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Louise Cusack
Where to begin?
Well, I saw Aldrin walk on the moon on our grainy black and white television in 1969. That's my first important memory, and I'm not sure if that's because I was in awe of the event, or simply because I got the day off school. But I remember it distinctly. It was the first time in my life that I thought I might like to be anything other than a writer. Although in those days there wasn't much
question that a 'girl' would get to do anything exciting with her life. Not in Brisbane in the Sixties. So I went back to telling my class-mates that one day they were going to see a book with my name on the cover.
Another 'peak experience' in my life was when a Russians in Space exhibit visited our town. The show was in a big tent with all the exhibits behind rope cordons, but I begged, and the man running it let me slip past the barrier when no one else was looking so I could touch one of the sputniks that had orbited earth. I can't begin to describe what it felt like to lay my fingers onto that pockmarked surface and know it had been in the vacuum of space - where I wanted to go. I get goosebumps still, just thinking about it.
My elder brother's obsession with Science Fiction was another important factor in my development as a writer. Everything he read, I read. Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, E.E. 'Doc' Smith. When I was thirteen, he started sneaking pornography home and I was 'borrowing' that as well, taking it under my mosquito net at night with a torch. Perhaps that's how I developed a fascination for the psychology of sex - why people become obsessed with the object of their desire and how lust twists lives. Early in my career I wrote an erotic novel, "The Venus
Obsession" which was quite explicit and never saw the light of day, as well as a collection of erotic short stories, three of which have been published in anthologies. However, I think I've worked through that as I now write sex with a little more subtlety!
My family life was suburban, middle-class. When I go home to Brisbane now, summer still smells the same way as it did when I was a kid. We had a mountain near us that we used to climb - Peg's Mountain - which is still a reserve. I went there a lot with my brothers, we'd disappear for the whole day and come back for dinner. I remember Guy Fawks night vividly and still find fireworks to be a magical thing.
When I was eight I was in love with Prince Planet. When I was thirteen I fell hard for Captain James T. Kirk. He was my first big crush and I've never quite gotten over him.
In my teens I forgot about writing and started 'living' instead. I hung around with my tribe, a group of six girls who still keep in touch. We partied and had opinions - I felt very passionate about politics then. In my twenties I was an activist, first in the nuclear disarmament movement, and then with a big-time commitment to Animal Liberation. I protested outside rodeos with placards like "Real men don't rope baby calves", and did a lot of work towards educating people about animal experimentation. I became a vegetarian then and married a wonderful man who puts up with me still.
By thirty I'd had children and I've been passionate about motherhood ever since. However, shortly after the birth of my last child I realised that the odd restlessness which had begun when my father died years earlier, wasn't going away. I went back to working part-time but that wasn't it. The problem was writing. I'd somehow forgotten that I was going to be a writer. I remembered then and I began.
For years I typed every day until I found characters who would tell me their stories, rather than me having to 'make them up'. Finally that happened and I started to get published. I don't pretend to understand the alchemy that occurs when people appear fully-formed in your mind to tell you about their lives, but I'm very grateful that it happens to me and that I'm able to share it with others.
Last year Harper collins published my novella, "Goddess and The Geek" which was a personal
favourite and I was very happy to see it's characters, Julian and Natasha, who have been real in
my mind for so many years, finally come alive in print. I'm even more excited to see it short list
in Australian and International awards.
In recent times, I've launched Destiny of The Light, the first novel in a Fantasy trilogy Shadow Through Time which I'm very excited about. The trilogy is published by Simon & Schuster, Australia and the second novel "Daughter of The Dark" will be published in June 2002. That book is almost completed, so I'm doing what I love best, drinking heaps of coffee and writing like a mad thing.
Who needs drugs when you can write!
Books:
Shadow Through Time:
Destiny of The Light (1)
Author's Homepage:
http://www.louisecusack.com
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