I Published My First Novel At 52
When she worked in publicity, Jacquie Byron used to send out press releases. These days, press releases are being sent out about her. Her debut novel Happy Hour features a cocktail-swigging protagonist, Franny, who will appeal to many readers.
“Happy Hour is about an older woman who decides to lock herself away from the world after her husband dies,” Jacquie Byron says about her first novel. Her protagonist’s seclusion turns out to be short-lived when she becomes enmeshed with the lives of her next-door neighbours who have their own set of problems and never realise the trauma behind Franny’s cavalier attitude.
Jacquie says she wanted to make her novel funny, but that her character took her down a different road. She’s aware that it will be sold as “chick lit” but hates the term. “I feel it’s a way of denigrating writing that women like.”
When she finished school, Jacquie set her sights on journalism, and wound up in writing-related fields: publicity, trade magazines and copywriting among them. At the same time, she did a score of writing courses, something she first viewed as a hobby of sorts.
“I always loved the idea of having a book with my name on it in the bookshop, but it a fantasy. I never thought about the work that would be involved in getting that done.
“I dreamt about having the time and the brain space to do something like this and when I became a freelancer, and the mistress of my own time, it was a game changer.”
Some of the writing courses were “pure pleasure”, such as the Melbourne Writers Festival masterclasses (with Bryce Courtenay), while others were more challenging. But through them, she made contacts and started thinking of her writing differently.
“I didn’t want to be a dabbler anymore, I didn’t want to muck around. I wanted to be a professional writer. Around 2015, I said to myself, ‘no more courses, just write.’ And I had the lifestyle at that stage where I could do that.”
Her first fiction manuscript, Trouble Sleeping, which remains in her top drawer, was completed in 2015 with the help of a Glenfern Fellowship and pushed her career along the way: she received a commendation in 2016’s Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award. The previous year’s winner was The Dry by Jane Harper.
““You’ve got to have other things to sustain you … do not live fully through another person.””
The character of Franny landed in her brain fully formed. “There were times when I wanted to walk away from my life, when I thought, ‘Can you leave me all alone?’ so I started to fantasise about whether you could leave your life.
“I thought of a younger woman who drives away and doesn’t come back, but in this day of technology, that becomes harder. So I wondered: how could you do it while staying at home?”
Drinking and her pet dogs are both part of Franny’s escape, and Jacquie says she enjoys both. “Drunken Nanna was the working title of this book and I still think I could sell that title to a Hong Kong movie producer!”
Writing about 65-year-old Franny has led Jacquie to think more about ageing. “Mum tells me that she still feels like her younger self, and then she looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘Who is this old woman?’ We don’t change that much as we age, and we shouldn’t have to. In the old days, there was this pressure to become a tame old lady. In my life, I thought I’d stop drinking by now, to be honest!”
That won’t happen as long as she’s still having fun. Every weekend, she and her husband have a party together (even in lockdown) which involves martinis, listening to music and a late-night whisky. Still, she admits that there are “old lady things that I do: walking the dog down the beach, going to Bunnings – when did that all happen?”
Readers have commented that Happy Hour is about grief but to Jacquie, “It’s about a great love affair. A lot of the fiction in books says that we should find our soul mate, but writing this book, I wanted to ask, ‘If that soul mate goes, if you invest too much in a person, what does that do to you?’
“You’ve got to have other things to sustain you. It’s one thing I push in the book: do not live fully through another person.
“When you see people who have just lost someone and are so bereft, the one thing you don’t want to say is that it gets easier, but it does. It’s not better but it is easier. Franny can never have what she had, but it can be something else that’s pretty good. Not better, not worse.”
Jacquie hopes that we’ll see more older characters in popular culture and look at ageing women differently. “There are fabulous women: Susan Sarandon, Debbie Harry, Elle Macpherson, Naomi Campbell – and do you think that anyone has ever called Jane Fonda ‘elderly?’ Not to her face!
“The thing I’m realising more and more is that I’m not minding this getting old thing. I have more choice and agency than ever.”
Happy Hour by Jacquie Byron (Allen & Unwin), $32.99.