Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a baby-boomer who’s come to writing later in life! I grew up in a working-class area of the UK, and our family life was very dysfunctional. My father was abusive to Mum (and to us) but she always found a way to protect her children, and taught us the value of words and education. She herself had to leave school at 14 and work in a factory, when she had been her school’s literary “star” and told she would be a writer. Life and World War II intervened, and her dreams were crushed by a romantic betrayal of her first great love. I migrated to Australia in 1974 and Mum followed soon after. My own search for love also proved elusive, and after several failed marriages, I am now happily married and living on the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, Australia, where I help my husband to run a lovely guest house. I have 3 children and 4 Grand-children, and I graduated with a degree in psychology/history in 2012, alongside my daughter. It as one of the proudest moments of my life! I hadn’t intended to write a book, but after Mum died, I wanted to write the book she always felt she should have written — for her. In the process, I discovered she’d been horribly betrayed by the Catholic priests she’d served and loved for the last 20 years of her life: they were all pedophiles (now in prison or dead) operating within a small-town diocese with their crimes covered up for decades by a corrupt church hierarchy. I had to start all over again with my book, and the result is my first published work, “Men of Twisted Cloth”.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Men of Twisted Cloth.
I was horrified to discover after my mother’s death in 2015 that she and I had been completely decieved by an evil group of predatory priests, who had masqueraded as benign, quiet and intellectual religious authority figures, and fooled many innocent people in their parishes, as well as destroying the lives of hundreds of vulnerable children. I was determined that the full story should be told.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I love to write in bed before I get dressed. It can be for an hour or sometimes can take me up to lunchtime! I much prefer to write when alone. I love the creative power and beauty of words to inspire, and I try to construct them as a sculptor creates pieces, shaping them into sentences that sound beautiful and convey a message and often an emotion.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I only read non-fiction, believing that “truth is always stranger than fiction”. Except for the old English classics, which I love for the beautiful and efficient construct of the language: Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen etc. As someone intensely interested in human beings and what makes them tick, I love the works of neuroscientists and psychologists, such as Oliver Sacks. I love good memoirs and interesting, off-beat stories and well-written books of the true-crime genre, simply to feed my curiosity about how people behave, and why. I recently enjoyed “Bad Blood” (a Bill Gates recommendation about a corrupt silicon valley company), loved “History on Trial” by Deborah E. Lipstadt (the story of a court case between her and a prominent British Holocaust-denier) and “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanithi, a young neurosurgeon who writes of his profound experience with dying. I found these to be truly meaningful books.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on another piece of creative non-fiction, “Hovel” It’s about a beautiful mid-century modernist house, the people who have lived in it (I’m one of them), and the stories behind them. I’m making the walls speak. And so much more.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m new to this myself. My plan is to keep pushing, bit by bit, mainly online. This website is slightly experimental for me. Living in Australia makes it, I feel, a little bit harder, especially as independently-published books have to be sent from America, not from Amazon.com.au for regulatory reasons within Australia. But I’m pushing on regardless!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I wrote a book because I was passionate about the topic. And then I discovered I love writing! So I’m going to keep writing. My advice is: write for yourself, enjoy the process, and commit to a bit of writing every day if you can. And always do more than one draft!
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Look for the people who help, not the ones who hinder. Life is just too short to let people drag you down, if they are not major people in your life. Let them go! ( That, by the way, is advice I gave myself at the age of fifty. And I have tried to live by it ever since).
What are you reading now?
“Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff, and “Somebody That I Used to Know: Love, Loss and Jack Thompson” by Bunkie King.
What’s next for you as a writer?
To organise a proper study in which to write!
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
A book of Cryptic crosswords (to keep my brain active) Thomas Hardy, “Tess of the D’urbervilles” (because I never tire of the language). Walt Whitman “Leaves of Grass” and “Song of the Open Road” (for inspiration) and a rollicking, good, witty autobiography (Clive James springs to mind)
Author Websites and Profiles
Trudy Thomas Amazon Profile
Trudy Thomas’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
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