Narrawong author Maya Linnell on her rural novel Bottlebrush Creek
Maya Linnell is a writer who is succeeding by focusing on the environment she knows best.
FROM her desk, Maya Linnell looks across the chook shed and the paddocks of her south west Victorian property – with their pigs, sheep and cows – to the blue expanse of the Southern Ocean.
But as inspiring as the vista is, more often it’s Maya’s own life and experiences that inspire her books.
Having just released her latest page-turner Bottlebrush Creek — on the back of her debut novel Wildflower Ridge — she’s in the process of editing her third book, “with ideas percolating for the fourth”.
“All four books follow four sisters and each sister has a little bit of me in them,” says the 39-year-old author from her Narrawong home.
“Bottlebrush Creek focuses on Angie, who is quite bubbly, loves baking but is tortured because she can’t bake while they’re living in a caravan and renovating their house.
“Wildflower Ridge had Penny who, like me, wanted to get out of the country as soon as she left school, but unlike her, I figured out faster that the country was the best place to live.
“I plunder little bits of what I’ve heard and seen, my own life, and mix it with a dash of ‘what if’ and then go to town.”
Readers will have to wait for the release of the subsequent two, but suffice to say one of the subsequent sisters is the “mother hen who loves to sew”.
Having met the characters of her rural romance novels, we meet the author.
Maya lives on a 3ha property with her husband Jason Eats — who she met through a Beaut Blokes (an event for single country men) — and three children, aged 12, 9 and 8.
When she’s not writing she loves to cook, sew, garden and yes the couple has only recently finished building their home.
“When we bought this property it was an old cow paddock and so we made the poured earth bricks, and I did everything from laying floorboards to grouting and cutting timber, with a little help from electricians and plumbers,” Maya says.
“I enjoyed it, but like Angie it took me away from my absolute love, which is writing, followed by cooking and gardening.”
Maya says she would write stories from a young age, growing up in the tiny town of Tantanoola, on South Australia’s Limestone Coast.
“I would have been eight or nine when I gave my teachers one of my stories. They said ‘do you even know what the word crestfallen means’ and I said of course I do.”
With a father who was a freelance journalist for a motorbike magazine, Maya also opted for journalism, after travelling around the world returning to take a cadetship at The South Eastern Times in Millicent.
She worked on the paper for five years, found reporting council “torturous” and instead loved reporting on the cooking competitions and even judging the baking.
In 2004 she decided to pop across the Victorian border to Harrow to take part in Beaut Blokes, falling for Jason after he bogged his four-wheel-drive while trying to impress the ladies.
Together the couple lived in Portland, where they first renovated a house, before moving to Narrawong in 2013, where Jason is now a technician on the Codrington and Yambuk wind farm.
When their youngest child began kindergarten that freed Maya to begin writing, initially completing an 11-month ‘write your first draft’ course.
Maya describes her style as “rural fiction from the heart, with romance only a small part”.
“I like to bring in broader issues, and even get inspired reading The Weekly Times, highlighting issues such as succession planning, farm safety, community volunteering and feral wildlife after we had an incident nearby in the scrub with feral pigs.
“I love telling stories about rural Australia, especially rural women.”
She now sets aside time from 9am to lunch to focus on her books, but inspiration strikes at any moment, walking on the beach, gardening or on the ride-on mower.
Maya says her life now is “pretty special”, with animals providing their meat needs, and a vast vegie patch inspiring dishes in the kitchen.
“Our stars aligned because Jason is the same. Making bread, raising chooks is much nicer and cheaper than buying food and so fulfilling.
“I was raised with the idea that if you can do it yourself, you should have a go at anything.”
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