"Izzy" by Moira McAlister - historical fiction and "taking liberties"!

 

I've worked with a few writers in the past two years who have written novels based on real people in their family tree. So how many "liberties" can you take - or do you have to leap off into fiction in order to make the story zing? Moira has written a novel that is even more fascinating when you know it's based on a real woman.

What inspired you to write this book? How did you go about doing all of your research?

There are two distinct parts to the writing of this book.  Izzy is historical fiction based on facts that I discovered while researching the life and deeds of my great, great grandfather, which I published as a website in 2015 Dr Barry Cotter: the first doctor in Melbourne (drbarrycotter.com) His was an interesting life, full of action and adventure and very well documented through the Historical Records of Victoria, numerous newspaper articles, shipping and appointment lists, official correspondence, references in histories of the time and private records of various types, including an obscure, pantomime style production called ‘A Satirical Manuscript’, held in the State Library of Victoria.

 I spent five years collecting and sifting through these pieces of evidence and finally felt I was able to write his story.   I chose to present it as a website for a number of reasons.  Firstly, and most importantly, because a website is easily edited and I have been able to change or add information as it comes to light.  Secondly, it would be freely available to family members and others who are interested. Thirdly, one advantage of the website is that I was able to link ‘research pages’ to each chapter of the story, so that all my sources and references are easily accessible, but not cluttering the main body of the work. And lastly, I was able to add links to interesting people, places and events if the reader cared to follow up on anything in particular. The end result, to me, is a vibrant, full account of Dr Cotter’s life, almost like a living thing, because it keeps growing and changing over the six years since I first published it. 

But back to Izzy.  Like most women of the 19^th century, Dr Barry Cotter’s wife, Inez, left very little evidence of her life. She appears as an ‘add on’ in various accounts, is mentioned on shipping lists with him, in their marriage certificate of course, in the birth records of their four children, in a few newspaper reports and PROV holds two letters that she wrote. These entries are all fairly routine and dull, but there were also several very tantalizing facts that I found which pointed to a woman whom I could not ignore and I knew that if I was going to write about her, it would have to be fiction.  The facts were like lampposts on a dark road, illuminating just a small space around them.  I could see the next lamppost in the distance but needed to employ plausible and well researched, but fictitious, characters and actions, to get there. This is the image that sustained me throughout the writing. 

Any funny or weird stories?

In the course of my research, I became familiar with the original plan of the Melbourne grid; that iconic plan of straight streets and square blocks, that so defines Melbourne.  It was used as the basis for the first land sales in Melbourne on June 1^st, 1837.  I knew that Dr Barry Cotter had purchased Block 11 Section 12, the south west corner of Bourke and Swanston Street (Oh! If only he had kept it!). His name was printed on the original document along with others who bought the 100 blocks on offer that day.  On first seeing this document, you can imagine my surprise, to find, on the same piece of paper, the name Lachlan Macalister, a kinsman of my husband’s family, a man whose life I had also researched.  That the two of them were present at the same place, at the same time made me think that they probably met.  I guess they would never have thought that their two families would be joined in later years.   

I enjoyed writing that scene in Izzy, not only because of the improbability of it, but also because both men were typical of the purchasers on the day.  Cotter was keen to make Melbourne his home and grew rich on land deals in the growing town.  Macalister was a sheep farmer ready to expand into this new region, a hard businessman, known for his lack of tolerance for the Indigenous people. His blocks in Flinders Street were for warehouses to store wool for export. 

How difficult was it to write about someone who was a family member? At what point did you decide to write a novel rather than a biography? Why?

The most freeing action I took in writing this novel was to change her name from Inez to Izzy.  Perhaps it was because of the amount of research I had done, and my determination to tell Dr Barry Cotter’s story as fact, that I felt bound by her Inez-ness. Once I began to think of her as Izzy, suddenly all sorts of possibilities opened up for me to explore and the work took on a different life, a life of its own, just touching base with the facts at certain points in the story.  By writing drbarrycotter.com as a narrative non-fiction, I felt that I had covered all the biographical details of both Barry and Inez that were available.  I wanted though, to tell her story.  Although so much of the work is fiction, I feel that it is plausible fiction.  

The research I did for Izzy was not so much about her, as I had already gathered as much as possible beforehand.  The research for the novel was about the world she lived in – broad aspects like the places, times, events, people, the role of women, class differences, social mores etc and the specifics such as child care practices, particular inventions, medicinal treatments, common foods, ship board life, fashion and dozens of other details that I felt had to be ‘right’ to maintain the authenticity of the story.

What do you think you have learned along the way that you would pass on to others treading the same path?

Family history is always a matter of conjecture and often of heated discussion. My experience showed me that you can do it in two ways – either as a documented, well-researched biography or narrative non-fiction, which will stand the scrutiny of anyone who cares to inspect it.  Or, declare that it is fiction and use the facts to anchor it, but not bog it down.  Change people’s names to free yourself from being enslaved to the facts of time, place, action and events.

You decided to self-publish the book, but did you consider sending it to commercial publishers or agents first? If so, what happened? What has the process been like?

Yes, I did approach traditional publishers and the answer is – nothing happened. I came close to a contract four or five times, but in the end, after a roller-coaster of hopes dashed, it all came to naught. Once I made the decision to self-publish, the whole process changed.  It became a joy!  I went with a small self-publishing company, IndieMosh, which is situated in the Blue Mountains. The communication skills, professionalism, expertise and experience of this company made the process a dream come true.   

I was in charge at every step, from the cover to the internal layout, to the font, from the page colour to the headings.  Every detail was discussed.  And when the final proof was ready, after many delays on my part and much patience on their part, they did all the technical aspects such as uploading to Ingram, helped with author pages on Amazon, Smashwords and the IndieMosh website, organized royalties and dozens of other technical and specific tasks that I had no idea about. 

What have been the most challenging things – and the most enjoyable?

Challenging?  Probably the editing.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I have always been a confident writer, sure in my understanding of grammar, certain in spelling, at ease with punctuation. I was educated at a time when these skills were important and have taught them myself in primary school for many years.  So, I was shocked to see the number of mistakes which the final professional proof read found.  I cannot stress enough the importance of having other eyes read your work – lots of other eyes -manuscript readers and professional editors will assess your work in terms of readability, structure, flow, plot points, character development, language etc.  They will also see the typos, misspellings and missing words which you glaze over but which are so glaringly obvious to the reader.  

Enjoyable? The satisfaction of having done what I set out to do.  Telling this story as fiction gave me the freedom to explore the motivation behind the actions which are recorded as fact.  Shipping lists, marriage certificates and census records only tell so much.  For example, our 21^st century mentality tells us that a marriage certificate meant a couple were in love. However, in early Melbourne (1835- 1837) men outnumbered women by 20 to 1, so there were many reasons for people to marry – security and respectability for women, housekeeping and companionship for men. Love was not always the prompt to marriage.  The motivation for the action is the ‘human’ part, the ‘universal’, those hundreds of feelings and emotions that prompt action and defy race, culture, distance and time. These universals are a powerful way for a writer to connect with a reader. People are always people and the way they relate to each other is the basis of all literature.

I'm sure Moira would love any Canberrans to hop along to the launch - RSVP as below.