New Episode - Unveiling the Dark Corners of Crime Fiction featuring Lynne Johnson with Guest Host Laura Boon
Unveiling the Dark Corners of Crime Fiction featuring Lynnee Johnson with Guest Host Laura Boon
Episode notes
Get ready to plunge into the dark, mysterious corners of crime fiction with our special guest, author Lynne Johnson hosted by Laura Boon. Lynne's debut novel, THE BAIT TRAP introduces readers to Detective Zach Byrne, a tough cop navigating a world of addiction, cyber safety, and a murder most foul. Set against the backdrop of a mouse plague and bushfires, Lynne's novel promises to be a thrilling read, and you won't want to miss the exclusive excerpt she shares with us.
Let's pull back the curtain on the common but powerful trope of the alcoholic detective in literary circles, something Lynne masterfully portrays in her narrative. Through personal stories and reflective chats, we examine society’s attitudes towards alcoholism and the rocky road towards recovery. Crime fiction may be exciting, but it can also be a mirror for societal issues.
We traverse the chilling world of psychopathy and the grisly process of creating murderers. Lynne's meticulous research and insights on the role of trauma in violent acts are something to look out for. Also, don't miss out on our discussion about the power of storytelling in the characters' journey from addiction to recovery. Wrapping up, we touch upon the rough terrain of self-publishing and how an author can overcome powerlessness. Lynne shares her online presence details and where you can grab a copy of her debut novel. So don't wait, tune in for a conversation that's as thrilling as it is thought-provoking!
Episode Chapters
0:03:45 - Book Summary and Reading Excerpt
0:11:57 - Choosing Crime Genre in Becoming Writer
0:17:06 - Exploring Societal Issues Through Popular Fiction
0:20:13 - Alcohol and Attitudes in Anglo-Western Culture
0:27:04 - Narrative Transformation in Recovery
0:31:06 - The Importance of Book Covers
0:36:28 - Navigating Publishing Challenges
0:39:26 - Feedback and Outsider's Perspective
0:42:50 - Book Issues and Editor's Feedback
In the Intro
Guest Host Laura Boon discusses her writing background–including her latest non-fiction book TIPS FROM AN INDUSTRY INSIDER. She mentions first reading Lynne’s work whilst doing copy edits and being impressed by her writing. She was blown away by the subject matter–including how THE BAIT TRAP (Lynne’s debut novel) approaches issues of addiction in policing.
Transcript
01:24 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Thanks, so much, Laura. It's so lovely to be here and, yes, it's very exciting to be here on my publication day.
01:31 - Laura Boon (Host)
Yeah, it's fantastic. It doesn't always work out that well. But, Lynne can you please give us a short summary of THE BAIT TRAP?
01:40 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Sure. So THE BAIT TRAP is written in the crime, suspense and thriller genre. It's set in 2021, in a fictional town called Cooinda, which is in the Riverina district, and it's set in the middle of a mouse plague. Also, bushfires have featured in the recent past too. The locals of the town are deeply divided over a coal seam gas mine, and the Judd family secrets are simmering beneath the surface.
The book opens on page one and there's a murder, and we learn that John Judd has gone missing after failing to return from harvesting one day. Judd is a farmer, he's a much loved husband, father, and he's a bit of a community icon. He's not too good, to be true, but almost. Then the action switches to a rehab centre in Sydney where Detective Zach Byrne has gone, ostensibly to address his alcoholism, but really to get his wife, Jenny, off his back. Jenny visits him in the rehab centre. She tells him that the marriage is over, and then, two days later, Byrne learns that his career has been put on ice as a result of a raid that went terribly wrong. He's then put on what you could describe as light duties when he's given the brief to go to Cooinda to find out what happened to John Judd. So Byrne rolls into town. He partners up with the local cop. He's a little bit too relaxed and trusting for Byrne, and the pair are determined to find out what happened to John Judd, but the locals seem determined to keep the truth from Byrne.
Byrne discovers that Judd isn't quite the clean skin that everyone thought he was. He had a hidden bush cabin that might hold all the answers, if they could only find it. And there are two subplots in the book. What Byrne doesn't expect when he rolls into town is to meet Judd's daughter, Thea, at the local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. She's a recovering alcoholic as well and they fall in love there. Then Byrne's feelings for Thea and his professional obligations collide. The second subplot also deals with Byrne and his relationship with his teenage daughter, Skye, who is an influencer, and she gets herself into some hot water when she's posting for some near nude photos on the internet. And Byrne wants to warn her about cyber safety, but he can't reach her because they're estranged as a result of his alcoholism.
04:35 - Laura Boon (Host)
That's an excellent summary. Thanks, Lynne. And that's really just the starting point and everything goes from there. Do you have an extract you can read to give us a flavour of the bait trap?
04:47 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Listen to podcast for excerpt.
08:14 - Laura Boon (Host)
Such a chilling beginning to the novel. Lynne. I get goosebumps just hearing it again. So yes, we're going to have to find out who the mysterious outsider is and why he picked on poor John Judd or maybe not so poor John Judd, we'll find out. So we're going to talk about THE BAIT TRAP in some detail, but first I'd like to backtrack a little bit. I'm always fascinated by author’s origin stories. Were you a reader or a writer first, and what led you to deciding to write your first book?
08:50 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
I've always loved stories. I was the child who spent my lunch hours in the library, who always got to school early so I could go to the library. I was obsessed as a child with books like Little Women, a Little House on the Prairie, anything with little in it, basically. And then later in life I became obsessed with Jane Austen and the Brontes and Dickens. But when I left school I didn't think that being a writer was a thing. There were certainly no creative writing degrees and I had this stereotypical notion that writers were people who eat out in existence in a garret. So I chose law and I found my natural resting place as the copyright lawyer, which is the closest thing I could find to being a writer without being a writer. But I was always drawn to the storytelling aspect of law. So I'd linger far too long over witnesses affidavits, particularly the front end of the affidavit, trying to work out what witnesses' stories were and their evidence. And I just loved interviewing the witnesses. I'd say so.
The day you walked into the opponent's office you sat down. What was in the background in his office Okay, a rail of binders Interesting. And what was on the spine of the binders Potential income streams, good, okay, so ways to gouge money out of your company, and I would just be titillated by details like that. I've always eavesdropped on conversations and I put those conversations in the notes section of my phone. I've always been a keen observer of behaviour in conferences, in court, in cafes, on buses. I've spent a bit of last week listening to the Bruce Luhman and Tenor Ten Network hearing in the federal court in Sydney which is being livestreamed on YouTube, and it really is a study in human behaviour. You've got the judge asking Brittany Higgins questions and she is desperately trying to apprise the judge of her position. And then you look at all the people in the gallery and Bruce Luhman isolated in one corner and the rest of the people in a clump, and I yeah, I just love observing gatherings of people.
11:28 - Laura Boon (Host)
It's an author characteristic, I think that we like to eavesdrop on conversations and observe people.
11:35 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
It is and, like one of my eldest sons, will say if I'm out and about with him, he'll say Mum, stop it. And if you're doing it again, I'll say what he'll say you're staring at that couple. That's bordering on rude.
11:51 - Laura Boon (Host)
No, if you're a writer, that's what you do. People have to get used to us.
11:57 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
But as to how I became a writer, I guess in 2021, a few events coalesced the job that I had been in for 19 years as a government copyright lawyer that ceased to exist. All the juicy, copyright litigation and advice and transactional work had been progressively drying up. We became empty nesters. As our last son went off to university, we were also in the throes of a pandemic. I resigned from my job and I thought to myself what do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? Do I want to be doing timesheets and catering to clients and deadlines, or do I want to write a book? And I felt like the universe spoke to me. So I did a few creative writing online courses at the Australian Writers Centre and I sat down to write THE BAIT TRAP in June of 2021.
12:55 - Laura Boon (Host)
Wow, that's amazing. That's really quite a short period from two publications. So I have to say I'm very impressed and I'm curious about what made you choose the crime genre, because obviously crime wasn't always your go-to reading material from what you've talked about. So have you become a crime reader in recent years, or are you more of just a crime writer?
13:23 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
I read widely across genres. I read a lot of literary fiction, crime and contemporary women's fiction. I love crime. I love listening to confessions of psychopaths, like Jeffrey Dahmer. I love listening to true crime, like Gary Jubiland's. I Catch Killers. I love watching police procedures, like Broadchurch. I love Outback Noir, scandi Noir, anything Noir. So I guess I found my natural resting place in crime fiction. But what struck me was that a lot of detective fiction had different iterations of the alcoholic detective, like Sam Spade in the Maltese Falcon and Stephen Valani in Truth. And then there's all those cop shows in the 60s and 70s that I was glued to. But I couldn't find a story that authentically portrayed an alcoholic detective in recovery who had faced his alcoholism, swallowed huge chunks of truth, forgiveness, and been redeemed and experienced freedom as a result of that forgiveness. So I thought I'd write one, I thought I'd create an anti-alpha male detective, and so I did in Zappburn.
14:50 - Laura Boon (Host)
That's fantastic, and I think you're right. The alcoholic detective is almost an overused trope in crime fiction, although it makes perfect sense to me that somebody who faced so much horror on a daily basis would need some kind of crutch or find it very easy to come to depend on some kind of a crutch. So let's examine that a little bit further. So what was your inspiration perhaps your personal inspiration for making Zac Byrne a recovering alcoholic and for also making Thea a recovering alcoholic? They're in different parts of their journeys, but I'd really like to know what inspired it and what you'd like readers to take away from that. I think that almost everyone's life in Australia has been touched by people who drank too much.
15:47 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Alcoholism is a major cause of illness and death in Australia. I do a lot of work now in correctional facilities and alcoholism and other addictions are certainly a significant factor in people reoffending and returning to prison. And I guess for me when I'm writing character always comes first and then character informs and shapes the plot. So I started very much with the two protagonists Zac Byrne, the alcoholic detective, and his love interest, who's the boozy lawyer. And I started with those two characters and in a sense their journey is a conversation with myself about what it means to be an active alcoholic and then a recovering alcoholic in Australia and how Australians interact with alcoholics. But I thought that a book dealing with the R word recovery would be a hard sell.
But if it's a crime thriller I thought that readers might give it a go. And what better place than crime fiction to explore what it means to be alcoholic? Because, as you said before, Laura, it's littered with the trope of the heavy drinking detective and it's nothing new about using commercial fiction as a vehicle to examine societal issues. No one does this better than Jane Austen, who's my idol, and she explored family dysfunction and wealth and social class and things not being quite what they seem and, of course, pride and Prejudice, through popular fiction of her day. When you read her books, readers are very rarely ever told what clothes her characters are wearing or what furniture they're sitting on, unless she herself is making a statement about this social class or character.
17:50 - Laura Boon (Host)
Yes, and there is that amazing scene in THE BAIT TRAP where Bern first goes into the local pub and he's asked what he wants to drink and there are not a lot of people in there. But when he asks for something soft, it's like that sort of classic situation where you can hear a pin drop and then everybody's got something to say about it. My dad told me you should never trust a man who doesn't drink and all those kind of societal stereotypes we have, when in actual fact, probably realistically, it would be better to trust someone who didn't drink and not trust someone who does drink.
18:33 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
That's exactly right and it's a case of in Australia, you're damned if you do drinking, you're damned if you don't. Yes, because that scene where Byrne walks into the pub and he asks for something soft to drink, that actually happened to me when I first gave up drinking. The struggles of Byrne and Thea are very much influenced by my own struggles with alcoholism and I remember in early days of sobriety I was out with my colleagues and we were celebrating the end of a very big piece of litigation that had gone on for over 10 years. And we were at lunch and people said oh go on, what are you having to drink? And I said I don't drink. And the place was pin drop quiet and they said, no, hang on a minute. All conversations ceased. They said now we really need to know why you're not drinking.
And I have a variety of responses to suit the situation. But I just said look, there's a lot of alcoholics in my family tree. You shake the tree and a lot of them fall out and I've just made the decision not to. And it, yeah, it was. I don't know how many times I've been told you can't trust a person who doesn't drink.
20:00 - Laura Boon (Host)
It's amazing we wouldn't have that, or don't have that response to someone who says, oh, I don't drink tea. Nobody says why not, don't you like it? Or I don't watch tennis, it's boring, that's just okay, that's a personal choice. But alcohol and attitudes to it are really wrapped up so tight, I think, particularly in Anglo-Western culture. I remember Marion Keys telling a story about her recovery when she stopped drinking and she went out with a friend and the friend said now what are you going to have to drink? And Marion said no, I don't drink anymore. It will literally kill me. And her friend said yes, but surely a glass of wine would be okay, as if there's no alcohol in wine. And it's funny on the one hand, but on the other it's really tragic because it makes it so hard for people to stop drinking If alcohol is bad for them.
20:56 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Yes, that's exactly right. The consumption of alcohol is so ingrained in the Australian psyche. Our diggers were given alcohol in the trenches in WWI, and as soon as our kids turn 18, they're taken to the pub because it's a rite of passage. And during the pandemic, social media was a wash, with people celebrating the end of the day of working from home or homeschooling with a click of a picture of their glass of wine. And that's okay. For people who can control their drinking. But I never could. So in a sense, I feel like I didn't so much create this book. It was there for me to unravel and discover, because I think it's a conversation that Australia really needs to have about alcoholism and Australian's relationship with alcoholism, and I'm just hoping it will go some way to de-stigmatise Alcoholics in recovery and also those who choose not to drink.
22:02 - Laura Boon (Host)
One of the things I liked about THE BAIT TRAP was that it can be stereotypical, despite having the heavy drinking detective, to also have the criminals in the story to be, to have their actions informed by various forms of addiction or abuse. And Certainly the villain of your story does have something of a tragic past, but it's not drug and alcohol related and I thought that was interesting and a good point to make.
22:38 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Yes, I did a lot of research on the making of murderers and, without giving away too many spoilers, what is it that leads someone to dismember a body, to cut someone up? And they're obviously psychopaths who do that. But there's the organised sort of psychopaths and then there's the disorganised, so it's very much bifurcated and a lot of psychopaths live amongst us. They're functioning members of our society. Often they're CEOs of companies. You're sitting next to them on the bus, they hold down jobs, they have driver's licences, they command huge sums of money. But in terms of people who dismember bodies, there's always a background of trauma that has enraged them so much that they need to go the extra mile and not just kill someone but cut them up. And that concept of going overboard is called overkill. Yeah. In terms of psychopathy, I really love the research in part of the book, particularly what it is that makes a murderer.
23:54 - Laura Boon (Host)
Maybe that's a good time to talk about research. So you've talked about a lot of the research you've done into human psychology and how that impacts us. But a crime novel requires the knowledge of modern policing and I really got a nice feel for that through the writing of the bait trap, even though it's a small rural investigation, as time requires, burn brings in a forensics expert. He brings in someone that can decipher computers that have been deleted and all sorts of things and I wondered what it was or how you research that, even to the point of understanding internal resources.
24:41 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Well, I use the skills that I had as a lawyer and I use them in the writing of this book. So, in the same way that if you were so running a piece of litigation, you would find the subject matter experts that you needed to give the case the best possible chance of success For example, you'll get an economist to advise your client how much they could hope to get in damages or account of profits you would return a barrister to present your case in the best possible light to the judge. So, in the same way, I found Someone to advise me on the police procedural aspects of the book. I actually found her again on the Australian Writers Centre Creative Writing Graduates Facebook page. Her name is Melanie Cage and she's a gutsy, big-hearted former Sergeant, police prosecutor and crime scene officer.
And when I met with her for the first time, I went with a list of questions and my manuscript and we sat down and I asked her all the questions and there was really no substitute For speaking to an expert in that way. There are just things you cannot glean from Googling or from desk research. For example, when I asked her, how did you get into the police force and what year was that and she said I entered the force in 1997 and I was lucky and I was the last year to do a written test and a face-to-face interview and the physical comprised of running around the Surrey Hills police station car park not the gruelling physical that I should imagine you were doing, golden and and those sort of details are what are called specificity, and I think Kate Forsyth also discusses specificity a lot and that goes to the authors voice and it's the details that make the reader have an intense experience and it allows them to suspend disbelief and and really believe what that what they're reading is factual.
27:04 - Laura Boon (Host)
Lynne, let's talk about storytelling. I know, because we've spoken about it before, that you believe we all have a view of our lives, a narrative that we tell ourselves, and certainly this is something that drives the actions of Zac and Thea in their story. Do you think that narrative changes for someone who is an alcoholic or an addict from when they're in addiction and when they go into recovery?
27:35 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
I do. Certainly. The narrative that Byrne and Thea have while they're in active alcoholism is I'm a victim. They see the world very much in a black and white way. They're unable to live life on their terms. They're unable to feel their feelings without drinking them down and they think if only everyone would do as I say, then the world would be a better place. But by the end of the book I would like to think that they had undergone some transformation as characters and they're progressed down the path of recovery, because by that stage they are less likely to see the world in a black and white way. They are able to feel their feelings without drinking them down and using other maladapted tools. They're able to hold on to life with an open hand and live life on life's terms. And they also accept that not only were they powerless over their alcoholism, but they're powerless over pretty much everything else in their lives.
And certainly for me in recovery, accepting powerlessness was a really big thing. I had to accept that I'm pretty much powerless over most things in my life, so the things over which I'm not powerless. Then I need to concentrate on doing the best job I can with those things, and this is something that's really pertinent to writing a book this issue of powerlessness and it's also something that Jane Harper speaks to in her TED Talk Creativity in your Control and I think every aspiring author should listen to this TED Talk. I think it's only about eight minutes, but the substance of that is that as writers, we are powerless over pretty much everything on the journey.
We're powerless over whether we'll get an agent. We're powerless over whether we'll get a publisher. We're powerless over whether the book will be published. We're powerless over whether people will buy it. We're powerless over whether people will like it or whether they won't like it. But what we're not powerless over is delivering the best possible product to the market that we can, and for me that looks having the technical skills, reading the craft books, doing the online courses, engaging the relevant subject matter experts that you need, like the police officer, the experts on agronomist issues, guns, it, spyware. We're not powerless over that.
We can inform ourselves in that respect. We're not powerless over getting the book properly edited. We're not powerless over having an enticing cover. So for me, I concentrated on delivering the best possible work product that I could to the market and not thinking about whether it will be a New York Times bestseller, whether there'll be movie rights or those other things, because that's not helpful. We're powerless over those things.
31:06 - Laura Boon (Host)
That is such a remarkably important message, and it reminded me that you certainly had control over who you chose to do the cover and it's come out amazingly well.
31:17 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
I'm sorry, but people do judge a book by its cover.
31:21 - Laura Boon (Host)
I always think that's one of the most hilarious sayings: Don't judge a book by its cover, because that's the first thing you do, right.
31:29 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
That cover was designed by Luke Corsby from Blue Cork and I could not love it more. But again, I briefed him in quite a specific way. I said I wanted a bush cabin, I wanted canola and I wanted mice. And I didn't want cute mice Like they appear in bait, I wanted nasty looking mice. And I can honestly say he delivered on all those aspects. But he's a very talented cover designer. But a work product is only going to be as good as the effort that's put into it.
32:06 - Laura Boon (Host)
Yes, and how much you share with us is the kind of insights you give them. In this case, and again, that comes down to what is within your power and what isn't. That's, I think, a message that all writers can benefit from being reminded about, because it is such an uncertain journey. And perhaps we'll talk a little bit about your writing process. We've mentioned briefly that it's been about two years that you've been working on it, and let's perhaps talk about when you decided to self publish or why you decided to self publish.
32:39 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
So I pitched to all the relevant publishers in Australia and I also pitched to a few in the UK and a few in the US. I was not successful. I made it to the commissioning editor twice. The first time I was on the lounge wearing pyjamas, with the Maggie Beer salted caramel ice cream. For a few days After the second rejection, I was not on the couch in my pyjamas, with the Maggie Beer ice cream.
And, to quote you, Laura, to quote you back at yourself, the factor that separates those who publish in Australia and those who do not is resilience. It was probably about three factors: resilience, determination and diligence. Because it's being said by someone, it's harder for someone to get published in Australia than it is to go to the Olympics, and I would agree with that summation. And I think it's also harder to get an agent than it is to get published in Australia. I'm a really determined person on the finish line. If I start something off, finish it and I decide to self publish and it's.
Someone also said it's a bit like being the CEO of your own small company and that is true. You have to manage all the different aspects of publishing, but there are people like yourself who you can subcontract tasks out to. There are a lot of experts around. There are a lot of people in the publishing industry who will only feel happy to help you or to recommend someone who's suitable. And I think self publishing today doesn't have the negative stigma that it had years ago. You can self publish and still end up with a very professional looking work product.
34:45 - Laura Boon (Host)
And I think that the world would be infinitely poorer without some of the self published books that are in it today. So I'm always cheering from the sidelines for an author who's willing to take the risk and self publish.
35:03 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
And I agree, and I think those people who are not backed by traditional publishers. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're poor writers or that they are lacking in talent. Jk Rowling was rejected, I think, 15 times. Matthew Riley was rejected. He's self published and he's obviously earned millions. His self published book was picked up by an editor from Harper Collins and she then republished it and the rest is history. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are lacking in talent if you do not get published. Often it's just people who don't persevere that don't end up published.
35:50 - Laura Boon (Host)
I think that's really true and it's more likely to be or many times it can be a case of bad timing. You may be rejected by publishing because they've done something similar recently. Or you may be rejected because your story is a little bit controversial and makes the publishing team uncomfortable and they're not sure how it's going to go down with the public. There's thousands of reasons why you could be rejected and none of them mean that your book is not actually publishable. It just means that it didn't work for that particular team of people.
36:28 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
That's exactly right, and I got a knock back from one of the traditional publishers because they said no, we've got a crime book coming out this year and next year we don't need any more crime. Okay.
36:38 - Laura Boon (Host)
And that's a big window right. One crime book a year, so yeah.
36:44 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Yes, and I also. I listened to Shankari Chandran talk at the Blue Mountains Rivus Festival and I heard about her path to publication and I think the book, her most recent book, Chai Time in Cinnamon Gardens, which just won the Miles Franklin. That was her fourth manuscript and certainly this the second one, which was the Barrier. She only got that published after rewriting the protagonist and making him have white skin, and look where she is now.
37:20 - Laura Boon (Host)
Yes, it's fantastic. It is a great story and it's a reminder that, as tough as things can be for you, there's probably somebody out there who's facing even bigger challenges and not giving up on it.
37:35 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
That's right.
37:36 - Laura Boon (Host)
To talk a little bit more about the process. I know that you have a writing group. How did they help you on your journey?
37:44 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
I can honestly say the two best things I did on my journey was, to do online courses and to join a writing group. I joined a writing group just after I finished my first draft and I circulated the first draft to my writing group and the feedback I got from them is that on many occasions they have saved me from myself when I needed to be saved. All four of them have different strengths. Mary is a real gun on craft and she's very good at structure, at plot holes, at point of view. For example, in my prologue I had this I had it dark and she said it's quarter to seven, it's not dark, it's not like the quarter to seven in the Riverina, what are you doing? And just things like that.
She also had me sending Byrne back to the scene of his trauma, unsupported, and she said I don't think that's right, you really need to have a trauma specialist looked at that and it turned out that would not be a sensible cause of action. Veronica is very good at character and relationships. She spotted I don't have daughters, I have three sons and she spotted things that weren't right in the relationship between Byrne and his daughter. She said she arrives in Townley and then he leaves at her own devices for three days with the. I can't say anymore because I don't want to spoil this.
So then I had to go and rewrite that section of the manuscript to have him supervising what she was doing with herself. Whilst in the country town, one of the other members of our group is an editor. She's very good at casting at Eagle Eye over the manuscript, and the fourth one is very good at big picture. And she said to me Lynn, you made a promise to the reader in your first book. She said I note that all the ends are tied up very neatly in this book, so that means that readers will be expecting in your second book to have a similar neat ending. Is that the promise that you really want to make? And yeah, that is. I needed to be told all of those things and the feedback is given in a very respectful and constructive way, and if it is, then that's exactly how feedback should be given.
40:17 - Laura Boon (Host)
It is, and it's invaluable to have a group like that who can give you an outsider's perspective on what you've done, because as writers we get so close to what we're doing. We think we've covered all the holes and everything and we know what we expect to be there, so sometimes we can't see it when we've actually just missed it. And then on that sort of same journey, I know that you mentioned that you shared with your writing group the copy edits that I did with you and that everybody used that as a learning experience, and I was wondering if you could share perhaps some of the things you learned from that or that other people learned from that.
40:59 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Yes, of course. Another good thing about being in a writing group is that you get to share your knowledge. So I did share your report on the copy edit from my book with my writing group and I really learned a lot from that report. So I just turned in on three major things that they took away from your report. The first one I didn't realise, but readers imprint on the first good character in a crime novel.
Now, after the prologue, the first good character that I introduced was not Byrne, it was not the protagonist, it was his off-sider. So what I had to do was bring the scene where Byrne is in the rehab centre, as you suggested. I made that chapter one and then all the preceding material relating to him investigating the disappearance. I relocated and wove that into subsequent chapters and that worked a lot. It flowed a lot better. I also had huge slabs of back story. Like two chapters were just all back story and, as you quite rightly pointed out, it slowed down the pacing of the book. So when I fragmented that, I relocated it and I wove it into the rest of the book. Unfortunately, one of the characters in my book is the town gossip and can I just say it's very useful having the device of the town gossip, because if you don't know how to get into the back story, you just have the town gossip telling another character what the backstory is.
42:47 - Laura Boon (Host)
Great, I love that, yes.
42:50 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
And the third thing was and I wasn't aware of this that a lot of the book was written in the passive voice. So object, verb, subject. An example of that was there was a gurgling sound instead of a. Heard a gurgling sound. And passive voice is not wrong, but it's strongly associated with academic writing, which is probably why a lot of the book was written in the passive voice, because I was used to writing legal advice. But it's a lot wordier than the active voice, it slows down pacing and it also denies personal culpability, so it doesn't allow you to make that point of view character as blame worthy or as dropped into the action. I think you rewrote a lot of the material that was in the passive voice and it looked a whole lot better. There were lots of other observations, but I don't have time to go into them all.
43:58 - Laura Boon (Host)
That's lovely feedback to hear and it's really nice from an editor's perspective when somebody really takes on board what you're saying, and I do know I gave you quite a few examples, but you rewrote a lot of it yourself. What's next on your writing agenda, lytton? Can you talk about it?
44:16 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Sure. So, as I've touched on legal cases, they were a very rich source of material for authors. The plot from the bait trap was derived from a British case and the plot for my second book has been inspired by the Melissa Caddick saga. That has a lot of Sydney grit and it relates to a Ponzi scheme operator who defrauds a group of investors, a lot of whom are family and friends, and disappears after being raped by the corporate regulator. I was inspired to write a book about it called Affinity Fraud.
What is it that makes us want to hand over money or personal information to people who we don't know, and often people who are close to us, or all people who are close to us?
And that idea was spawned from a weekend away. I had with my uni friends that we were celebrating 30 years post uni and I fessed up and said I had recently fallen prey to the WhatsApp scam where a person impersonating my son convinced me to hand over my credit card details. And fortunately, I acted really quickly and screamed up to the con bank and asked them to stop the two transactions. That was sheer luck and it was just also acting quickly. But then, one by one, every person in the room fessed up to being preyed on by scammers and I'm talking about highly educated, very savvy people who are not backward in rebuying predatory people and I got thinking if all of you bar one have been preyed on by scammers, I need to write a book about this. I need to write a book about what it is that makes us hand over money and personal information to people we don't know, and how well do we know the people who are closest to us?
46:32 - Laura Boon (Host)
Two very important questions, and often the answers in both cases will make us a little uncomfortable. I think Exactly. Yeah, Lynne. Thank you very much. It's been a great chat. Can you tell readers where they can find you in the online world?
46:49 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Sure. So you can find me on my website or on socials. You can find me on Instagram and also at Facebook.
47:07 - Laura Boon (Host)
Congratulations again on finishing and publishing your first novel. It's really thought provoking and an insightful look into Australian culture. I'm sure it's going to be very well received and possibly a little bit controversial, which is always a good thing. The paperback is available from Amazon and from Lynn's website if anyone is looking for it, and the ebook is widely available through all regular ebook retailers. Thanks again, Lynne.
47:35 - Lynne Johnson (Guest)
Thanks for having me, Laura.