Please help me welcome today’s guest, Meryl Brown Tobin with her new release…
Please tell us a little about yourself, where are you from? Where do you live now? Family? Pets?
I am an Australian and live with my husband in regional Victoria, Australia between bush and coast. We think we live in Paradise.
Living in our place is like living in a bird hide. We have counted over 80 different species of birds within a kilometer of our home. Each morning we put out seed on our balcony and usually crimson rosellas and rainbow lorikeets come in to be fed. Sometimes a grey shrike thrush, a dove, sulphur-crested cockatoos, galahs and occasionally king parrots come in. In late October a small strange bird with stripes across its chest came in. A friend who illustrated a bird guide book identified my photos of it as a shining bronze cuckoo. Magic!
We also have other wildlife as ‘pets’. At least five different black swamp wallabies live on our small property and accept us as other fauna. When we pass, they stop eating grass or browsing on trees, watch us walk by and then resume eating. Sometimes we see an echidna, a blue tongue lizard, one of the four different sorts of snakes we have here––copperhead, red-bellied black, brown and tiger––lizards and skinks and the odd fox.
Where did you get the idea for ‘Broome Enigma’?
My family and I have visited Broome in Western Australia a number of times and love it. The setting came first and then we met a young man there who seemed so out of place as a maintenance man at a holiday park that I played the ‘What If…?’ game. In time the answers formed and I came up with a hero whose past life was shrouded in mystery.
Why did you choose this genre (is it something you’ve written in before)?
I’d written lots of short stories about human relationships and several novelettes and novels, but none published. Here I had set out to write a love story but the rest evolved until the suspense became as important as the love relationship.
What is the most difficult thing about writing a book? What was the most difficult thing about this one in particular?
Getting the start right is very important and also giving back-story without info dumping. Hinting at violence rather than showing it in this novel was also difficult. I deplore violence and could not and would not write graphic descriptions of it. However, for realism, there had to be some unpleasant situations.
What do you want readers to come away with after they read Broome Enigma?
Apart from sharing the adventures and travels of pleasant people who have faced up to and overcome serious challenges, I hope readers will not only have enjoyed the read but also have grown along with the characters and had insights into their own challenges.
Your most prized material possession? Why?
Probably my computer because it has become almost an extension of me. It is in my DNA that I have to write.
Have you written any other books that are not published?
My first novel was a very amateurish one though it had a noble motive behind it. Its two main characters were Australian identical twin young men who were called up in the conscription lottery to fight in Vietnam. One saw himself as fighting a just war, while the other, a conscientious objector, refused to participate in what he saw as an unjust war. Both young men put forward their arguments to each other and friends and family to justify their stands.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
Both. For instance, the hero of ‘Broome Engima’ was inspired by a goodlooking young man I once saw working in a holiday village. Dressed only in jeans and sandals and shifting around sprinklers, he had shoulder-length hair, was perfectly tanned and looked as though he had just stepped off a film set about surfers. However, he did not ooze the personality I would expect to match. He did not smile and had a ‘damped down’ personality. That prompted me to wonder how someone like him came to be working in a holiday village. Eventually I came up with a back story.
How did you come up with the title?
Because the setting was so important to the story and because the hero’s past life was shrouded in mystery, the title popped into my head early on.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
While my main motive for writing is that my story is ‘a good read’, I would like readers to enjoy the emotional rollercoaster experienced by the two main characters, especially the heroine as the book is through her point of view. However, if there is a message it is to treat others with respect and that all relationships, even when participants in them disagree, can be respectful.
How did your interest in writing originate?
I think it must be innate. I’ve always loved school and loved writing. When I was about eight, I joined children’s clubs run by two newspapers and entered their competitions and contributed material.
On a working holiday in Australia’s cosmopolitan Outback town of Broome in 1986, Jodie, a young book designer and artist is open to romance and adventure.
At the holiday village where she is staying, she meets Joe, a young man who works there. Despite the strong attraction between them, the many unknowns about his earlier life keep them apart. To try to uncover his mysterious past, they travel to Perth and back to Broome and are drawn into not only bizarre but also dangerous situations.
Is Joe the person she thinks he is, or is he some alter ego? Can Jodie and Joe stop their relationship from developing until they have answers and know if he is free to love her?
Excerpt:
A big gust of wind rocked the van and flung Jodie hard against Joe.
He pushed her off.
“Joe, it’s me, Jodie! Wake up, wake up!”
“Jodie, is that you?” He threw his arms around her and buried his head in her chest.
She brushed his hair back from his sweating face. “Take it easy, Joe. Take deep breaths. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
He stopped shaking and pulled back from her. “What’s happening?”
“It’s the cyclone. Don’t you remember?”
Another huge gust shook the van and sent Jodie sprawling on Joe’s bunk and into the wall. “Ow, that hurt!” She picked herself up and rubbed her head.
The van rocked violently again. Joe and Jodie grabbed for handholds.
“Quick, come into my bed with me, Joe. It will be safer there.” Tripping and feeling their way along the wall, the two made their way to the double bed and clambered in.
Her breathing coming in short spasms, she lay on her back and took deep breaths. The storm whined and screeched about her, and the roof creaked and scraped.
“Oh, my god, the roof’s going to take off any minute!”
Joe’s arms enveloped her. “Hush, everything will be all right. But will you be okay if we have to make a run for it?”
“Yes.” She let out a sob. “But I like our chances better in here than out there.”
Joe kissed her forehead. He pulled her closer and they lay locked against each other while the storm raged around them.
Buy links:
Broome Enigma : Tobin, Meryl Brown: Amazon.com.au: Books
- Amazon (France)
Broome Enigma (English Edition) eBook : Tobin, Meryl Brown : Amazon.fr: Boutique Kindle
- Better Read than Dead (Sydney)
Welcome to BRTD – Better Read Than Dead Bookstore Newtown
- Barnes & Noble (USA)
Broome Enigma by Meryl Brown Tobin, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)
- Booktopia (Australia)
https://www.booktopia.com.au/broome-enigma-meryl-brown-tobin/book/9781509250639.html
- ThriftBooks (USA)
- Brown’s Books (UK)
https://www.brownsbfs.co.uk/Product/Tobin-Meryl-Brown/Broome-Enigma/9781509250639
- 17.Mighty Ape(NZ)
https://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/broome-enigma/38222278
- Walmart (Sacramento)
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Broome-Enigma-Paperback-9781509250639/5067638128
- https://www.exlibris.ch/de/buecher-buch/english-books/meryl-brown-tobin/broome-enigma/id/9781509250639/ (Germany, Switzerland, Austria?)
About the author:
Meryl Brown Tobin, is an Australian writer. She writes short and long fiction for adults and children, non-fiction, especially travel, poetry and educational puzzles. She has had 21 books published. These include puzzle/activity books, black-line masters books of educational puzzles, work books for primary students, a travel book, a children’s picture storybook, a poetry collection and a haiku collection with four other poets. In total nearly 300,000 copies of her first four puzzle books were sold in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Hundreds of her poems and puzzles, scores of her short stories and travel and other articles, and some cartoons have appeared in more than 150 magazines, newspapers and anthologies in Australia and elsewhere, including the US. ‘Broome Enigma’ is her debut novel and more novels are in the pipeline.
Author Alicia Dean 