Welcome to TP Hogan's Author Interviews.
Today, I'm joined by a Young Adult, Science Fiction author, Adele Jones.
[Adele Jones reading excerpt]
Blaine wandered to the front door and worked the key into the lock.
Pushing inside he ripped open the envelope and began to read the cover letter.
It was from an agency he'd never heard of.
His head whirled as he scanned the words,
so much so, the keys dropped from his hand into the floor.
"Blaine, is that you?" Blaine scarcely registered his mother's voice.
Scattering the other letters onto a hall stand nearby,
he re-read the information and frowned.
"Honey, I'm doing a party soon, won't be home until after dinner. Blaine, are you alright?"
In the silence that followed, Blaine noticed his mother was standing beside him,
awaiting a response.
He shook his head, feeling as if a dense fog had engulfed his mind.
Realising she'd started reading over his shoulder, he shoved the papers back into the envelope.
"What do you have there?"
Blaine shrugged and lowered the envelope to his side as if it wasn't anything significant.
He needed time to think but his mum wouldn't be put off.
"Looks official."
It was then Blaine noticed the color had drained from the face.
What did she read?
TP: Well we have today with us Adele Jones. Hi Adele.
Adele: Hello, TP. How are you?
TP: I'm very good. So if you'd like to give our readers a brief introduction of who you are
and what you write.
Adele: Okay, well I am an Australian author and I write mainly for
the young adult market.
TP: Yep. And where did your journey, your writing journey start?
Adele: I love stories. Our family love stories, but I suppose if you looking at when I actively
began writing for the market, as in writing something that I wanted to get published,
I would have been in my early 20s. Back then I was actually writing historical fiction.
TP: In a single sentence or slogan, what what encompasses the story expectation
for your readers?
Adele: Science fiction for the real world.
TP: Nice, I like that, I like that.
So, have you got some interesting information on the books or book series that you've written?
Adele: Yes I do, I can tell you a little bit about that.
Actually, I write a few different things. I write poetry. I have written
short fiction and short non-fiction works and inspiration works.
And I tend to often have a bit of a social justice theme that's probably not intentional
but it just yeah they're the things that probably fire me up a bit and I've also
released the Blaine Colton trilogy which is a technical medical crime thriller,
and that's through Rhiza Press. It broaches...that particular trilogy
broaches some pretty tough issues. But I do this, by basically putting a face to
those issues through my characters and then raising questions that they experience
through their journeys in the book.
TP: So, you're Australian, where do you come from?
Adele: Originally? I'm a farm girl, actually. I am.
From the Darling Downs. That's now called the Western Downs,
and I now live on the 'mountain top' in Toowoomba, which is on the Great Dividing range in Queensland.
TP: Did growing up as a farm girl have any influence on you on your story writing or you're writing journey or
anything like that?
Adele: I think it had a massive influence on me because you have a really increased awareness
of your need for human connection.
Community is such a big factor in the whole rural lifestyle, I think.
I guess because you don't have people sort of up against you all the time,
you value those connections of family and friends. I guess that also was something that I didn't realise,
even as a child, how much we facilitated those events. Even just on holidays or on weekends
we'd sort of ride kilometres, if needs be, just to go and connect with our neighbours.
We'd hang out like a pack of kids you know? We were quite an interesting bunch.
Just lots of fun, get into all sorts of mischief. Not harmful.
I think that it took me a really long time, like over a decade to realise that
writing needs that same community. That same connection. So that was really
where my writing journey started to take off, was when I met someone else who was
a long-term friend but we just never realised for both wrote.
so it's like...You write? I write. Let's get together and talk about writing.
That's how our writing group began. We're the 'quirky quills'. That sort of developed into all sorts of things.
We're part of the Omega writers organisation which is a national organisation.
So you get really connected and it's just so encouraging. So, I love that bit.
That was part of my growing up that I really took a long time to translate it into my writing journey.
TP: So... Adele: And that's...Sorry?
TP: Keep going, sorry.
Adele: Oh, no, you're right. I was just going to say... I think that because of the farm life,
work ethic is a big connector with that, because, anything in life, I think
whatever your work ethic is growing up that does come through a lot in the way you approach life.
When you are on a farm and you have jobs to do, like you might be making sure cattle have water, or that animals
are calving. There are people who are relying on you to do those things. Your parents or family...
fencing all that sort of stuff. If you don't do it there's that natural consequence of something will happen
you know, or could happen, I should say.
There's that sense of responsibility, and a sense of onus. That helps with the writing, because there's no one there
cracking the whip over you unless you've got a deadline due. So it helps with that.
And of course...imagination. We used to run around and do all sorts of crazy stuff.
Invent planets and stories, and you know, act them out. Always fun. Build huts - best thing ever. Just saying.
[laughs]
A real love of the landscape, love of the earth, just that real connection.
I think that open space is really good for creativity. So...long answer to your question.
TP: That's great. It's really interesting to come from that mindset, to explore that mindset.
That's really awesome.
You said earlier that your Blake series...Blaine series....sorry, was a medical mystery.
Adele: Yes.
TP: What you do is, you're actually a scientist. How does that influence your writing and your
story journey and what impact has that had?
Adele: Well I think, I probably perceived life in a slightly different way. When you talk to people from different
professions, they see different things in a situation.
But what I really like is that whole challenge of nutting out facts. What can I find here?
And how does that fit in here? The historical research? That's probably what sucked me into it.
Yes, it was interesting, but I really like the satisfaction of going...
...hmm, ah, this here and I need that scenario, and that has to be to here and actually looking up the details,
and finding this, this and this, and pulling it all together. And I was like mwhhhaha.
And the family thought I was so weird but that's all fun.
and I think that, that was a real happy place for me.
And I think, too, in writing the science-based fiction...because I actually write the near science fiction
now so that's my adult area really now. I thinks that's been fun because I can use the field I'm in,
that's sort of biomedical area, and actually push that out a bit.
Near science fiction feels like it's real but it actually isn't. It's fictionalised and so I write it for the real world and
just like to blow out those bounds a bit. It's quite fun.
TP: Well, I'm glad you have fun with it. It actually does come across in your stories.
It's like opening up this different world that you have no idea exists and then you jump
into it and you think...oh she just makes it sound so simple, and makes it sound so easy,
oh, of course that makes sense.
Adele: Thanks. That's what I hope.
Hope people aren't going...gee, how would that work. That would be not good.
TP: The Integrate series, Blake....I keep calling him Blake. I know his name is Blaine, and I keep calling him Blake.
Integrate. Blaine. They're the two separate words.
Adele: There are a few people who've called him Blaine....Blake. It's Blaine.
TP: It's easy to do.
Adele: It is. I've had a few comments from readers and it's 'Blake'. and I'm like....It's Blaine.
Happens, I think it's just kind of a brain crossover. It's too easy.
TP: Yeah. It's the 'Integrate' and 'Blaine', you know.
Adele: Yeah. I'll change the title. Yeah....no. I don't want to.
TP: In the series Blaine Colton has a specific condition. Was there a particular reason behind that choice?
Adele: Well, Blaine is a survivor of Mitochondria Disease and the idea behind the book is actually,
...What if science could?
That thought really came from a conversation with a friend. A family friend and I were just chatting and her
brother had Mito, and I'd never really asked her about that.
I was just, you know I'm just nosy. It's a fact of the matter. You know....helps.
I just kept asking her, so what is it that keeps your brother in a wheelchair?
And she'd tell me a bit about it, and I'd say...How is it inherited?
And she'd say...It's complicated.
Are there any sort of treatments available?
Well, it's complicated.
What about genetic options?
Well, it's complicated.
So that was the answer. It's complicated...all the way.
It wasn't my main area, I knew about it. And that's the thing she'd ask me.
Do you know about Mitochondrial Myopathy? Do you know about Mitochondrial Disease?
Well, I've heard about it but it wasn't my main area of interest, so I thought well I'm going to find out more
about this and I just started digging through information, just to see what I could learn.
The more I read, the more complicated it was. It's just an amazing and complex illness.
Originally, I didn't want to use that because I didn't want that sense of ...
Oh you're just writing it about it about him.
He inspired me to write it, but I actually wanted to invent an illness that was kind of Blaine's own,
if that makes sense? But the thing is, I also wanted to write it in the 'near world',
and it was like, well this is the only one that really ticks that box of it being so complex
that it's going to be an 'impossible' to try and fix.
That was really why I went with that. It was in the 'too hard basket', and
the same thing at the treatments though. I guess I wanted them to feel real.
I looked up a whole heap of either hypothetical treatments or treatments that had been
trialled in some form. Nothing had obviously gone to the full range of where I thought, oh yay, this works, let's
roll with it. It was actually just different treatments, and I thought...you know, that sounds like it has some validity
and so I would use that. That's what I used to kind of define, also, a custom-made treatment for Blaine's
custom-made, unique, never-been-seen-before type of Mitochondrial Disease.
So, that's where all that came from.
TP: Where did the idea for Blaine himself come from?
Adele: I actually had the idea for the story probably for a good two years before I wrote it.
Sadly, that young man passed away a year before I did get it published, which is a
bit unfortunate. It would have been really fun to be able to present it to him.
I think it was the year before I actually submitted I can't remember, but it was actually before the book came out.
I actually acknowledged him and asked his parents, and that was really nice that they gave me permission to
acknowledge him in the beginning.
But, Blaine as a character himself, was originally just for a short story.
That's what I had in mind. I just thought 'something fun', and that.
Obviously, it was way bigger than that. And I knew that very well straight up, after trying to get the idea down.
Blaine himself was very clear on my mind. He was there and I thought I knew who Blaine was going to be.
He was like any teen. He wanted to fit in. He had those same goals and aspirations... but I'd had given him
some really strict instructions. So it's like...Okay, Blaine this is an action story. You got that?
Technical thriller. You know, adventure. And so he's like...Cool, we're rolling with that and then...
we're about halfway through the manuscript...and he kept looking at this girl.
Like, who is this girl, Blaine? Oh, I don't know but she's cute.
I'm like Blaine, no, no, focus, focus. And he just kept looking at this girl...
and then he started talking to the girl. So then I had to go back and write the girl in.
So, I'm just, really appreciative to Blaine....not...for making all that extra work. But anyway, we got a
romantic thread in it. So, thank you, Blaine for that.
In writing him, though, Blaine himself as a character was really challenging, because I wanted him to be believable
and like any character accessible to the reader, but his whole life had been defined by illness, he had no choice
for himself, his whole world was dictated for him by other people's choices, and then suddenly he's got this
whole world of opportunity and so he could have been a really, spoiled, obnoxious piece of work. He really could
have been, or he could have been horribly passive like...Oh, well that's how life is...and he's none of those.
I think Blaine as a character kind of really found his own, in that he really came out of himself and just hit this
healthy combination, of this real teenage attitude. It's a bit sarcastic, you know, he's impulsive but he's got a
really good huge sense of humor, but he's hugely determined. It's like the thing you keep slapping down,
it just keeps getting up again. And it's actually in one of the novels, there's actually a reference to it. It's quite
stimulating, it's like the thing that won't die. It's fun to write him, but he's also really naive. That's actually an
important part the first story. It's part of the plot, because he's so easily manipulated because he hasn't
got that real context to align things with so he is a bit more vulnerable. He does actually kind of swallow a few
lies that you and I, with a bit more life experience would say...well, hang on a minute, I know this, let's line this up.
So he's a bit more vulnerable in that sense. But because he's also smart, and he's had a lot of time to think,
things kind of gelled together in his mind and so he's not just going to lie down and die. So, he's like, hang on a
minute, I don't know if this makes sense. I'm going to do something about this.
Yeah, he was fun.
TP: He is a really awesome character. He's really fun to read. He really is.
Adele: Thank you. That's lovely. I like him, but I'm biased.
TP: Really? I wonder why that would be?
Adele: No idea. You'd think I was the author or some ridiculous thing like that.
TP: You've really encompassed him and really indebthed him as a character. He's really fully
developed, what were the experiences that you went through...you know, you've got this character, he's
awesome, he's amazing, he's got some struggles that he has to go through and he definitely has his
vulnerabilities and his faults and his weaknesses, so with him developed, what were some of the experiences
that you went through for fleshing out the story, or researching the series or finding the rest of the story?
Adele: Right. Okay. As an author approached my novel writing by filling my head up with all the stuff and then
spewing it up the page. Sounds really revolting.
I never used to be to be a fan of the fast first draft. But a few NaNoWriMo later and also when I wrote Integrate, it
was just a...hey let's just write a novel in a month...sort of thing, but I had all of the stuff in my head, and I had a
really clear view of the plot, and that. Probably Integrate and Replicate, I just did all the research of the things I
thought I needed and then just I wrote into that. I guess it allows the character to have a little bit of flow and the
story to kind of get its own pace and so that works really well for those two and then I'd go back with extra
research. So I sort of flesh it out a bit more, with specific issues that I sort of think well I need to know a little bit
more about that. [Noise of lawn mower in background]
Oh, sorry. Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah.
So, that is the way I approached those stories, that way I'm actually also writing up extra detail into the story so
that I would go back and go, yeah I need to make sure I keep this, this and this in there because we're leading to
this. That was my 'set up' notes, if that makes sense?. The problem with that, though, was of course when you
go back sometimes, you're like okay I need to pull this this and out this bit out so there's not so much
information overload but it's finding that balance. So I actually don't do that now, I tend to try and just write it
basically in and just flow with that.
The problem is Integrate was actually written as a standalone.
TP: Aha, yes. I know the feeling.
Adele: Yeah, so that made it a bit interesting when I came to writing...not so much Replicate, but Activate,
because there were set ups in Integrate, I would have done differently. That made Activate extremely hard.
I mean as you know you've written an amazing series, and you know how hard it is to get the follow on, because
you get more threads, you've got to pull them all together, and because I to tie all those threads in
Activate, some of them were a little bit hard because they came from an angle that I wouldn't have probably
put them in originally, if I had known. But that's fine. Nothing like a challenge, right? So what I did is asked a
whole heap of experts. I think I asked five or six experts in their fields. I sent either by phone interview or
face-to-face or questions, whatever it was. Some of them gave me heaps and heaps of information to read
Have a read of this, that's what you need to know for that. Through those conversations I got the details
I needed to actually write Activate. But I already had a first draft, because I didn't have all of that detail available
when I needed to be finishing that. I try and have that first draft written before the previous book goes out
because then you know if there's things you need to kind of set up in the previous book you've got the option there
to do that. So I sat down at our computer, which happened to be dying at the time so it was really tricky...
Oh, it was terrible. I just had all of that information around me, I consolidated it into notes, and it was
a matter of going through the manuscript and going...Okay, that scene won't work. Delete. Gone.
I deleted probably, over a third of the manuscript.
TP: Wow
Adele: That was basically where I had to restart and that's how it came together. There was this really cool
ending twist. Sorry couldn't keep it. In my head I know how that would have gone...but yeah, it wasn't ever going
to work in the end, so sorry readers.
TP: Have you ever been asked any questions or queries about the books that surprised you, from readers?
Have they contacted you and asked you some stuff that just surprised...
Adele: I like getting questions. It's fun to have readers asking questions about your writing, but I think probably
the thing that has surprised me is that people are surprised about my career, does that make sense?
So the science writing crossover.
TP: Well, you write science fiction so...
Adele: Exactly, I know. But I used to write historical fiction, so you know... Yeah, I think that, that surprised
me most it's like that...Oh, but don't you work in science? It's like...Yeah?
In my experience, science has required me to be very creative and I think it's a beautiful compliment.
I know a lot of really crazily creative people in science so to me it seems a really perfect sort of connection.
I think some people do find that a little bit surprising but that's not about the story sorry, I went off on a little
tangent there. Oh, one thing I was surprised about was a question from
one of my friends who had a red convertible sports car. Have you read Integrate? I know you've read Integrate.
Do you remember the red convertible sports car?
TP: No.
Adele: [Gasps]. I'm just totally shocked, now.
[laughs]
Well, the reason that car is in there...is because she dared me to put it in...and her.
So, the gorgeous blonde in the red convertible sports car is a real person. Sorry, can't put that 'no real-life
characters' disclaimer on it for that one.
TP: Based on a real life person.
Adele: That's right, but only that person. It was fun. It's like...I dare you. Fine. Done.
TP: Here you are. Just don't annoy you because once you're in the story you could be killed off.
Adele: Well, see I didn't kill any...no, I can't say didn't kill anybody...not spoiling, but I didn't kill her.
TP: Yep. Okay. Fair enough.
Adele: That would be bad if I killed her. I like that friend.
[laughs]
TP: The Integrate series is a really good series. And I recommend other people read it, like highly
recommend it. It's a lot of fun. So, where can readers find you and your books?
Adele: Okay, I can be found right here in my media room...
my books though....seriously my books are in lots of places.
Surprising places, that I don't even know they are. They are kind of sneaky like that.
This is really cool. I actually get readers who send me photos of...oh, look I saw your book in this
bookstore...picture. It's really fun I love it. That's kind of nice but I don't
remember the names of all the bookstores sorry, but I do know the main ones so basically,
they're available...obviously the biggest question to ask...are they electronic formats and
paperback? Yes, so if people prefer ebooks or paperbacks, they have
both options so that's always nice. You can actually order them directly through
the publisher, Rizer press. Can order directly through any bookstore just quoting the ISBN but there are some
books that actually bookstores that stock it. And that's always handy because
then you know it's right there so 'Koorong' bookstore and there's also a number of small independent bookstores.
Again, I don't know them all but there's 'USQ omnia books and beyond', so that's actually out at the University
in Toowoomba and they've also got a Springfield...yeah I think that's the right place...campus,
I believe they stock the books here, and the 'Little gnome book store' and that's in Wynnum.
Also in Wynnum is the 'Mad Hatter's bookstore'. Beautiful, but seriously, these are such cute bookstores.
You've gotta go there. The Mad Hatter bookstore actually has this whole mural on the wall that the
bookstore owner painted herself. It's gorgeous.
Anyway, tangent again. I'm good at those.
I saw it...get this....Kmart in America.
TP: Nice.
Adele: I was doing a set something totally unrelated and I'm like...Wow okay, didn't know that. I don't know if they
stock it routinely but it was there. And online bookstores, there's 'Bookaburra Books'. 'Amazon', 'Book Depository',
Oh hang on, no take the back 'Boomerang books', 'Barnes & Noble', 'Waterstock', 'Books in Stock',
and a lot of other ones that I find randomly on occasion.
The other thing too is if you are a reviewer, and as you know, any author loves reviews...isn't that right?
TP: Yes yes absolutely love them.
Adele: Reviews are good. Thank you. That's NetGalley they actually have the books available
through there, so if reviewers want to go and get a copy that way, go for it.
Also, booksellers, if they want to purchase books there's Novella Distribution which makes it really simple.
And libraries. I love libraries, you get so many cool books there.
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