Sandie Docker grew up in Coffs Harbour, and first fell in love with reading when her father introduced her to fantasy books as a teenager.
Her love of fiction began when she first read Jane Austen for the HSC, but it wasn’t until she was taking a translation course at university that her Mandarin lecturer suggested she might have a knack for writing – a seed of an idea that sat quietly in the back of her mind while she lived overseas and travelled the world. Sandie first decided to put pen to paper (yes, she writes everything the old-fashioned way before hitting a keyboard) when living in London.
Now back in Sydney with her husband and daughter, she writes every day.
https://www.sandiedocker.com/
Transcript
Braille House and Book Shop 507
Interview with Sandie Docker
by Andrew Backhouse
ANDREW: Welcome to another event with Bookshop 507 and Braille House. Today we’re joined by Sandie Docker, author. Thank you so much for joining us.
SANDIE: Thank you so much for having me, Andrew.
ANDREW: A pleasure. So, can you tell us a little bit about yourself.
SANDIE: Thank you, Andrew. It’s a funny question to answer because I still think of myself as the quiet, simple girl who grew up in Coffs Harbour and somehow managed to write a book. My first novel, “The Kookaburra Creek Café”, came out in 2018 and before that I was doing what everyone else does—travelling the world, working jobs, and starting a family, and then I put pen to paper and now I’m three books in with another one coming out next year.
ANDREW: What inspired you to start writing books?
SANDIE: I didn’t take the route that most authors take. I am fortunate enough to live in Sydney, which means I got to go to a lot of author events, pre-Covid, of course. They always tell this story about how they were pre-destined to become authors; they wrote their first novel when they were seven, or they came out of the womb reading Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. It was written in the stars that they would one day become a writer, and I was absolutely not that person. It’s sacrilegious to admit that I hated reading as a child. It was the last thing I wanted to do with my time, and it wasn’t until I was in my late teens that my father introduced me to fantasy novels. That was when I discovered a love of reading. When I finished school and went to university, I was doing a Bachelor of Art, majoring in languages—Mandarin and German—and as part of the Mandarin course we had to do a translation component and it was during that that my lecturer suggested that I had a knack for writing. I thought that’s a strange thing to say to me. This was never on my radar. Then I moved to London with my then boyfriend, now husband, and I think I was missing home. You know, going from Coffs Harbour, which was at the time only 20,000 people, then suddenly I’m in London, which is slightly bigger than 20,000.
ANDREW: And the weather’s a bit different.
SANDIE: Very different. Eighteen degrees and they’re in their bikinis, and I was missing home, I think. And I started to write while I was there and that was when I wrote my first manuscript, which was an absolute pile of dog you know what. But it showed me that I loved that process and I went on to write a few more manuscripts, and that’s how it all began.
ANDREW: And your books are quintessentially Australian, as we can see. But you’ve also published in German. Why do you think it’s important to tell our stories to people from other countries?
SANDIE: I think there are countries overseas that are really fascinated by Australian stories. It was my first novel, “The Kookaburra Creek Café”, that got picked up by a major German publisher and translated over there. Germans do have a fascination with Australia and it’s something that they don’t necessarily know a lot about. I was actually an exchange student in Germany when I was 17-18. I would get questions like, “Do our kangaroos deliver our mail?” And they were genuine questions. And so, I think it’s really important that if Australian authors do manage to get out there, into those other countries, our stories show that kangaroos don’t deliver our mail, but we are unique in the way we live our life. And I think that’s what fascinates people from overseas.
ANDREW: Tell us a little about the writing process. Do you sit and write cover to cover, or is the whole book planned out in advance?
SANDIE: No, I’m not a plotter. A plotter is somebody who knows right from the very beginning exactly where it’s going to go. They have chapter outlines before they start and everything is planned. I have never written like that. I am what they call a “pantser”, which is a shocking name but it comes from “fly by the seat of your pants”. So, I have no plans before I start writing. I tend to start with just one single scene in my head and it’s usually a scene that comes much later in the book and I explore my characters and my story through that. Who are they, what are they doing, why are they in this particular place in time, and I write my way into the story. And I don’t tend to write chronologically, either. I write whatever’s coming and then I have to go back and change things and fix things.
ANDREW: And your books are loved. What do you think is the secret ingredient?
SANDIE: If only I knew that. I think there’s a lot of luck involved. I think what probably resonates with my stories, or what I hope resonates with my stories, is that they are quintessentially Australian, which resonates with Australian audiences, but tend to be about everyday people doing everyday things, but something extraordinary happens to them. Hopefully I tell that story with heart and emotion and I think I find that balance between pain and an uplifting story. Because life isn’t always rainbows and cupcakes, and I think people can relate to the pain that my characters go through. But I still leave them with that happy ending at the end.
ANDREW: As an author, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
SANDIE: There’s all sorts of advice out there. Some of it’s good, and some of it’s not. The best piece of advice I’ve been given is—I’m looking at it up there on my shelf because I’ve actually framed this quote—and it’s “The bigger the issue the smaller you write”. I think it’s a really important quote. It goes on to say, “You don’t write about the horrors of war. You write about a kid’s burnt sock lying on the road.” I think that’s a really important piece of advice. When I’m looking at my novels, and I do deal with some quite traumatic experiences in all of my novels. To write about that experience as a whole would be too much. You have to take the smallest part of that pain and that trauma and write about that for that individual character. And I think that was the best piece of advice I ever got.
ANDREW: Your first book only came out two years ago. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind. What’s changed for you in that time?
SANDIE: It’s been a crazy, crazy ride. In April 2018, and then January 2019 was “The Cottage at Rosella Cove”, and March this year was “The Banksia Bay Beach Shack”. So it’s been quite a whirlwind. On the outside it looks like an overnight success story, but if you’ve ever heard anybody talk about their overnight success stories, you’ll know it’s never overnight. It took me about 18 years to get to this point. You just don’t see all of that hard work that goes into that beforehand. I am writing now full-time which is fantastic. I’m not making big bucks but enough to keep my husband off my back that I can just keep writing. So that’s been wonderful. And doing events in Covid—they’ve all been virtual like this—but before Covid, getting to travel the country and meet readers. That has been fantastic.
ANDREW: And just looking at your books there. Beautiful cover art. How do you connect with the illustrators or the people who do that?
SANDIE: Because I’m with Penguin Random House, which is one of the major publishers in the world, they have a team of artists that they go to for cover art, and I was very fortunate with the artists that they picked for my covers. When they sent me through the draft cover for “Kookaburra Creek Café” I was over the moon with what she had done and I think she’s done a really brilliant job. As an author, I don’t have any say in the cover. It’s presented to me with “Do you like it?” And I don’t really have the option to say no. But thankfully I love them and I’ve just recently been given the cover for next year’s book, which is in the same vein as these guys and it’s beautiful as well. But I’m not allowed to share it yet.
ANDREW: What advice would you give to the younger you, not just as a writer but in general?
SANDIE: To the younger Sandie: I would make sure she knows there are going to be hard times ahead, that she will survive those hard times, and to not lose hope, whether that’s in her personal life or her professional life. Hang on to hope.
ANDREW: That’s good advice. Do you have any advice that you could give anyone in our audience who might be thinking about writing a book, or who have written something which they are looking to get published?
SANDIE: Yes. If you’re wanting to write, the best advice I can give is write, write, write. As with anything in life, the more you do it, the better you get at it. I did quite a few courses in my journey to publication through the State’s Writer Centre and it was amazing to me how many people on those courses who never wrote. You know, “I want to be a writer.” “What have you written?” “Oh, nothing.” You can’t be a writer if you don’t write. It’s the only way you’re going to find out whether you can write 90,000 to 100,000 words. And to not be afraid of it. The first thing you write is going to be awful, it is. There’s no question about that. You’ve got to get past that stage to then find that manuscript that is going to get picked up. So write, write, write if you want to be a writer. And for anyone looking to get published, find one or two trusted readers that you know will be honest with you, so probably not your mum, that will give you feedback well before you ever approach an agent or a publisher, because you’ve only got one shot with those guys. First impression and that it is it, so you need it to be as polished as it possibly can be before you hit the agents or the publishers. Because once they’ve seen it and said no, they’re not going to look at it again.
ANDREW: Why is reading so important? Is it not just for an escape—why do you think reading stories is important?
SANDIE: It helps us connect, I think. Connect with other people, not just the writer, but people we talk about the books with, whether that’s in book club, or over coffee with your best friends, and it helps us experience a life broader than we can live ourselves. I think that’s really important. It helps us build empathy, it helps build understanding, and if we can do that, it helps bring us closer together as human beings. The more you rerad, the more connected you are with that human experience and I think in this day and age that’s a really important thing.
ANDREW: It is. And how about yourself? What sort of books do you read in your own time?
SANDIE: Well, you can see I’m sitting in my library with an awful lot of books around me. I tend to read, predominantly, within my own genre, within the women’s fiction genre, which is quite a broad genre. That can be happy, shopaholic books, or slightly darker Liane Moriarty-style women’s fiction. But I tend to read mostly that, and then my second favourite area to read would be historical fiction, So people like Fiona McIntosh, Geraldine Brooks is one of my favourite. That’s what I tend to read most.
ANDREW: And what’s next? You mentioned that you had a book coming out? Can you tell us about that? How much can you tell us about that? I reckon there’s a bit of a scoop here.
SANDIE: A world exclusive here. It’s called “The Wattle Island Book Club”. This is a story about a book club set on a fictional island called Wattle Island. I’m in the editing stages of that at the moment, so it’s a little bit messy. I haven’t quite brought it all together but we have a main character who is a librarian and she’s going through some issues, shall we say, in her life. She helps set up a book club on this remote island and, for reasons I won’t go into just yet, she ends up on the island and together with a cast of characters that are on the island, they help soothe each other’s wounds I guess we could say.
ANDREW: Very good. And are you able to read us a little bit from one of your books?
SANDIE: Yes. Do you have a preference?
ANDREW: No. Whichever you prefer?
SANDIE: Let’s go with the newest. We’ll go with “Banksia Bay”.
ANDREW: Very good.
SANDIE: The story of “Banksia Bay” is that Laura, who is a journalist, was raised by her grandmother, and her grandmother passes away, and Laura finds an old photograph and a broken pendant. And those two items lead her to question whether what she knew about her grandmother was true or not. So she heads to Banksia Bay to try to find out what actually happened in her grandmother’s past. And when she’s there, she meets a whole bunch of wonderful characters. One of these is Virginia, who is the owner of the beach shack, and she suspects that Virginia is the key to unlocking the past, and this is where they meet for the first time.
Laura looked up from her scribble and watched the waves rolling in and out. The longer she looked, the more colours she could see as the sun rose higher, lightening the morning. Black melted into grey, indigo blurred into teal. Bright orange softened into lemon as she watched. Voices dancing across the sand broke the silence, and Laura realised she had been staring into the ocean for half an hour. Heath was walking past with Old Salty, both of them carrying boards under their arms. She sank into the dunes, hoping they wouldn’t see her.
A rumble in her stomach alerted her to the fact that she hadn’t yet had a coffee this morning. Did surfers drink coffee after a morning in the waves? Maybe as she followed the men, they would lead her to an open café. She slipped on her sunglasses and headed down the beach after them.
On the small deck, there were a couple of white metal table and chairs. As Heath and Old Salty sat there, an old woman dressed in tattered denim overalls came out of the shack with a cup of coffee for each man. The front wall of the two-storey beach shack was painted blue. One side of the building was red, another yellow. All of the paint was flaking. Inside, the shack was lined with shelves, and Laura just had to take a closer look. Heath waved to her as she passed inside, but she didn’t respond, captivated by the sight before her. Against one wall, painted red, the same as the outside, the shelves were covered with books. Second hand books of all descriptions, from Tolkien to Jackie Collins, from instructional guides on building wooden bird houses to an unauthorised biography of Hugh Jackman. Against the back wall painted blue, the shelves were cluttered with knickknacks—ceramic owls, glass ashtrays, carved wooden masks. There was also an impressive collection of shells, more than Laura had ever seen in one place before. On the yellow side of the shack, a worn sofa sat in front of the counter, stacked high with mismatched coffee mugs, some in bold plain colours of blue, red and green, some with brightly hued patterns.
The woman who’d brought Old Salty and Heath their cups stood behind the counter watching Laura move around the shack. “Can I help you with something?” She looked at Laura over her lime green glasses.
“No, I was just—actually, a coffee would be good, thank you.”
“Well, first you’ll need to be taking those sunnies off. I don’t like serving people if I can’t see their eyes. You can tell a lot about someone by their eyes, you know.”
The woman turned to the coffee grinder and set about making Laura’s drink. Laura pushed her sunglasses up her forehead and rested them on top of her head.
“I’m Laura. I’m renting the holiday house one street over.”
“Welcome, Laura. I’m Virginia, owner of this little—” Virginia turned to hand Laura her cup and stopped, staring at her. All the colour drained from the woman’s face. Virginia’s heart beat faster, her breathing quickened. What type of wizardy was this? The woman standing in front of her was the spitting image of Lily. Maybe she was having a stoke. Women her age did that. Had strokes, or aneurisms. Could you hallucinate with an aneurism?
“Hey, Virginia. Are you all right in there,” called Ian from the deck. “Are you going to give our visitor her coffee, or make the young lady beg for it?”
Okay, so that old relic of a surfer could see the girl, and maybe she wasn’t hallucinating. Though, given his misspent youth taking any number of hallucinogenic substances, coupled with the fact that he was even older than her, maybe he couldn’t be trusted either.
She turned to glance at the old man, and saw Heath standing up. “Gran, is something wrong”` He took the mug from her hand and gave it to—what did she say her name was? Lauren? Laura? He gave it to Laura. The woman really was standing there in front of her, now staring at her with a rather quizzical expression on her face. Virginia and Ian might be so old they imagined things, but not Heath. If Heath saw her too, she was real. Easing into the arm chair, Virginia watched Laura out on the deck as she sipped her coffee, chatting with Ian. Who was she? And what was she doing here. Was she a mere coincidence, or was she an echo of the past? Virginia would have to raise her guard, not that she had let it down in the last sixty years, not once, not ever. She was always so careful. It was only a matter of time though, she supposed, that the ghosts of her varied yesterdays would come back to haunt her. Not that they ever left, not once, not ever.
ANDREW: Thank you for that. It’s so descriptive I felt like I could see the café, just from your words. Where can people buy your books?
SANDIE: Pretty much anywhere you can buy books. So it is in Big W, in Target, at any good bookstore. Or the online bookstores also have them as well.
ANDREW: Excellent. And thank you so much again for joining us today.
SANDIE: Thank you having me.
ANDREW: It’s been wonderful. Do you have any parting messages for our audience?
SANDIE: I think just be kind to yourselves in this very strange time that we’re living in. You guys in Queensland are doing a much better job than those of us down south at the moment. You know, Victoria has gone into a second lockdown. New South Wales are teetering on the edge right now. Be kind to each other and be kind to yourselves. Read to escape if you need to. And just take it easy.
ANDREW: That’s good advice. Thanks again so much for joining us. Just a reminder to everybody. Bookshop 507 is here in Queensland but Braille House loans braille books all across Australia. We have members everywhere, even in lockdown, so we hope they’re all doing well. Sandie, thanks again so much for joining us today.
SANDIE: Thank you for having me Andrew. And happy winter to everybody.