Until now, Danielle de Valera's been best known for her short stories, which have appeared in such diverse magazines as Penthouse, Aurealis and the Australian Women's Weekly.
All in all, she's had a chequered career. She's worked as a botanist, an editor, a cataloguer for the Queensland Department of Primary Industries Library and the John Oxley Library, and on the main floor of Arnott's biscuit factory.
The manuscript of her 1st ever novel (then titled Love the People!) was placed 2nd to published author Hugh Atkinson's in the Australia-wide Xavier Society Literary Award for an unpublished novel - in those days, there was no Vogel Award for Unpublished Writers under 35. After that, she abandoned writing for 25 years to raise her children, whom she raised alone.
She resumed writing in 1990, somewhat behind the eight-ball. With Louise Forster she won the Australia-New Zealand-wide Emma Darcy Award for Romance Manuscript of the Year 2000 with Found: One Lover.
That first novel, Love the People! was shortlisted for the Byron Bay Writers' Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award in 2011, and for the UK's Impress Prize in 2012, under the title A Few Brief Seasons. It's due out here in October 2021 under its final title Those Brisbane Romantics.
A freelance manuscript assessor and fiction editor since 1992, she has won numerous awards for her gritty, streetwise short stories. MagnifiCat, a departure from this style, is her first published novel. It was followed in 2017 by Dropping Out: a tree-change novel in stories - to put it another way, a collection of linked short stories.
For more information on this author, see Smashwords iInterview. There's lots there.
About that Name
Danielle de Valera's father claimed he was related to the controversial Irish politician Eamon de Valera on his mother's side. But he told some tall tales in his time, and this is sure to be one of them. Born Danielle Ellis, she found that this name was replicated many times on the web. In searching for another under which to write, she first tried her mother's maiden name, Doyle, but there were a number of those, too. What to do? Then she remembered her father's story and chose it as her writing name. But she feels any real connection is unlikely.
Claude is a big hearted marmalade cat, who moved to the country to escape city life. He works as a barcat in Tuckaburra, a small country town once a centre of the counterculture movement in Australia. Here, he lives happily with partner Mao, a half-Siamese, Mao's two catlings Wintergreen and Rupert, and Mao's mother Sylvia, a blue Burmese who owns the cottage they all live in.
All is rosy until …
Sylvia mortgages the cottage to start a herbalism business to provide for Wintergreen and Rupert's higher education. Then the hotel Claude works in burns down. Claude has a series of misadventures in part-time jobs as he tries to save the family home. Through it all, he never loses his belief in his personal fable: Things always work out in the end.
The cats are forced to start selling the furniture to meet the mortgage repayments. (A rich koala from Possum Shoot buys the bookcase.) When all seems lost, a good deed Mao once insisted the family do pays off in an unexpected way.
Lose your blues in this all-animal tale, based on the author's own novel, MagnifiCat, published here in 2014. No longer available.
Title : Counterculture Blues: a fable
EAN : 9780648609827
Publisher : Old Tiger Books
The eBook Counterculture Blues: a fable is in ePub format
If you want to read on an e-reader from a different brand, check out our guide.
It may not be available for sale in your country, but exclusively for sale from an account domiciled in France.
If the redirection does not happen automatically, click on this link.
Log in
My account