Stay Outside

In this episode, I focus on my current writing project, "Stay Outside," inspired by my grandfather's experiences, including foster care in 1903.

#foster #fosterchild #fiction #abandonment

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:20

Hello, welcome to another episode of Fractured Ink. I wanted to talk to you today about uh the book that I'm writing. Uh I've had a little bit to say about it in in previous podcasts, but uh now I'm kind of really, really into

Why I’m Writing This Book

SPEAKER_00 0:37

the writing and it's going very fast. So the title of the novel is Stay Outside and Australian foster stories circa 1900. And my maternal grandfather, Frank Devretsky Cohen, is

Introducing Stay Outside And Adam

SPEAKER_00 0:59

the foster child in the story. He was born in November 1894 in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. He searched his whole life for answers about his origins and what became of his parents. In this novel, we offer some of the of those answers. The book is inspired by the oral history passed down through my family, mainly from my mother, and by genealogy research that began to lift the cloud of ignorance around his early life. For privacy, I have changed

Oral History Meets Genealogy Research

SPEAKER_00 1:44

many names and for the needs of fiction adjusted some dates and places. The character profiles are not meant to correspond exactly to real individuals, except that Adam is drawn closely from my image

Privacy Choices And Fiction Craft

SPEAKER_00 2:00

of Frank, my grandfather, and the central facts we had discovered about his family. Adam or Frank's life was shaped by the wake of the Victorian Gold Rush and the hardships of 1890s depression in Australia. The title Stay Outside refers to the harsh reality that his foster

Gold Rush Aftermath And Hard Times

SPEAKER_00 2:25

father never allowed him inside the home, forcing him to stay in the stable unless given repermission. As an adult in 1932,

The Meaning Of Stay Outside

SPEAKER_00 2:38

he traveled and witnessed events leading toward World War II. Through his eyes, the novel offers a window into a wider world. Although Adam knew few details, he was heir to a rich ancestral

Travel Before World War II

SPEAKER_00 2:53

history, reaching back to the Jewish communities of Grodno, Belarus, and England. I invite you to join Adam's journey. The story is conversation driven, blending historical research with imagined dialogue and the multilingual code switching that feels true to the voices in my family. It explores themes of identity, resilience, abandonment,

Voice Style Themes And Tone

SPEAKER_00 3:22

and chosen family pragmatic survival, and the stories we pass down, some of which echo into the experiences I later fictionalized in my novel The Overlife. I'm aiming for a warm yet unflinching tone that honors the real hardships while celebrating endurance, love, and the small acts of protection and legacy that ripple across generations. Progress with the skiving the scribble app is steady. The cover is ready, and I'm excited to share more as it comes together. So uh that's all I have to say today, and better get

Writing Progress Cover And Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 4:05

back to writing the book. Hope you have a great day.