REVEALED: Mid North Coast authors launch new books

The Mid North Coast is home to plenty of talent, including a number of successful authors. Read all about their newest releases, and where you can pick up a copy.

With the skies grey and overcast, it’s tempting to curl up with a good book this winter.

So why not shop local, and support Mid North Coast authors, in the process?

Plenty of talented storytellers call our region home, and there’s a whole bunch of new releases they’re launching this winter.

Read on to learn about these writers and their latest creations.

Drew Lindsay | Adventure fiction

Moving from Sydney to the Mid North Coast with his wife Narelle, Drew Lindsay has called Port Macquarie home for four years now.

Mr Lindsay’s popular adventure series follows a fictitious ex-cop named Ben Hood.

All of the author’s stories are inspired by his own experiences as a detective in the NSW Police Force.

Two of his earlier books, Treasure and A Bag of Dolls, were even set in Port Macquarie.

The character’s quest for justice has landed the local writer on Amazon’s bestseller list countless times in the past decade.

Mr Lindsay’s latest book, Irresistible, follows the protagonist as he investigates the murder of a former colleague.

As Ben hunts for answers, he’s led into a dark world of high-class prostitution and international business dealings.

The book is available electronically on Amazon.com, Smashwords.com, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks, Kobo and other e-distributors.

Limited paperback copies are also available on Amazon.

The local author hit Amazon’s best-selling list for Australia & Oceania drama once again, with Irresistible rising to the number one position within 24 hours of being released.

The story was released earlier this year, but it isn’t Mr Lindsay’s only book to hit shelves in 2022.

Later this month his 39th novel, Voodoo, was also released – in just a couple of days, it hit number one on Amazon’s bestseller list for Australian & Oceanian drama and plays.

In this story, Ben Hood is enticed out of retirement to find a missing girl in Far North Queensland.

“It follows him getting involved with these characters in Cooktown who practice voodoo and witchcraft,” Mr Lindsay explained.

“I’m quite happy with the story, and I hope it will do well.

“I only charge about $5 a book online, but I’m happy with that – I’m not in it for the money, I’m in it to make people feel happy when they read them.

“I just want to entertain my readers.”

Christina Sheridan | True story

The Mid North Coast’s Christina Sheridan describes herself as “not a writer”.

“I’ve got a year 9 education and I suffer from dyslexia, so writing for me is actually very difficult,” she said.

“If it wasn’t for such a great [cause], I wouldn’t be doing it, but this is a story that must be told.”

Ms Sheridan’s quest for justice led to the 2022 launch of her first ever book Witness A, which explores the murder of Colin Winchester.

It’s locally written, locally edited and sold on local bookshelves – but it goes beyond the Mid North Coast, with Ms Sheridan saying everybody in the world needs to know about this story.

It follows a witness and her family, who were taken into the National Witness Protection Program after threats were made to Witness A’s life by the Italian mafia.

“The story is really about the civil rights violations that happen to people under this program,” Ms Sheridan explained.

“A lot of the time, people voluntarily enter into witness protection as some sort of bargain or ‘get out of jail free’ card – but, in this story, that wasn’t the case.

“She was a witness to the Crown and, when she was threatened, she had to make the choice between getting a bullet and dying or going into protection and giving up your civil rights.

“And this isn’t just a once-off, this happens to lots of people.”

This widespread impact was something Ms Sheridan uncovered in her research for the novel, and through her personal experience in knowing the witness.

“So I have a lot of emotional investment in this,” she said.

The second volume of Witness A’s story is currently in the works, with more to come.

“There will probably be another two after the next volume, so maybe three or four total in the Witness A franchise,” Ms Sheridan explained.

“Because it’s such a big, long story there’s just too much to go into one book.”

The novel has seen great success so far, with all of the major book retailers jumping on to sell it online within a couple of weeks.

Hardcopies are available too, both locally and through a variety of bookstores across Australia.

Looking to the future, Ms Sheridan says more writing – inspired by other true stories – will be on the cards.

“I’ve started writing another book, unrelated to Witness A, and I’ve already got the tick of approval from a local artist who has signed on to design the cover for me,” she said.

“That story will be looking at the underbelly of sex work and the human cost involved.”

John Heath & Bob Davis | Local history

Healing The Spirit is a new release from Birrpai senior knowledge holders, backed by Port Macquarie Historical Society and the town’s museum.

John Heath and Bob Davis, proud First Nations men, have worked together to create an accurate retelling of local history entitled Healing the Spirit.

“It looks at our people, prior to and beyond the impact of, the Port Macquarie penal colony,” Mr Heath explained.

“One of the driving forces behind mine and cousin Bob in writing this is we believe most published histories of Port Macquarie doesn’t pay due respect to the true history of Birrpai and non-indigenous people.

“(Other publications) normally don’t provide any detailed understanding of the relationships that emerged through that colonisation.

“To a large degree, most of the published works up until ours whitewashed the story, so there’s a general impression that Port Macquarie was a peaceful settlement, and that is puzzling.”

In what Mr Heath says is “quite a different” story from the narrative many believe, Healing The Spirit relies on “white-written records” instead of “our own oral histories”.

“We, as indigenous men, don’t want to go down the path of having to defend ourselves from the non-indigenous opinion that we’re just making it all up,” he said.

“So we’ve largely used those white historical records because some people tend to think that, unless it’s written down, it can’t be factually correct.

“And it’s important to get that message out because I believe education is the best way to go about reform – which we certainly need.”

Mr Heath says the book is especially relevant given we are living in a time when other states around Australia are looking at the formalisation of truth-telling and treaties.

Healing the Spirit recounts the history up until now, and finishes with reflections and the authors’ thoughts on the opportunity to move forward.

“A just society would be reflective of our traditional, pre-contact society, with values such as caring and sharing for one another,” Mr Heath explained.

“Our work shows that Birrpai society, as with all other First Nations societies, had no jails, slaves, armies, wars, invasions or poverty – to me, that’s something we should all strive for.

“It’s not rocket science, it’s common sense, you’ve only got to look at Ukraine or even the extreme poverty within our own borders (to see society could be better).

“At least reflect on what we’ve written, and how we got to where we are, and consider where we want to be in the future.”

A member of the local historical society himself, Mr Heath said the positive relationship he and Mr Davis have with the group was a great support in putting the book together.

“Particularly Debbie Summers and Clive Smith, they’re very much on-side,” Mr Heath said of the society members.

“They’re good people, and the world is full of good people, it’s just a matter of getting the good to outweigh the bad.”

Healing the Spirit isn’t Mr Heath’s first book, and it certainly won’t be his last, with another one already in the works and expecting to be launched before the end of the year.

Rachel Blacker | Spiritual self-help

Rachel Blacker had a premonition about her soulmate when she was 18-years-old, over a decade and a half prior to meeting him right here in Port Macquarie.

Their paths crossed while surfing at Town Beach, a chance encounter as he was passing through town.

Ms Blacker’s debut novel, Finding The One, is inspired by her journey of love.

“There was all of this time in between the premonition and meeting him, where I went through these processes to become my own source of love before I was ready to magnetise that relationship into my life,” she explained.

“I always knew I was going to write this book, so it flowed very naturally from that space on inspiration, after I’d met my soulmate.

“I do a lot of writing, with more books coming out in the future, but I don’t call myself a writer.”

The book aims to help readers firm up their desires and expectations when it comes to romantic relationships.

“It can help you come into the right energy to fall in love with life, find completeness within, and magnetise your ideal partner,” Ms Blacker explained.

“In my own dating journey, I was wanting – always looking for – a book just like this.”

She’s made that dream a reality, and hopes others will find comfort in the lessons Finding The One holds.

Here’s an exclusive sneak peak of the book:

There are those who say, ‘It will happen when you least expect it.’ This is because some people will hold fast to their goals with an unhealthy intensity and attachment to the outcome. When such people let go of their attachment to the outcome (when they relinquish expectations) that is precisely when their manifestation occurs.

I liken this to a phenomenon that occurs at the bow of a boat. When the boat is moving forward with intensity, any flotsam at the bow is pushed away by the wake of the boat. But when the boat eases off the throttle and drifts forward slowly, the flotsam will be drawn to the boat and will make contact with the bow. Likewise, when you ease off on the intensity of your desire, rather than pushing it away, it will be drawn to you.

Kevin O’Sullivan | Memoir

Kevin O’Sullivan, a clinical psychologist and therapist by trade, said writing his memoir helped him makes sense of a very significant part of his life.

A Good Boy is centred around the first 25 years of Mr O’Sullivan’s life, and the experience of joining what he calls a “very bizarre religious order”.

Now living in Port Macquarie with his husband and their three dogs, the local author’s debut novel explores how he navigated the church and his own sexuality.

It’s been a hit already, with plenty of locals approaching Mr O’Sullivan to ask when they can read the next book.

“A lot of people have told me the story ends quite abruptly – it’s a kind of full stop in that self-discovery journey,” he said.

“The original had been even more abrupt, but I added an afterword when a friend – who had been with me in those years of being a monk, and is now a published poet – told me the ending was too harsh.

“The working title for the next volume, which I’m about halfway through writing, is Cheaper Than Therapy.

“It will include the following 15 years of my life and what I did with the things I learnt in those first 25.”

A Good Boy spares no details, shining a light on what has become an infamous religious order.

“The story of the order is bizarre, and some people still can’t quite believe the things this supposedly saintly man did,’’ he said.

But the novel is about much more than that, and Mr O’Sullivan said his background in psychology helped him through the process.

“I work a lot with stories, and I think describing a narrative can be extraordinarily therapeutic,” he said.

“I tell my clients I’m putting my money where my mouth is to make sense of my own story – I often tell people, don’t come see me, write a really good book.

“It wasn’t until I was about halfway through writing the book that I realised what I was writing about.”

Although he’d written academically over the years, Mr O’Sullivan hadn’t found much luck in his creative storytelling pursuits prior to A Good Boy.

“So I took myself off to do some courses with the Australian Writers‘ Centre, which were incredibly useful,” he said.

“Not only technically, but also logistically through teaching me how to form a habit of writing.

“Converting from a competent academic writer, to a creative writer, was a really interesting process and I’m a bit hooked now.

“Writing is quite an exposing venture, I know some clients will read this book, but that’s how life is – it’s messy – and, by opening myself to that vulnerability, I’ve seen people resonating with my story.

“It’s been somewhat unnerving, but overall I’m very pleased with the experience.”