For A Moment More #author G. S. Johnston

 For A Moment More: A novel of living in the time of HIV/AIDS

It’s 1993. Chris Roberts is thirty-three, HIV-positive for eight years and working at an Oxford Street hardware shop, while funerals, fear and failing health threaten to destroy him.

Then, on a balmy night in Darlinghurst, everything shifts.

At a dance party in Sydney’s gay ghetto – midway through a performance of 'Something’s Coming' by a life-sized Barbra Streisand puppet – Chris has an epiphany. Effective treatments will come. And if he wants to be around when the future arrives, he has to fight for his life.

Chris’s daily routine becomes an act of resilience and resistance, fuelled by a refusal to disappear quietly. He stares down his past, makes peace where he can and dares to imagine a time beyond HIV/AIDS.

For a Moment More captures the sharp wit, humour and fierce tenderness of those times. It’s a story about love, farewelling friends, defiance and joy. It is about laughing in the face of fear.

Author GS JOHNSTON has been writing in one form or another for as long as he can remember, beginning with music and songwriting. After completing a degree in pharmacy, a formative year in Italy rekindled his passion for the written word, leading him to complete a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. Seeking a broader creative canvas, he

To connect with GS JOHNSTON ....
https://gsjohnston.com/for-a-moment-more/
https://gsjohnston.com/the-novels/
https://www.instagram.com/gsjohnston_/
Check out the Podcast show 
https://audioboom.com/channels/4910636-imagining-the-past 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, Greg Johnson. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Oh, thank you very much for having me. It's lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Oh, congratulations. Your author title is G.S. Johnston. Welcome. Tell us all about your latest book, For a Moment More.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Uh For a Moment More uh is set in Sydney in between 1993 and 1996. And it deals with the the kind of worst years of the HIV AIDS epidemic. Uh at that at that stage, people were getting ill who'd been infected kind of innocently through the 80s when it was kind of unclear what was going on. So a lot of people were dying, uh, and the treatments that were available at that point were very um scarce and also like taking cut glass, really. They were the side effects were horrendous, and they only um were effective for a short period. So um it's about that period, and whilst that might sound a bit dire, as uh Lucy Trelaw kind of said on the endorsement on the front cover, it's the the novel is shot through with exuberant humor, which is really my memory of that time was that even though this dreadful thing was happening, it was a very people were very funny. And I think the humor was one of the things that really got people through the whole the whole epidemic.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

And Greg, do you want to tell us a bit about um, you know, why that time in the 90s, and I was a teenager, so um very, very familiar with what was going on in in the world. You were working on Oxford Street uh as a profession, um, as a pharmacist, I believe. Tell us a bit about, yeah, now writing a novel and the inspiration around that.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Um, yeah, I was I was working as a pharmacist on Oxford Street through that period. So that gave me, you know, I access to not only what was happening with therapy, but like access to people. So I I guess writing the novel came about. I mean, I've been writing novels for a long while, but the idea came from during COVID when all of that language started happening again of people testing positive and sero converting and viral loads and all of this kind of stuff came, it really hit me. And I I had to sit and think about it for a while because I had this feeling of, you know, what's going on? All of this is over. You know, we don't need to think about this stuff anymore. So it took me a while to kind of a couple of days to kind of think about that. And then I had a chat with a friend who was um probably in his mid-30s at that time about HIV, and he just kind of said he knew nothing about it. And that really struck me that there were generations below me who just had no concept of what had had kind of happened. So I guess those two kind of things were the impetus. But you know, really, I think I I it it does feel like HIV, it hasn't been forgotten, but I think the severity of it and a lot of features of it have been kind of forgotten. So, in a way, I I guess I'm the target of my own criticism that you know, up until that point, I think I'd stopped thinking about it as well. Because, you know, people I knew with HIV, you know, they're down to taking one tablet a day, they're back at work, they're looking at retiring now, and all of these, you know, goals are back in their life. So it is it was easy to be seduced into not thinking about it. So once I started thinking all of those things, I thought it was really time to kind of have a retrospective look back at it because a lot of um a lot of things that were written about HIV were written as it was actually unfolding. So some of those texts are incredible, like um Angels in America, the play Angels in America, just every time I see it or um watch the the D of it, it um just amazes me that someone could reach that level of clarity while this thing was happening around them. So mine is a later period as well, it's not about the arrival of HIV, which had a lot of um medical and bureaucratic bungling and things. Mine's actually about what I think was kind of the worst time of it when you know all these people were dying. But there were just these glimmers of hope that you know something was going to change and it was gonna get better.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah. And Greg, what um why like why now? You mentioned, you know, COVID, I guess, started you started thinking about um yeah, like testing again and all those, you know, the language around that. I'm just wondering, you've written other novels. Um, so you you decide to write now. Um yeah, like what was that, what was the writing process like for you?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Um, it was an interesting process because the other novels mainly that I've written have been historical fiction. So a lot of that has involved a lot of research and a lot of difficult research. One novel was uh set in France in the 1869. Another novel was set in uh Hungary during the Second World War. So the research for both I don't speak Hungarian and I speak very schoolboy French. So um the research for those was quite difficult. So going into this project, I kind of thought, oh, this will be really easy because um it happened in Sydney and I live in Sydney, so I've got accessory and all of these things. But what I discovered was I think that um there's not a lot of what I'd call meta text about this stuff, like things that have been written after the event, kind of you know, and on a non-fiction level, pulling it apart. I mean, there are some things, there definitely are some things, but there's not as much as I don't think with World War II, I don't think there's a moment that hasn't been dissected somewhere. So it was starting to to a large degree from scratch. Also, uh, you know, I had the gay press to go and look at uh all that stuff's archived, but you know, the the stand it wasn't too bad coming up to an event, they were quite good with that, but then reporting what actually happened at an event or something, they were often a bit lax with, I would say. So um, so I did have to end up using things like Hansard and even a lot of um really oblique sources to just try and fill in some of the patches. So the research was actually more kind of challenging than than I thought it would be.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

So and Greg, do you want to um tell us like now, are you still a pharmacist or do you write? I know I actually know you're a podcast host as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

No, I um after I sold the business kind of in I think it was about 2006 or seven, yeah, and I just decided I um had really kind of had enough because um dealing with the general public is difficult. And um, so I started working doing uh well, I I also wanted to concentrate more on on my writing. So I started um working as a bookkeeper, which is quite good because it allows me a much more flexible use of my time. Like work has to be done by a certain date, but it's not like I'm stuck in an office all day. I can work at four o'clock in the morning if I want to.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So yeah. Uh and are you gonna keep writing beyond this one? I mean, you know, are you gonna keep writing? Is that the plan?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, I hope to um keep going. I enjoy writing a lot. It it's a really um pleasurable experience, despite the slings and arrows that come with it. Um so yeah, I haven't I've got a couple of ideas of things that I'd like to start work on, but I just uh I think as a writer you have to kind of react to something that's happening in the world now that you is upsetting you. So so I'll um yeah, keep keep mulling over the world for a while and find another project.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

You know, Greg, you get to enjoy when your book's released, you get to enjoy uh, you know, the wonderful achievement. And I'm really grateful that you came on to share with Yellow Shelf. Greg, if we're interested to learn more about you, to learn more about the books and even your previous books, I know you've got a website. Do you want to point us in the direction? You're also on Instagram. Where should we go if we want to learn more? I'll put them in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Well, probably probably the best place is the website to start with, which is just www.gsjonston.com. And on there, there's buy links where you can find uh shops that are stocking it, and uh and also you can find my social media contacts in there as well. So, yep, it's a one-stop shop.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Fabulous. Well, Greg, all the best. Enjoy uh the journey of uh releasing another book out into the world and the interviews and and all the support you've got. It's wonderful. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Well, thank you very much for having me, and thank you very much for taking the time to do the podcast as well. You know what?

SPEAKER_00 9:25

I'm gonna put a link into the um show notes because we have a lot of audience here who love podcasts as well. So, Greg, it's um I think it's cool what you do. Uh the podcast is called Imagining the Past.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yep, it's uh hist is mainly historical fiction.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

So very interesting, Greg. I enjoyed the episodes I listened to. Greg, all the best. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

All right. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks for that.