BETWEEN TWO worlds
By Andrea Louise Thomas Photos Yanni
R
obert Newton is complex. He’s a full-time firefighter with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in Moorabbin, but, at home in Mount Martha, he’s an award-winning young adult novelist with nine books under his belt. On the surface, the two professions seem to have nothing in common, but the common denominator is variety. “That’s what I love about my job. You never know what you’ll go to. I love not knowing. It’s the same thing with writing. I love being surprised. I don’t plan a story, I allow it to evolve,” he says. In his 32 years in the fire service, Rob has responded to a wide variety of incidents. Some stay in his head. One call to an overdose haunted him. As the young mother lay convulsing on the floor, her seven-year-old daughter held her hand. The mother later died. He wanted to make sense of it. He wondered what happened to that little girl in the pink pyjamas with bunny rabbits on them. So, he gave her a new life as Lexie in his novel, Mr. Romanov’s Garden in the Sky. In many of his novels, there is an outsider, a person craving to be seen, someone who wants to be understood and needs to be cared for. In his work as a firefighter and his own life experience, Rob has found a way to comfort the victim, the patient, the character, the reader, himself. He has a real sense of people. It comes from keen observation, a kind heart and an intimate understanding of character. continued next page...
October 2021
E ssence | 7
PENINSULA