David and Fleur Ferris at their Bunnaloo family property.
Remarkable life makes for a remarkable read Bella editor TYLA HARRINGTON has a few words with Fleur Ferris, the Bunnaloo farmer and mother who is stamping her mark in the colourful world of young adult writing.
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HEN BUNNALOO AUTHOR Fleur Ferris writes a novel it’s hardly spur of the moment stuff.
But all this only happens when her three young children are at school or if they have been put to bed.
The plot has been bubbling away in the back of her mind for years.
Because above all else they come first.
Sometimes even decades. To her the characters have become real people. She knows them sometimes better than she knows herself. She hasn’t been cursed with writer’s block (yet) but when she does encounter a plot problem she might often dream a solution. Fleur walks around with a notepad in her handbag, in case she stumbles upon an idea she must jot down. Mostly, however, it’s all stored in her head, waiting for that moment when she gets in front of the keyboard, losing herself in the world she has created.
Plus there’s her husband David and their rice farm. Still, with her first novel Risk being read in schools on the other side of the world, and in schools across Australia, including in Echuca and Moama, and her next novel Black to be released in July, she’s not doing too badly. “I have most of it in my head before I sit down at the keyboard,” Fleur said. “I have the key points.
combination of people I have come across in my life. “However these characters do become real to me. “I know their history, I know what they like and don’t like, I know everything about them. “I live and breathe all of them. “Obviously I can’t let them consume me because I have children to juggle as well.” But when her children are asleep Fleur steps through a mind portal into another world, one she has created and one only she can see.
“It looks a bit like a movie in my head — all these different parts — and them I join them together.
“Weirdly enough when I’m in the writing mindset I don’t get tired so I can stay awake quite late writing.”
“My characters are never based on a real person but I do believe they are a
Writing ideas she’s been given while driving or snow skiing or just being around the farm.
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