Sailing to success with Helene Young

After 28 years as an airline captain in Australia, Helene Young has swapped the sky for the sea to go in search of adventure with her husband aboard their sailing catamaran. The rural and remote places she visits, along with the fascinating people she meets, provide boundless inspiration for her novels.

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Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            Today I’m chatting with Helen Young. Thanks for joining me Helene.

Helene Young:              Thanks for having me Sarah, it’s lovely to be chatting to you.

Sarah Williams:            We’ve known each other for a few years now. We’re both Queenslanders. Originally met you up in Cannes when you did the Tropical Writers Festival I think in 2016 with Anna Campbell.

Helene Young:              Yes, that was a lovely event and we’re going back up for another one at the end of this year as well, in August this year there’s another Tropical Writers Fest so we’ll miss you if you’re now down in South East Queensland but yeah, I guess it’s like writing life, isn’t it, you get connections in all sorts of strange and wonderful places and it’s nice to still be in contact so thank you.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, no and it was absolutely fantastic and I know you’ve read, reviewed my couple of last books and of course you’ve got the quote on the cover of my new book so thank you for that.

Helene Young:              Well done, you’ve done a sterling job of capturing country life and building some really lovely romances there so well done, watching your career with interest and I’m sure it’s going to continue to take off.

Sarah Williams:            Thank you so much. Because of people like you who are really leading the way with Australian fiction I can’t wait to hear, tell us about your writing journey and how you got into it.

Helene Young:              Mine’s a little longer and little more convoluted than perhaps some authors. I was one of those kids that loved reading, always wanted to be an author but when I eventually left school I really didn’t have any direction and any idea of where I was going to go. I wanted to be a pilot, I knew that as well but really there wasn’t the finances available to just whip off and do a pilot’s license. I went off and did a host of other things before I eventually in my mid thirties I came back to writing. That ironically came about because of flying. We moved from Brisbane to Cannes for my new job with Quantis Link as a first officer and I suddenly found myself having been a flying instructor working long hours to working pretty nice hours in the little Quantus Link airline. I had time on my hands so I sat down and wrote that very first manuscript.

Helene Young:              They say that your first manuscript is always likely to be largely autobiographical and mine was about an Australian girl who goes to Lake District in England and ultimately falls in love with her boss. For those of that know me well, that’s where I met my husband. Anyway I wrote this story and it wasn’t us, it wasn’t about us but it was very much set in the place that we worked and there were people there that way too clearly identifiable, you don’t put real people in your books but certainly they color your story. There would be people up there who would go, “That’s me.” So that story will never see the light of day but it was because of that first manuscript which I shoved in the bottom of a filing cabinet drawer and my husband read it when I was away and rang me to say, “Did you write this? I had no idea you were even writing.” Oh my God, how embarrassing, he’s going to recognize himself, this is horrendous.

Helene Young:              Anyway, one thing led to another, he was the one who said to me you need to submit this, you need to do something with it. I sent it off to a company called [inaudible 00:03:09] Manuscript. I don’t even know if they still exist but down in South Australia and they did manuscript assessments. They sent me back 32 closely typed pages of what needed to be done and the biggest thing was learn your grammar and learn to write again, you can tell a story but you’ve forgotten all the basics. The second great piece of advice was to go and join Romance [inaudible 00:03:29] of Australia. That’s what I did and I put that manuscript in a competition they used to run called the Indasi Award and it came second to ironically, Anna Campbell.

Helene Young:              Anna was the winner that year. I went down to the conference and there was this amazing tribal woman with all this support and all these workshops I could go and so much learning that I could do so I just kept plodding away but I’m not a plotter, I’m one of those people who sits down and goes on a journey with my characters and then gets [inaudible 00:04:03] and goes, “Wow, now what do I do with all this?” And then I start to plot backwards and shape it and put a story arc in it and check the characters acts but that first manuscript will never see the light of day as I keep saying. It really was like I think of it as an apprenticeship, I learnt a great deal about it. I wrote four more manuscripts before the fifth one was finally picked up by Ashead and published as [inaudible 00:04:26] Wings of Fear.

Helene Young:              Along the way I really was never brave enough to submit it. I submitted once to Harlequin and waited 18 months and got the predictable no, sorry, you don’t meet our guidelines and you don’t fit with our story group. I went okay then, never mind. I still didn’t really know what I wrote at that point. I wanted to write romance but I also love action. I’m a John McCuray tragic from way back so I love action in a story, I love suspense in a story, I love intrigue so until finally somebody said to me you write romantic suspense and I went, “Oh, do I? No idea what you’re talking about.” It was a whole journey of discovery of that fact that there are genres and you kind of need to be able to not necessarily pigeon hole yourself but you need to be able to say to readers and also publishers, this is where I fit on your bookshelf because without that they’re a little likely to buy you.

Helene Young:              For me what worked in my favor was eventually someone saying to me, “Write what you know.” I’m like, “All I know is aviation.”. “Well?”.”Okay”. At the time I was flying out of Cannes and going up to [inaudible 00:05:33] Island looking down at this massive coastline that’s largely unpopulated and thinking all the what ifs. There was a group of young men that came to fly for Quantus who had come from the border watch. No, that’s what my name is for it, custards, what do they call it, Coast Watch was the name of the organization at the time and they were coastal [inaudible 00:05:54] Australia. They had all these amazing stories about all sorts of things they had seen and done in their flying career and I went, that’s it, I get intrigue, they’re mostly good looking, strong young men, they’ll make a perfect hero and now I just need some feisty heroines to go with it.

Helene Young:              A big part of my writing journey has been wanting to tell the story of women, strong, capable women or ordinary every day women who simply step up to the plate because I think women sell ourselves short. I think as a gender we spend too long going, “Oh, maybe not.” Whereas we need to be at the [inaudible 00:06:27] saying, “Yes, of course we can do that.” Being able to put those sorts of characters in stories has been wonderful and they reflect the sort of women that are around me, the women who struggle with juggling motherhood and careers and parents and all of that that the great big workload that goes with quite often being the woman in the family are the sorts of things that I wanted to be able to show in my stories so hopefully I’ve done that, certainly with the new book I’ve taken even more a step in that direction.

Helene Young:              Back to the journey of topic. [inaudible 00:06:57] eventually picked up my fifth manuscript after it finaled in the American Golden Heart competition. RWA America runs a thing called the Golden Heart Front Published Manuscripts and that book, I can’t even remember what its working title was at that stage, Beyond The Borders, I think, it finaled. I went to America and then when I came back to Australia I pitched to Benedict Foley at the RWA conference and she picked it up from there. Again, for those of you writers, viewers who are writers, that first letter that I got back from Bernadette said the manuscript’s not there yet but if you’d like to consider, and then she went on for two paragraphs then I’m happy to read a resubmission. I say to people when they say oh, I got a rejection, I say no, no, no, read it to me, is it really a rejection or is this an opportunity to work with the publisher or the editor or the agent and the resubmit?

Helene Young:              It’s important for writers to remember that a no is not necessarily a no. It might be a not yet and then if you’re prepared to take that extra step, and it took me six months to incorporate Bernadette’s suggestions before I resubmitted and she bought it in the two book deal for it and Shattered Skies.

Sarah Williams:            Fantastic. Yeah, like you said, sometimes that can be the most important training you can do. I know when I worked really closely with my editor, I’d done so many workshops before that but it was working with the editor, one on one, she was telling me specifically this is wrong or you can do this better. Oh my God, it was just like oh, okay, I get it.

Helene Young:              I know people hate, some writers, friends of mine hate editing, for me that’s really where the joy is. I love telling the story, get that down but it’s always a rough and dirty draft because I don’t plot, because it just goes with the flow organically and that means the editing is where you really start to bring it into shape. You realize how easy it is to shape it by shifting scenes around by looking at actually moving the story forwards and if it’s not, well probably it was fun writing it but that needs to go to the cutting room floor. You learn that and you just continue to learn that. A good editor is just a gift. I’m so blessed that I have Ali Watts at Penguin in my corner, both because she supports my stories and the new direction but also because she’s just very insightful. She can dust out 6,000 words out a manuscript and I wont’ even know they’ve gone but you go wow, that’s a skill.

Helene Young:              Editors have a specific skillset and I think it’s important that we do learn from them but also that we’re open to their suggestions. Sometimes you get to go, “No, it’s my story, this is staying because this is something I feel strongly about.” But nine times out of 10, they’re right and even if it’s just a matter of thinking about reworking it you’re not seizing control of your manuscript to them but you’re working with them and that’s what it should always be, collaborative, to make it the best possible manuscript you possibly can.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, absolutely. We’ll talk about Wings of Fear. It was your first one published and that year, in 2011, you won the Ruby, the American romantic book of the year. Congratulations.

Helene Young:              It’s the Australian romantic book of the year. I’d love it to be the Rita but it was the Ruby so it’s only the Australian version but that was still, that was a turning point for me. This is one of those conversations we’re having where we bare it all. Border Watch had come out in 2010, Shattered Skies came out in 2011 and unfortunately as much as I love Shattered Skies, it came out at a time when the Red Book Group fell over and that took out Angus & Robertson and about 30% of the book selling market. Cyclone [inaudible 00:10:44] ripped down the coast of Queensland and put Brisbane under flood waters so poor little Shattered Skies sunk without a ripple. It since trumpled on quite nicely but at the time the sales figures weren’t there so Ashep said we’re really sorry but we don’t want your third book which I’d been working on with them.

Helene Young:              It them became a matter of, I had an agent by then, lovely Claire Foster from Curtis Brown and she said there are other options, let’s see who else is around. We pitched to Penguin and Penguin ended up accepting that particular story but 2011 was a turning point because I’m sure that competition win helped enormously with getting a third contract. It made me feel like the end wasn’t nigh because when your publisher says, “Listen, I’m sorry but your figures aren’t good enough.” It just, it’s gutting but at the end of the day it’s also important to remember this is a business, they’re not in it for a charity, they’re in it to make money and a book, when you have a publisher who is your champion as Bernadette Foley had been for me at [inaudible 00:11:54] it also, not easy for them to then have a book that they’ve invested so much time in not do well on sales.

Helene Young:              That can happen for any number of reasons but it’s important not to take it personally because at the end of the day it is sales. Just like if a designer puts out a top and nobody buys it, well they’re not going to be asked to do the collection for next summer because it’s not sold. You have to remember that when you’re writing, that there will be rejection along the way and there will be times when your sales figures don’t stack up but it’s not the end of the road. It may be that you need to look at a different genre or it may be it just hasn’t worked this time for any number of reasons and there are many authors like myself that came out at that time in 2011 who all had a little hiatus before we got our next book out because the world just got in the way and that’s why.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah and the publishing industry is very up and down at the moment. A little bit like we’re seeing on your yacht, your catamaran. We’re seeing the sky in the background kind of coming in and out.

Helene Young:              Do I need to shut the curtains?

Sarah Williams:            No, it’s fine. It’s really cool.

Helene Young:              I don’t want to make anybody seasick, that would be horrendous.

Sarah Williams:            I probably should have warned everyone earlier on that you’re on your yacht.

Helene Young:              My beautiful boat, yes, I’m at home, well, you know so really. I know that keeps flaring the lights so I hope that’s all right too. I’m at home at the boat so all is well.

Sarah Williams:            Which is the wonderful thing about writing, you can do it anywhere.

Helene Young:              You can, it’s portable, absolutely portable and we’ve all seen photos and we’ve all done it where you’re writing on a kid pick up or you’re waiting for somebody to arrive at an airport and you sat there madly bashing away on your laptop or your iPad or whatever it is that you’re writing on because you’ve got 15 minutes, half an hour spare time so let’s get some words down, it’s important.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. You’ve got this new book out and we should talk about Return To Rose Glen. So it’s out on the 2nd of July, 2018 as this goes to [inaudible 00:13:54] and tell us the premise and what inspired you to write this one?

Helene Young:              There’s a beautiful book. I’ve just picked up my author’s copy so that’s always an exciting moment where you want to stroke your book baby. It’s a departure from my romantic suspense. I guess it’s come out the fact that I’m now older. When I first started writing I was 35, I’m now middle fifties, I don’t know when that happened, I really don’t know when that happened but things start to become, different things start to become more important. Over the last few years we lost both my mum and my mother-in-law also died and also a lovely old friend who was in her early nineties passed away in Trinity Beach. In the scheme of things it got me thinking about matriarchs and the fact that when a matriarch does die they leave a vast space behind, a power vacuum in many cases but it also changes the relationship between the siblings because everybody’s got a different opinion of that parent and it’s interesting the way those different opinions color the way we see our own childhood and how we perceive that we grew up. I find that sort of stuff fascination.

Helene Young:              I went righto, this is what I want to write. Penguin was very happy to see me go off in a new direction. They were like, “Romantic suspense is doing okay but we think that there’s more you can do is if you want to try that give it a shot.” It’s been nice to have that support but it does make it almost like you’re relaunching a new brand in some way because I’m sure some of my readers who loved the action packed books that I used to write will be going, “Well, there’s not quite so much action in this.” Hopefully the fact that the characters are still there and they’re hopefully quite rich and the landscape is still Queensland they’ll come with me on this change of direction. It’s very much a book about families, it’s about three generations of women who are drawn together underneath the faded homestead roof as a matriarch is wishing that she was dead because she’s old and she’s had enough. I think we’ve all had grandparents and some of us mothers who got to that age where they just simply had enough.

Helene Young:              That’s a difficult thing to come to terms with as well and again, siblings deal with it in very different ways. The back story I guess you could call it is the idea of elder abuse which was something that wasn’t strongly there to start with in the story but the more I started to talk to people the more horrible, terrible, tragic stories that I heard of family members doing the wrong thing. It was fascination to go, “Well, why did your mum let that happen?”, “Well because she loved him.” Right and getting my head around the fact that a mother or a father could be forgiving of a child’s misbehavior, an adult child’s misbehavior because it’s still their precious child and it’s very hard for them to then turn to the other siblings and go, “You’re right, that was the wrong thing.”

Helene Young:              Newspapers are full of it, it’s something that’s become topical and this book’s taken three years to write so in that time it’s become a whole lot more topical so I’m kind of glad that it’s out there. I hope that readers when they’ve read it will pick up the phone and ring their children or ring their parents and say I love you and say, “Hey, at the end of the day we’re in this together.” Because at the end of life is a journey that we should all take together not say well, there’s my elderly parent over there and I’ll just lock them up in a nursing home or vice versa. I do know plenty of older people who put quite strong demands on their very busy children as well. It’s got all those mixed bits and pieces in it this story as well as in the heart of it there’s a secret, a family secret which will take a very long time to be revealed in the book.

Helene Young:              It’s all set west of Cannes, I’m sure you know the [inaudible 00:17:44] area and Mount Mulligan. I hadn’t necessarily planned on it being out there but I always loved the [inaudible 00:17:50] limestone caves and there are caves in this book so that was a natural place to set it. A friend whose a helicopter pilot took me for a flight over Mount Mulligan and I just went oh my God, the escarpment has to be in the story, it’s got this amazing presence all of its own and it’s surrounded by [inaudible 00:18:07] country, it’s also had some tragedies. One very big tragedy with a mine up there back in the early 8, 1900’s but yeah, for me it was important. They’re the sort of things I that I think of as serendipity, if he hadn’t said let’s go for a flight and we hadn’t gone over Mount Mulligan there would have been a whole train of thought in that story that didn’t actually happen so I think as a writer you take your opportunities where you can find them.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, absolutely and it is a stunning area up there. I lived in Cannes for four years and yeah, its’ absolutely beautiful. There’s more than just the reef and the rainforest, there’s the whole outback.

Helene Young:              It is and it’s amazing out there and many people don’t get that far out and really [inaudible 00:18:50] not very far west of Cannes, it’s only a couple of hours. If you’re going on a flight,  got to [inaudible 00:18:53]. Catch the limestone caves, they’re as good as [inaudible 00:18:58] caves down in Sydney. They really are extraordinary limestone formations.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, absolutely. You doing some promotion and you’re going to be touring the South East Queensland, if we’re lucky enough to be around Brisbane, the sunshine coast which is where I am we should come and check you out. You’ll be touring with Barbara Hennay and Christine Wells, both of which I’ve interviewed. I’m not sure if Christine’s interview is going to get out before or after yours though.

Helene Young:              Well her beautiful book, The Juliette Code is out now and if you like an historical action packed spy story it’s wonderful. I think she crafts her characters so beautifully but as well that the setting is, she started writing historicals and I think that that eye to detail really shows through in her stories so yeah grab The Juliette Code and I’m desperately waiting for Barbara Hanney’s new book to come out. Hers is about four weeks after mine I think that hers releases and her stories have always got so much emotionally heart in them, they’re always a wonderful read. Really looking forward to being on the road with the two of them for the week in Brisbane and we get to tour as well so that will be wonderful.

Helene Young:              What else have we got promotion wise? We’re off to Harvey Bay in September for the Lines in the Sand Festival and prior to that, of course, we’ve got Tropical Writers Festival in Cannes with Barbara and I are doing a joint book launch. We’re hoping it’s going to be a high tea so if you’re into high tea’s please send your friends along for afternoon tea with us. I think it’s the 10th of August, high tea as whatever the conference hotel is so looking forward to that. Barbara is somebody who when I first started writing was very much a gentle mentor and we had a little group in North Queensland and she was the leader of that group with so much to give and so much that she was willing to share so yes, she’s kind of going back to mum. Not that she’s anywhere near that old but you get that sense, she’s such a wonderful inclusive person. It’s great to spend time with her.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, Barbara’s the reason I write romance. She was the one who did the workshop, my first workshop and she did it on romance and just everything she said clicked in, I go, “Oh, that’s what I write.” I remember as soon as that workshop finished I went home and I plotted what became The Brothers of Brigade re Station.

Helene Young:              That’s brilliant.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Helene Young:              Have you told her that?

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, I’ve told her and I owe a lot to her as well. She’s held very deeply in my heart as well.

Helene Young:              She’s lovely, very generous.

Sarah Williams:            And you’ll be at RWA in Australia, in Sydney?

Helene Young:              Yes, at RWA, I’m on a panel with Christine, Jeanette, no, not Sasha, there’s two others. Did I say Jeanette? There’s five of us on it, I’ve just lost one name there, Anthea Hodgson, one of the WA girls. We’re doing a Penguin panel for Love Between the Pages and part of what we’ll be talking about is the different ways you can love and romance in the story and how your genre can change as you write and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s something that as a writer you probably do want to develop and grow different areas so it’s good to be able to get out and explore those. We’re looking forward to that panel on Saturday at the RWA conference.

Sarah Williams:            Fabulous. Then you’re off to WA for the west coast fiction festival in November.

Helene Young:              Excited about that. We have to go to England, we don’t have to but we’re going to England for my lovely niece’s wedding which we’re very excited about so we’re putting Ruby into a mariner birth for about a month, we’ll fly off and do that and we’ll come back to wherever Ruby’s been left via Perth so really looking forward to the west coast fiction festival. It’s 60 odd authors, I’m sure they’ve probably got a few more by now but it was 60. They’ve got some big name stars coming from overseas but just about anybody whose anybody in the rural romance world will be there. You’ve got Rachel Johnson, Joanna Palmer, I’m pretty sure Mandy Magroes going, Pamela Cook is definitely going to be there, Jenny Jones is there, Tess Woods, she’s not rural but Tess Woods will be there. She’s one of the big organizers behind it all and of course it’s all about share the dignity and raising money for the handing out essentially sanitary pads to homeless women and young girls. I think that’s something that we kind of take for granted.

Helene Young:              I know something when we were packing to go to New Caledonia in [inaudible 00:23:22], we didn’t get there but we’re going next year in the boat, one of the things they suggest you take is the sort of reusable sanitary pads because the girls in those countries don’t have access the way we do and you forget how expensive they are. If you’re on a budget or you’re homeless then it’s something that’s really difficult, makes a big change to your life if you can access it so I think it’s a wonderful thing that they’re doing. I’m very happy to support it. I get to play with writers again, and readers. That’s a wonderful thing to do in November and WA, we had a holiday there, whoopee, was probably 10 years, maybe longer than that. Anyway, it was a while ago, it one of those impromptu holidays where other holiday plans fell over, we spent a month in WA just going, “This is amazing.” Really looking forward to going back to visit again and have another little sticky bit.

Sarah Williams:            I think they’re trying to do the west coast fiction festival every two years, I think [inaudible 00:24:21]

Helene Young:              WA in so many ways gets left out. I did a book tour there for Half Mary Bay I think it was around WA and they were just so delighted to have somebody from the east coast because people don’t make the trek. I’m going it’s not far. Now, maybe my perspective is skew because I’m a pilot, it’s like you can fly, come over here, I don’t get it. It’s a beautiful place, they’re really welcoming, the food that the libraries put on, “I’m going to go home a stone a weight, would you stop feeding me.” But just delightful and the readers were so welcoming so it was a lovely place to go so if you’re out there and you’re looking to plan a book tour, go to WA, they’re amazing.

Sarah Williams:            Perfect, all right, so what’s next, what are you working on now?

Helene Young:              The next book’s just started to take shape and it’s another family drama with a little bit of a difference and there may be a character from Return to Rose Land who gets to make an appearance because she doesn’t get her full resolution in the story, it didn’t need need to be part of the story arc so I think it will be nice to pick up her thread and carry on with that. It’s going to be set probably more in the city because I think the issues I’m dealing with it, and again it will have three generations but they won’t necessarily be family, they’ll be three generations of women that are dealing with a similar problem of being a woman in a modern world and the fact that it can all fall apart and then be quite difficult to just carry on with all the expectations and where you get a job.

Helene Young:              Some of it came from being in Hobart where we spent four months touring around Hobart in the boat and while we were in, well not Hobart, we toured around Tasmania, you couldn’t tour Hobart for four months in a boat but around Tasmania and we were stopped in Hobart and they were talking about the fact that there were issues with accommodation because Air BnB had just taken over so much of their affordable accommodation so there were people in living in tents on the showground in a Hobart. It’s freezing cold and pouring with rain, what is going on in Australia that this sort of thing is possible? That’s kind of the general direction it’s going, that it’s easy to suddenly find yourself in a position where you don’t have a roof over your head. Does that make you homeless or if you’ve got friends to [inaudible 00:26:39] well, no, you’re probably not. It’s having a look at that and how that can happen so suddenly and so easily but then there’s a whole lot of other stuff going on with families, sisters and mothers and aunts so it’s fun.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s awesome and I love family sagas and I love the matriarch as well, I’ve always got a big matriarch in my series too. That sounds absolutely fantastic so Return To Rose Glen’s out in July, a couple of days before mine, I’ll sneak that in there. My next one’s out July 4th, yours is July 2nd.

Helene Young:              Should be having a launch party on the 3rd or something, a combined one.

Sarah Williams:            We’ll do a Facebook live. Well that’s fantastic. What’s your website? Where can we find you online?

Helene Young:              You can find me on www.helene so it’s spelt H-E-L-E-N-E, Young, Y-O-U-N-G as in not old yet. Com so that’s www.heleneyoung.com and it’s got all the links to the other social media platforms and my favorite one is my Instagram account because I get to put up all the photos of the beautiful places we get to visit so go to [inaudible 00:27:49] Instagram account.

Sarah Williams:            Beautiful photography, I’m so jealous, it’s gorgeous.

Helene Young:              [inaudible 00:27:55] lovely places.

Sarah Williams:            That was fabulous, thank you so much for coming on the show today Helene.

Helene Young:              My pleasure and all the very best with your new release as well, look forward to reading it.

Sarah Williams:            Thank you so much.