Briefly tell us about your book.
Modern Marriage is set in 2017 against the backdrop of the same-sex marriage plebiscite and follows Klara, a cosmetic physician who seemingly has it all: great job, devoted husband, plush house and wrinkle-free face. The only thing to elude her is having a baby. So when her husband Dante is found unconscious in a gay sauna, Klara’s life is thrown into disarray as her husband’s situation exposes cracks in her friendships, family and, most pointedly, her sense of self.
Modern Marriage peels away the makeup, Botox, designer clothes and visual merchandising of a life to expose raw secrets, ingrained prejudice and the gap between perception and truth.
Tell us about your background and what led you to writing this book.
I work as a doctor in general practice, cosmetic medicine and sexual health. This vocation gives me a broad exposure to varied people and circumstances and, I hope, makes me a better empath. I believe reading and writing are empathic endeavours because they demand you inhabit or closely follow a character and their life events, so I see working as a doctor making me a better writer, and vice versa.
I started writing Modern Marriage in 2018 when I became frustrated at the amount of time I spent doom-scrolling through news sites. So I decided to use my lunch breaks at work for something more creative and instead began writing the novel on my phone in Google docs.
Prior to starting writing I had seen multiple news articles where men were found dead or unconscious in a gay sauna, and when I heard from a colleague of another case during the plebiscite year, the idea lodged in my head. How would this man’s family feel if they found out about his sexuality this way? What if he had a wife? How would the drama of the plebiscite play into this scenario?
It was these swirling questions that led me to write a first scene, then another, in 20-60 minute increments on my lunch breaks, until 9 months later I had a 90,000-word manuscript.
Do you write about people you know? Or yourself?
I heard an interview once where the author said most characters are one-third yourself, one-third people you know and one-third pure fiction. This rings true to me, as even when you think you’re making something up, that creation is fuelled by your past and current experiences, emotions, interactions and beliefs.
None of the characters in Modern Marriage are based on real people but a lot of them have characteristics of myself or people I’ve known or observed, and others I have imbued with idiosyncrasies that serve the story.
My novel has three main characters. Klara is a cosmetic physician and for some of her work scenes I have fictionalised some aspects of my career and let her run with it. Her colleague Tomas is an immigrant, and his storyline shares similarities with my own and those of my extended family and acquaintances I have met during my overseas travels. Rachel is Klara’s sister-in-law, a nosy, self-important psychologist who is a hyperbolic amalgamation of god-complex health workers I have come across, and frankly I probably was at one point as well.
Ultimately, I believe the best books echo some fundamental truth and what better way of tapping into that than mining your existence.
What’s some great advice you’ve received that has helped you as a writer?
Listen to all the advice and then pick what works for you. My writing life is almost exclusively propelled by listening to book podcasts, which I started listening to in 2018 and practically haven’t missed a day since. Advice I’ve taken on board includes:
- Write when you can, even if it’s in tiny chunks of five minutes.
- Don’t be precious: you don’t need a coffee, rose-scented candle and mood lighting in order to write.
- Read widely and don’t be a snob about genres.
- Finish every book you read. Even terrible ones can teach you something about the craft and how you might have improved it yourself.
- Join the Australian Society of Authors or your local writing organisation, and go to workshops and seminars.
- Join Twitter and make author friends.
What’s your daily writing routine like and what are you working on at the moment?
When I was writing Modern Marriage, my writing routine involved switching my brain from medical, work-mode to creative escape as soon as I left the consulting room for my lunch break. That meant I was writing five days a week for between 10 and 60 minutes, usually in a cafe, sometimes at a park bench or bus stop.
Since then I have become a dad to three kids, and now my writing routine is scattered and involves stolen time of a maximum of 20 minutes each bite: during naps, in between feeds, when I’m not working. It’s become much harder to keep the flow of the story I am working on, but I’m determined to keep at it because writing is a joy.
Currently I am redrafting a novel about addiction and school refusal, and in the early stages of a first draft of a novel about unconventional romantic love.
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