My First Book
When nowhere is safe in the world you know, you have to hide… or start making a new one.
Robert is eleven when his best friend dies and he learns that if he wants to survive in the world he has to be ‘normal’. He buries his feelings, his awful childhood memories, and his suspicion that he is gay. Even when he falls in love with Johnny, he pretends it isn’t happening, and buries those feelings too, choosing safety in the closet, a career as a lawyer, a wife and kids, and suburban happy ever after…
Until Johnny returns needing help and then disappears, and Robert’s façade begins to crack in heartbreaking and dreadful circumstances.
If Robert can convince them to help him, together they may set something unstoppable in motion. It will either run down the corrupt police or run over and destroy Robert’s life.
Inspired by the true story of a suicide that was reclassified thirty years later as a gay hate-crime murder, The Outing is set in 1980s Queensland, (Australia), where corrupt police and politicians rule together, with an audacious disregard for the law.
It shares poignant and emotional elements of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain and Craig Silvey’s trans-coming-of-age novel Honeybee, with the suspense of The Dry by Jane Harper, while drawing on the historical facts leading up to the airing of the dirty linen of the Bjelke-Peterson era with the broadcasting of The Moonlight State-1987 (click the link to watch video).
Why Did I Write This Book
I hadn’t planned on writing The Outing. I was teasing out the elements of another story when armed with my morning coffee, in March 2020, I opened my laptop and browsed the news headlines.
A thirty-year-old suicide finding had been overturned. A new inquest had found that the death was murder. Something at the back of my mind was remembering it had heard about this before, so I started Googling.
As I read about Scott Johnson and his family, the trauma they had been through over thirty or more years, became an overwhelming reminder of my own fears for my son, growing up in Queensland when being gay was both criminal and vilified.
And so I began researching and it was only a few clicks later that I found the news reports and commentaries of another ‘high-profile’ death. George Duncan. And there were more.
And more.
Later that day, sitting in our friend’s country house in Provence looking out over the olive grove, and the massif beyond and revisiting those fears the idea of fictionalizing Scott and George’s stories took root.
Over the next few weeks, several possible storylines competed… a fictional memoir, a coming-of-age story, a crime novel, domestic suspense. None seemed to capture what I didn’t quite know yet. But the main character, Robert Carson began taking shape in my mind. And I kept asking him, ‘What’s your story, Robert?’ ‘What happened to you?’
And he told me his story.
Early on, I and others, thought they wanted to know more about how Robert felt. His relationships with his parents and how it affected him. What he thought about. How he overcame the isolation and exclusion and differentness, and how he didn’t.
There were a lot more introspective passages, so in a sense literary would have been another genre box for the novel. But, Robert grew up hiding from his feelings, burying them when they did arise, and definitely not indulging them.
He didn’t want to know. Knowing invited doing and being, and doing and being anything but normal, was dangerous.
As readers, we glimpse it from his expression, from what he doesn’t say as much as what he does. From his habits and mannerisms. And to me, the spare prose is as heartbreaking in its starkness as a lyrical description, even though I’m partial to them too.
I was keen to honour the historical context and legal accuracy as much as possible. The story is set in the lead-up to the end of an infamous era in politics and policing in 1980s Queensland, Australia.
But the social model is applicable throughout the world. It took a while to research but for me, it’s an important topic, and worth the effort.
During the writing and editing process, several other discriminatory and violent episodes of hate made headlines around the world. It leaves me in no doubt that even though we are trying to put our prejudice behind us, we are still lagging behind the ideal.
I can’t really say I hope you enjoy reading The Outing, but I do hope it moves you and gives you a sense of hope. And I hope it reminds us all: Love is Love.