Fractured Ink: Writing In Life's Chaos (audio)
This Podcast will focus on fiction writing that deals with families undergoing the chaos of severe challenges. We'll start by introducing my two published novels, "The Overlife: A Tale of Schizophrenia" (https://amazon.com/dp/191685219X) and "Three Kidnapped, Three Siblings, Three Furies"(https://amazon.com/dp/B0DPXW76DV/), with some information about myself. For example, "The Overlife" is inspired by my personal experience with my paranoid schizophrenia and my mother's. "Three Siblings" deals with sibling abuse and is inspired by my complex PTSD. I also live with absence epilepsy. My mind is "Fractured" by these conditions, affecting the "Ink" I choose to leave on my writing pages. We will also discuss these conditions for their own sake. We will feature other authors dealing with families facing the chaos of a severe challenge.
Despite the serious nature of this description, we will have some fun! Humor has always been a big part of my life and is sometimes the best therapy.
Don't forget to follow this Podcast, subscribe to my channel, like my videos, and comment.
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Fractured Ink: Writing In Life's Chaos (audio)
From Foster Care To Fiction: Shaping A Grandfather’s Story
A working title. A family legend. A blank page that won’t wait. I’m kicking off a new novel inspired by my grandfather, a boy abandoned around 1902 and placed in the Australian foster system, whose life bent toward resilience despite a brutal start. The goal isn’t to glorify pain—it’s to explore how a kid with little power learned to build a future, and what those early fractures can teach us about courage, love, and the stories families tell to survive.
I open up the creative plan: how I’ll navigate clashing family memories—my mother’s fierce admiration alongside my aunts’ harder-edged recollections—and turn them into layered, credible fiction. We get into the ethics of writing from inherited stories, the difference between factual certainty and emotional truth, and where to draw the line between homage and hagiography. I also share practical craft choices, from outlining in Scrivener to drafting notes on Kindle Scribe, and how those tools help me track timelines, manage point-of-view, and keep the world consistent with early twentieth-century Australia.
Research sits at the heart of this project. I’m mapping the foster care landscape of the era, the work children did, the schools they did or didn’t attend, and the social stigma that followed state wards. You’ll hear how I plan to weave archival detail into scenes without turning the book into a history lecture, using sensory anchors—dust roads, kerosene light, corrugated tin—to keep the prose human and grounded. Along the way, I make space for listeners to shape the journey with their questions: Which scenes feel essential? Where should the story begin? What truths matter most when facts are scarce?
If stories of endurance, family history, and thoughtful historical fiction speak to you, come walk beside me as this book takes shape. Subscribe, share the episode with a friend who loves craft and research, and leave a review with the one question you’d ask my grandfather if you could. Your notes might light the next chapter.
Podcast on working with the Kindle Scribe and the Scrivener App:
https://youtu.be/CzPW2FNNVuA
#Australia #FosterCare #FosterCareawareness #FosterCareHistory #Grandfatherstory #PTSD #CPTSD #FosterCareAbuse #historicalanecdotes
Hello. Uh today uh is a very exciting day for me because I am beginning a new book, and uh that book uh doesn't have a title yet, so its um working title, if you like, is I Was Left to Grow Up as a Potato. Why? Because it's going to be based on um the life of my grandfather, and once again it's in the in the fiction genre like my other books, but uh the inspiration comes from uh his life, especially what he went through as a child. So he was um abandoned by his birth parents uh when he was about eight. Uh he had two siblings, and the sibl that the children were put into the foster care system in Australia, and it would have been about 1902 when this happened. So it gives me a chance to talk about someone I greatly admire, the impact that his early childhood had on him. Uh, unfortunately, uh the choice of foster family for him uh was not good, and he had a traumatic experience. So I want to talk about that, but I also want to talk about what he accomplished in spite of what would seem like um just the worst part to start in life. So I'm looking forward to uh telling this story. Many of the anecdotes that will go into the book were anecdotes that were told to be mom, told to be my mother, because uh when I my grandfather unfortunately um passed away the year I was born. So uh the information I have about him is either information I look up on the internet or information from various relatives. And my mother absolutely idolized her father. So um I'm talking about my maternal grandfather, so she idolized her father, and she had many anecdotes about him. My she had two sisters, and the uh two aunts uh had rather a different view. So this is all very rich in story and intrigue. I will be using uh the Scrivener app, which I've talked about in uh another podcast, along with my new Kindle Scribe, as I explain also in that same podcast, which I'll reference in the uh episode description. So, beginning of a new adventure, and I hope that uh you will uh follow me in this adventure. Please uh hit subscribe, uh like, and sign up for comments because one of the most valuable things I can get while I uh do this endeavor are great comments. So I would really appreciate them. Okay, have a great day.