Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest today, Stephen Crabbe author of Conflict on Kangaroo Island and Song of Australia. Stephen is now working on his third novel, telling a story set in South Australia during the First World War. It will feature characters from the earlier books.

Stephen Crabbe was born in Adelaide, South Australia. His ancestors were among the earliest colonists, arriving from Scotland in 1839.

His twin passions from the earliest years were music and language in all its forms. He studied classical pianoforte from the age of five until his late teens. He read widely in English and loved to explore other languages. He also played many different sports.

Eventually Stephen took up education as a profession, which took him into both public and private schools in several different roles. Eventually he chose to be a music educator, a vocation he followed for decades.

Writing was always a compulsion for Stephen, but in later years it drew more attention.

Screen productions used his scripts and many of his articles were published online and in print. The main focus of his writing now is fiction, especially of the historical kind.

Stephen lives in Western Australia.

Norm: Good day Stephen and thanks for participating in our interview.

What do you think is the future of reading/writing?

Stephen: It’s a pleasure to be with you, Norm! Over recent decades, the literary world has been through one radical change after another. I can’t see this constant transformation stopping. Perhaps the future is simply continuous change. I do not expect, however, reading and writing to stop. I don’t expect the end of the book.

The forms in which, and the media through which, we receive the book will change. But I’ll hazard some predictions here.

Firstly, aural, rather than visual, engagement is presently becoming far more popular; people are keen to listen to a voice read a book to them while they walk and work and drive and sit in their lounge chairs. New technology will accelerate this trend. Artificial intelligence is fast approaching the point where it can mimic the voice of any selected narrator—including the timbre, variations in pitch and tone, and all other aspects.

This will make production cost of audio-books just a small fraction of what it is now. I think this form of book will be as popular as the visual form before long. Secondly, again due to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, translation of books into any language on earth will be faster and cheaper than anyone dreamt of ten years ago. This has already been demonstrated convincingly. Books will thus be bought and read so much more readily across national borders and cultures, which suggests a huge increase in demand for books. Thirdly, I think through digital technology we’ll see much more illustration of fiction on e-reading devices.

On the other hand, I don’t expect the traditional printed and bound book to disappear, because many people will still want to have the tactile experience of it. The type of material on which it’s printed will probably change before long, using bamboo or hemp fibre, or stuff I haven’t yet heard of. But whatever the changes, “the book” will not die.

Norm: Why do you write? Do you have a theme, message, or goal for your books?

Stephen: From the moment I could read, I wanted to write. I was thrilled when other people read what I wrote with some interest. Through language, I wanted to have an influence over the world around me. I suppose that sounds like a lust for power! But no, I’m not a sociopath; I don’t want to manipulate others into enacting my will.

I do want readers to understand my perception of life and our place in the cosmos, and to think about how their own worldview stacks up beside it. I try to make this happen by helping readers to live with my characters, even to live as my characters, through the tale I tell. This is how fiction can help to improve the human condition. Each author has particular attitudes and values, which will become apparent by reading enough of their work.

But a message? No, I don’t want to transmit anything that overtly. However, I do think readers find in my stories some grounds for hope that we can find a path towards peace within ourselves, with each other and with the universe at large. If my writing has that effect, I’m very pleased.

Norm: What has been your greatest challenge (professionally) that you’ve overcome in getting to where you’re at today as an author?

Stephen: Nothing unusual about my answer to that one. Working at a career that could meet the needs of a young family, lack of time outside of the day job … I kept trying to write in those years, but the outside pressures were too great for me to make a success of it. Once we had no dependants and I could reduce the hours I put into my teaching, I began to write to a publishable standard.

Norm: What did you find most useful in learning to write?  What was least useful or most destructive?

Stephen: It comes down to people. In my childhood and youth, I was extremely sensitive to the reactions of others. Peer ridicule, or what I assumed was ridicule, in my school years cut deep. That sort of thing made me want to hide my writing, even to stop writing at times. The more encouraging attitude of certain teachers kept me going.

Norm: Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two?  Please summarize your writing process.

Stephen: My personality type is predominantly intuitive, and logic is my secondary mode. Symbols and possibilities lead my writing; in the first stages of creating a story, that’s all I have. New characters will ambush me or seduce me. An object or a place will suddenly take on a power of its own and I can’t get away from it—until another one kidnaps me. I reach a stage where logic is my life-saver, and I reach for it to hack some order into the beautiful chaos.

I sort out which characters to allow into the story, exactly where it will take place, which themes can be played, and so on. I construct a few explicit events to occur at certain key points in the overall narrative. Then, using all that as an infra-structure, I go back to the beginning to write a proper draft. Intuition takes over again as I write one chapter at a time, letting it all develop as I proceed, and then I switch to the analytic mode to prune and shape … In the current vernacular of the literary world, I’m a “pantser” (flying by the seat of my pants) who shape-shifts into a “plotter” temporarily at moments of need.

Norm: For your writing, does the story come first, or the world it operates in?

Stephen: My fiction is historical; the setting comes first in the process of creating a story. It’s a world I know quite well—the place where I was born and raised, the times I either knew in my own life or learnt about from my older relatives. Of course, it developed more depth from reading and watching old film. The story emerges partly from that historical world, partly from characters with whom I’m preoccupied at the time, and partly from themes that are always flowing through my mind like rivers.

Norm: Could you tell us about people or books you have read that have inspired you to embark on your own career as an author?

Stephen: Oh, the list of books is endless! Could I put them into any order of importance? I don’t think so. In my youth, it was poetry that most deeply informed my mind-set—Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Hardy, G.M. Hopkins in the English tradition. Some of our Australian poets, especially Judith Wright and Kenneth Slessor, had a huge influence.

But the innumerable authors I’ve read since then have shaped facets of how and what I write today. I’ve been propelled to write, as I said earlier, since I first learnt to read. Perhaps a special mention should go to a charismatic English teacher in high school, Dean Manuel, who did a lot to help me find the heart of the literary impulse. With his guidance, I think I came to know my own writerly voice much more clearly. Of course, I was in mid-adolescence, when one is ready to be influenced by someone of a certain type. But he saw that I had a keen literary perception and what he called a “facility with words”, and he overtly encouraged me to develop these abilities.

Norm: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing process?

Stephen: Writing an initial draft! When I start to write a new book, I have in my head a cyclone of images and voices and characters and themes. To marshal them all into a sequence of scenes and chapters is a frightening prospect and a long battle. Once I have that draft, however, I turn with deep relief to the enjoyable task of crafting and polishing the narrative into something that will engage a reader.

Norm: How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your books, Conflict on Kangaroo Island and Song of Australia? As a follow up, could you tell our readers a little about each book?

Stephen: Song of Australia grew partly out of my fascination with South Australia’s participation in the First World War. It was a time of fundamental formation of Australia’s sense of identity, and my grandparents had been deeply involved in it.

As a musician, I was equally fascinated with the fact that the person who had taught me the piano until I was eighteen had grown up during that war. All of that triggered research and imagining, which led to the book.

While researching for it, I came across newspaper reports of a political problem about the production of a chemical from the native yacca bush on Kangaroo Island, in the first year of the war. Conflict on Kangaroo Island grew out of that. The lead character is a young woman whose abilities and behaviour are shocking to the community; although ostracised by most, her compassion and sense of justice impel her stick her nose where it’s not wanted. This book is the first of a series, the next two of which should be published before long. They will follow the same protagonist and several others through the years of the First World War in South Australia.

Norm: What were your goals and intentions in these books, and how well do you feel you achieved them?

Stephen: Most readers say they love the characters and themes, which pleases me. These responses indicate that I’ve succeeded in immersing today’s people in the world of 1913—18 and encouraging them to think about the issues the stories deal with. Their comments also satisfy me that I’ve brought the beautiful island setting to life in Conflict.

Norm: What are some of the references that you used while researching these books? 

Stephen: By far the richest source of information was our Australian National Archives, which publishes digitised newspapers and journals online, dating from the earliest colonial days and right up to 1954. Just browsing through those pages from any year offers an author limitless facts and triggers imagination so powerfully.

A book about the history of Kangaroo Island was also extremely useful: Unearthed, by Rebe Taylor. Supplementary information came from many articles in journals and websites.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your books?

Stephen: Just look at my website http://www.stephencrabbe.com/  and find my books at all Amazon sites and The Book Depository.

Norm: What is next for Stephen Crabbe?

Stephen: I aim to send the remaining books in the series to the editor later this year. So, in 2020, readers will be able to follow those characters right through to the end of the war. I also hear rumblings in my mind about new novels set in a very different era.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.