Paula Xiberras
Recently I had a chat with prolific author Karly Lane about her latest book ‘Second Chance Town’. The novel is the story of Lucy, living in a rural town raising a teenage daughter and finding herself attracted to the town’s new resident pub renovator and outsider Hugh Thompson.
While attempting to protect her daughter from the town’s prevailing drug problems in Lucy must navigate a relationship with Hugh, he of the secret past , heavy tattoos and preference for motorcycles which sees him viewed as part of the addiction to different ways that is threatening the town.
But the novel is called ‘Second Chance Town’ and for both Lucy and Hugh their second chance involves their taking a chance on each other.
The novel brilliantly sketches small town life and realistic characters including the portrayal of a gay couple.
Karly tells me in her early days of writing when her children were little she would both write at night, and during the day move her desk near the children’s play area so she could keep an eye on them. Now with the children at school Karly has those precious hours available for her writing but there is always the occasional need for last minute edits that can stretch into the night. With such prolificacy Karly tells me she is “thinking all the time”.
Karly is often surprised when readers see a different vision of places she has drawn in her books and Karly’s characters often make a big as impact on her as they do on her readers. She tells me when she drives past a certain area that she employed as the scene of an accident in her novel “Burnt’ she often has to remind herself it was indeed fiction, not a real accident.
Second Chance Town is out now published by Allen and Unwin
