[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morrell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for Authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author Podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free Author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.
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Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in Today's interview is with Toby Hammerschlag on Fiction with Purpose, Apartheid, Resilience and Writing for change and WeChat aspects of her new novel Looking out and beyond the story rooted from Toby's childhood experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa, blending personal memory with historical fact, covering complex themes racial injustice, World War II and migration, all while being accessible to young adult readers. How Toby's background as a literacy educator helped shape the story to align with the Australian school curriculum and still connect emotionally with students to Toby's hopes for this book to empower young people to stand up against racial discrimination via conversations or classroom discussions for looking out and beyond, sparking in schools, publishing with Woods Lane and embracing a hybrid path to authorship what Toby's Author Adventure has been like bringing this important story to life and her advice for writers who also want to make a social impact with their work and much more so in my Author Adventure this week I have finally caught up with the lovely Kirsty from Thorn Creative.
So longtime listeners of the podcast know that Thorn Creative have been a sponsor for many, many years. Kirsty at ThornCreative is my web designer. She created the Hybrid Author Podcast website and honestly, I've just never looked back. It's where I sell books from, it's where people can sign up for my newsletter. It's where I update everything, events, upcoming events and things like that. It is pretty much the hub of my author business and no one can take that away from me because you know, I pay for hosting. It's my website. It's my space. I don't need to rely on a third party subscriber to to get rid of it all. And what was interesting when I met Kirsty was we had a really, really interesting conversation about AI the way it's impacting websites, which is not something that I thought of before. And she had some such good points and insight as well from her business. I'm happy to say that Kirstie will be coming on the podcast to chat about this and also she's got some very, very interesting author templates she's creating and different things going on. So I'm really excited to share that episode with you in the near future. Kirsty and I both are from Pervest in Australia. We don't live that close by, but we are still in the same area and you know, we've been collaborating and doing stuff together for many years, although from afar. So I think it's just nice to put that friendly face to face, you know. And it was, it was really, really nice catching up so I am attending a write in for the Romance Writers of Australia tomorrow. Just a couple of hours because I've got I'm working at the sellers afterwards, but I'm really looking forward to catching up with some romance writers local to my area and I can actually partake in the writing. I could always do that anyway. But now that I'm actually started on another novel, a romance one, I am very excited to be around individuals writing in that same genre and yeah, start to make connections in this category. I haven't really been to much other book events or anything. I'm really just in the throngs of lots of other works and things like that.
It's been a really busy time and it's also still school holidays, but they go back next week, which is now that it's appearing. It feels like it's been quite a good break for them, but it's also good for them to get back into things. We are halfway through the year. The Hybrid Author Podcast is currently open for guests. If you are an author or industry professional in the publishing writing world, reach out and pitch me
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Toby Hammerslag grew up in South Africa, immigrating to Australia with her husband and two daughters in 1986. She was a special education teacher for many years, specializing in literacy. While teaching, she would write passages and stories for her students when she couldn't find an appropriate text for them. After retiring from teaching, she did an oral history course with the Chief oral history Librarian at the State Library of New South Wales. She then interviewed people in order to preserve their family stories. Some of the characters in her recent novel have been inspired by these interviews. Her first book, the Rooftop, was published in 2015. It is a story of friendship between four young students from diverse cultural and social backgrounds. The book celebrates freedom and diversity and has been widely used in schools. Looking out and beyond is her second novel. The research and writing of her novel has taken five years. Toby and her husband live on the Upper North Shore of Sydney and is now a grandmother of five. Wow. Welcome to the Hybrid Author Podcast.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Toby, hello and thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to speaking to you.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: We are absolutely honoured and thrilled for you to join us. Thank you so much. So Amin, can you tell us how you came to be a writer? Was this when you were writing texts for your students? Or was it when you were a child? Or how did you pick up pen to paper?
[00:07:30] Speaker B: I think that I've always loved writing and even going back to school days, which is quite a long time ago, I was always the creative one and I always loved writing. As you said before when you were talking about my bio, I was a special ed teacher for many years specializing in literacy and it left little writing time or emotional time or any time to pursue writing. However, when I had students with literacy difficulties and I just couldn't find an appropriate text, I would write stories for them and I'm only sorry that I didn't keep any of them. Oh no. But then when I retired I did an oral history course which kind of fits into Being a writer because I'm interested in people, I'm interested in stories. And then I went on to writing.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Amazing. No, that's great. That could be another book in you, I guess. You know, the text for people that needed help with it, your students.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yes. And in fact, there's a character in my first book, the Rooftop, and she's a little girl, has a learning difficulty.
Bright, creative, and that's one of the kind of the kids I taught and others.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: It seems like you draw inspiration from those around you, but also from your own personal experiences.
Yeah. Today we are here to talk about your new novel, Looking out and Beyond. And this story is quite personal. It's deeply rooted in your own childhood experiences of growing up in apartheid South Africa.
So what inspired you to fictionalize this particular part of your life? And how. How did you approach your memories and historical facts?
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Yes, this story was percolating in my head for a long time.
And of course, it is my story in the sense that I grew up in apartheid South Africa, immigrating to Australia in 1986. When the state of emergency was declared in South Africa. We wanted to immigrate for a long time. But when the state of emergency was declared and civil liberties weren't guaranteed and people could be incarcerated with without recourse to getting a trial, that's when we decided literally at that time, we are now leaving this country. But so the motivation for this book comes from a family that I knew and I know very well that lived in South Africa, in the rural part of South Africa, and they established on their farm a school for the black kids. Huge undertaking endeavor and very brave because, I mean, one of the reasons that they established the school was that the education for people of color was inferior. They wanted to give the opportunity to these kids. And that's what I have in my novel too. So they were the inspiration. That's what I have in my novel. These are people in the novel. They are white South Africans living in rural South Africa. And they want to improve the life for the people around them in rural South Africa. There was the people that surrounded them. They were great supporters of the nationalist government, the government that was in power. So if you established a school or acted in the most decent way towards people of color, you were ostracized by the people around you. So in my book, you have these people who forming the school on their farm against this background of astonishment for the people around them.
The main protagonist is someone called Ada in the book. She's a girl of 12 years old and she lives a privileged life in South Africa on this farm. She loves this farm. She doesn't look beyond the confines of her world until she comes into contact with a girl of mixed descent who brings with her another complete world which opens up the world for Ada. I've brought my story into that because even though it's completely fiction, it's not because it's historical. It paints the divide between white people in South Africa and a young person growing up and a person of color whose every day there would be harassment. There would be every day was the struggle. Yes, it's autobiographical, but it's been fictionalized. But it is against that historical background.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so powerful. I couldn't even, you know, I've obviously seen movies and read some books on that era, but to actually have witnessed it, I couldn't even imagine. Was there a specific reason you went for, you know, 12 year old girl over say a different age group or anything like that? Was. Was that strategic in any way or just how they perceive the world or.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yes, this. My last book was for the end of the audience, was end of primary. I wanted to write for high school students. She became a 12 year old girl.
I've incorporated as a subplot the Second World War. And so there was. There was a bit of. There was a practical reason I wanted her to be born at the time of the war when her father was sent to North Africa and her mother is a war bride and so she's born there and the first time she meets her father is during that time when he returns from war. But I also think that a 12, 13 year old girl, the world's just opening up to them and I think that's amazing age. So to discover the world at that age is quite important.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it's kind of. You're still an adolescence, but you're dropping that sort of really child, aren't you? And kind of heading through into puberty.
[00:13:07] Speaker B: What we have in the book is that Ada wants to be independent. She's an only child. But on the other hand, what you're saying is this dual. This dual feeling of being still wanting to be protected but still wanting to be out there.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Emerging from your innocent childhood.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I love that. That's great. Well, you mentioned World War II. You do have some complex themes in there, you know, racial injustice, apartheid, as we said, and migration. Have you used your background as a literacy educator to sort of soften those subjects? And how have you actually thought about school curriculum with this book? Your first book's been well received in schools. And how have you weaved in these big, complex themes into two books, you know, for children? How have you managed that?
[00:13:54] Speaker B: So the theme of the Second World War, it really only emerged after I began writing that I didn't intend to. It's a subplot, but it fits into the narrative of the book. And all is revealed at the end because the. And I don't want to give too much away, but what happens to Joan in the war and his interaction with indigenous soldiers is what determines how he lives his life with his wife Jahilia, afterwards.
But going back to the curriculum, I wrote the book without even thinking about the curriculum.
There's obviously a teacher in me that always comes out.
And only after I'd read, after I'd finished the book, I actually looked up the history curriculum and I thought, wow, there's apartheid, the Second World War, and the poor treatment of indigenous soldiers.
It was sin. But I think that, as you say, they're complex themes, and how do you. How do. How does one bring them? I think the nature of the book lends itself to a young reader being able to absorb it.
And I'm hoping that I've brought my experience of teaching literature to young people. So the book is a highly structured book in a way. So we start off.
There's a historical introduction, and so a student that's reading it in Australia can begin to get an idea and be transported into a world that they have never understood.
And then you have the narrative, also, what I've done in the narrative. And also this evolved in the writing.
The narrative is written in the third person, and the war stories are written in the first person. It's mainly through the eyes of Ada, but she wants to discover the secrets of why her father behaves the way he is, why he doesn't tell us what's happened. And I think that adds interest for the reader and they'd be able to understand and relate to complex topics. Certainly the structure of the book. Sorry, I got sidetracked.
There's a glossary at the end of the book. One is. And so it will. It will help the reader navigate the book. And I know people who actually look up the glossary as they go along.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: Right. Amazing.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: One of the other ways in which I think it makes it accessible to the reader is that within the book, there's a lot of description. And I think people can be transported to a rural town. It's quite interesting that people who've read the book said, well, I've been transported I'm Australian, but it's like a rural town in Australia.
Then someone else, when I mentioned that when I was being interviewed in Canberra at the bookshop and I mentioned that and I said apartheid aside, it's a rural term, the owner said to me, but hang on a minute, in the 1950s in Australia, Indigenous people couldn't even enter a swimming pool in the same sense as what happened in apartheid. Obviously not. Not extreme. There's a lot of description in the book. And then when Ada is trying to discover the mystery, so there's mystery in the book, trying to discover her father's past, she goes and secretly looks at the letters written from his days in North Africa. So then you've got the letters which young people can read and they can see. And then Jonah reads his war diary. So it's absolutely difficult themes. But I think through the writing I've made it accessible to my readership.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: No, that's amazing. So when you set the scene, is there a lot of action in it as well? Or is it quite more character driven, emotionally driven, or is it incidences throughout or you don't want to give time?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I think it's character. There are incidents, there's climax and there's menace that runs through it. We've got this policeman called K and he's typifies any policeman that you would have met during that era. They were scary people. That menace lies there. And he comes and he visits the farm, he raids the farm when he thinks that the little girl of mixed descent which is staying there on a so called white property, and he comes in the middle of the night and he raids this property. So there is menace and. But there's also happiness.
And what I've introduced right through the book is the theme of music.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Lovely.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: And a lot of research went into that.
So we've got ethnic music, we've got. And there's actually an Australian strand that comes into it. We've got the Australian doctor who's also see in action in North Africa. And his wife teaches on the farm and she introduces, she sometimes teaches them Walsing with Tilva. And the little ethnic kids just laugh. They have never heard anything like that in their life. So we've got all that beautiful music that's coming through in the book. And then ultimately in that last scene when. And I won't spoil it, but Jahilia loves music. She's the wife of the farmer. She wants to take the black kids to see the wizard of Oz and they're not allowed in. And then there's a lot of drama related that I won't spoil us.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: No, no.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: And so I had the most wonderful woman in South Africa. Oh, no, sorry. I had a wonderful man doing all the music and the games that the ethnic kids played. I had him research it and then I had the wonderful woman translating the ethnic languages.
Both fabulous people who helped me tremendously.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds incredible. I mean, it sounds like you've got a bit of everything in there. You know, the story, the action, the music, the emotional side. There's a lot going on which. Yeah, it just absolutely sounds wonderful. So your hopes for the book is to, you know, it's a big, big, big, big message. Empower young people to stand up against racial discrimination. What conversations or classroom discussions do you hope this book is going to spark in schools?
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Being a teacher, you know, and I've got teacher notes on my website.
So there's a more formal side where, you know, the book lends itself to integrative teaching, English and history. So there could be a more formal side. There can be kids researching.
This is a springboard, Mabo. It could be the formal side where kids are researching. They're researching the war. They're researching the poor treatment of indigenous soldiers. For example, in the book, it touches on how indigenous soldiers could not come into an RSL unless it was Anzac Day. And these were courageous young people. They could look into just the factual battles of the Second World War and how they fought against tyranny and, of course, apartheid South Africa and how people were treated. The other side is often in English. There's the creative side, where people are studying characters and writing diary entries from the perspective of characters, and there's all that side to be explored. But in terms of conversation, what I really would like is that for young people to talk about racism and how they could impact on everybody's life and how they might have come cross it in their school, in their neighborhood. And to think back to the title, Looking out and beyond that. We need to look out and beyond the confines of our world to the world of others.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: The title was intentional in the sense that there's a physical act of looking out to see the black pickers coming, just arriving at the farm.
And then we have the farmer and his wife looking out, but they've looked out beyond the farm. They already know what's happening outside of their farm. But at the end of the book, when Ada is looking out, she's now has grown and looking out as a person who has learned from her experiences, well, it's still.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: You know, the themes are from the past, but they're still extremely current. So, yeah, I could imagine very powerful conversations being sparked in schools after reading your work from. From this as well. So you've published this with Woods Lane, and, you know, how's that experience been?
[00:22:19] Speaker B: They directed me through the whole process. Even though I'd been through it before, this was a little different.
I was more involved in the process, and I found there was a lot that I had to do. So, for example, they would give me of an illustrator, and I think there was an illustrator who really wanted to do the work, but she was very busy and she vacillated between, can she do it? Can I do it? Can't I do it? And then she put me onto someone else. I think that you saw the COVID of my book, and I think someone called Kettle Skagg, and he captured. He read the book and he captured the essence of the story. There's always movement between how you perceive it and when you actually get the COVID of the book. I was in Canberra at the time, and when the COVID came out, I couldn't even look at it. My daughter's an art historian, and I said to her, you look at it. Tell me if it's okay. No, I think this is good.
I went back to my hotel and I'm not. I hardly drink alcohol at all, but I went straight to the bar.
There were issues in the publication. I mean, there were times when I had. My editor was in Italy at one stage. The person who was laying out the book, he was traveling between Sydney and Melbourne. I'm not even sure he had a permanent address at the time. Negotiating all that was difficult, but definitely Woods Lane did guided me through the process, and I am grateful for that.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. Do you have any advice you want to share with other writers who maybe want to, you know, make a social impact with their work, such as you have?
[00:23:56] Speaker B: I think that if you have a story to tell or a message to put out to your readership, go for it. But it's very important to send out a message to the world. But saying that when you're doing something that's historical fiction, like my book, you have to do a huge amount of research and to make sure that it's accurate.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:19] Speaker B: And so I spent many a day in Canberra in the archives, looking at diaries of soldiers. I was lucky enough, for example, to have Honorable Justice Edwin Cameron in South Africa, who was on the Constitutional Court and wrote the new constitution for South Africa, looking at My book. Very generous on his part. He looked at the historical introduction and said it was okay. And also he looked at the language in the book, for example, and because I wanted to capture that era where demeaning language was used when people spoke to people of color. And I wanted to capture that. And he looked at it quite carefully and he said there was, I was walking a fine line between authenticity and offense.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: He looked at the language and he said that some of the words, even though they're accurate, you cannot use them.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Because they are. So it's trauma tricking for people in South Africa.
And then I was worried about my Australian audience. So there were a lot of hurdles that I had to. Had to overcome. So I'm saying to people who write, it's not an easy path, but it's a worthwhile path.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: It's important as well. I think a lot of people might stay clear of writing these types of works because. Yeah, exactly. That they're worried about what they're gonna say or if they're gonna cause offence. Even people voicing their opinion on how they feel about certain things and how you're gonna be perceived is a scary thing. You know, you're very brave of what you've done, but it sounds like you've done your due diligence. You know, you've checked your facts and had it all published. So you can put it out there with confidence as well. Well, our listeners are dying to know where can they find the book? Toby where's available on an offline.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Probably the best place would be Woods Lane Publishers, but it's also on Amazon, which is an easy option to obtain the book.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing all you have. The book sounds fantastic. Congratulations. Really, really important story.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: Thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to speak about my book. I appreciate that.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: You're welcome. Thank you.
Next time on the Hybrid Author podcast we have another loanosode from me chatting how to get your indie or hybrid book into bookstores. And I'll touch on understanding bookstore priorities, consignment versus wholesale, creating a bookstore ready sell sheet, follow up etiquette and building relationships, why local connection matters and much more.
I wish you well on your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now. That's the end for now. Authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening and I hope you'll listen next time. Remember to head on over to the hybrid Author website at www.hybridauthor.com to get your free author pass. It's bye for now.
