, just let me know.

Stories by Jeremey

Working on the Covid line

https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/covid-line/

Suburban Fight Club

https://asenseofplacemagazine.com/suburban-fight-club/

A Meaty