AustLit

Adrian Stirling shares his personal experience of writing and researching his first full length novel Broken Glass. The novel is set in a small country town and so Stirling sets out on a series of day trips to enhance his knowledge, 'gained through teaching', of small town living. He found the exeprience particularly rewarding and says that '[m]any of the incidental conversations in the books are things I overheard people saying'. Stirling says that the characters are not based on anyone specific but that the main protagonists in the story, Danny and Nile, are 'a collection of qualities' found in people he observed in his travels. After walking down 'plenty of main streets' he began to notice 'the things small towns had in common: war memorials, top and bottom pubs, bakeries with gold-medal pies and vanilla slices', and says Suddenly...it felt like I was writing about something real'. Stirling says that looking back, his process of writing and re-writing 'wasn't very economical' but it allowed him to 'explore different charatcers individually before the plot really came together'. He was happy to finish and 'have written a book' but didn't hold any 'false hope for publication, so was very excited when Penguin offered to publish it.