By Abbey Cannan
Birds are singing, horses are fed, the kids are off to school and now it’s time to escape to the harmony of the writer’s room, overlooking the luscious Noosa hinterland.
It’s the dream lifestyle turned reality for the author of four internationally published novels, Josephine Moon, who has lived with her family in the peace and quiet of the hinterlands since 2012.
Although Josephine is now a successful author preparing for the launch of her latest novel, The Gift of Life, she didn’t always know what she wanted to do with the gift of her life.
After a false start in Environmental Science, she made the switch to completing a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and then a postgraduate degree in education.
“I made the switch from Environmental Science to Communications because I realised that while I might have had scientific interests, my core skill set lay with writing. Then in my first-year of teaching English, I did a weekend workshop with the Queensland Writers Centre and had a ‘full body moment’ where I declared that being a career author was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life,” she said.
Twelve years and ten manuscripts later, her first novel The Tea Chest was picked up for publication.
“I signed with my first agent in 2012, then took some time to further develop my manuscript. She then pitched it to ‘the big six’ publishing houses in Australia simultaneously, I got three offers and chose the one that felt like the best fit, and the manuscript sold in January 2013,” she said.
After persistently pushing for a book deal for so long, Josephine said she was mostly too shocked to actually be excited about the publication of her first novel.
“I kept thinking it had to have been a mistake, and I was terrified of failing the people who had put their faith in me. The day I saw my manuscript as a novel, though… wow. I was literally speechless for several minutes, something that never happens, and then I was very excited, and rather giddy,” she said.
Having previously been an English teacher, Josephine would tell any students struggling to decide on a career path to follow their passions but to know that there is a need for flexibility.
“I don’t think many people get the perfect career first time around. You’re going to live a long time and you’ll be working for decades, so it’s important to keep an open mind and keep searching for something that takes you that little bit closer to where your dream is, even if it’s baby steps. There’s also no harm in finding a job that you can happily do to pay the bills, while simultaneously pursuing your dream outside that. That model works for a lot of people.”
That model certainly seemed to work well for Josephine, who already has a list of bestselling contemporary fiction novels including The Tea Chest, The Chocolate Promise, The Beekeeper’s Secret, Three Gold Coins, as she prepares for the launch of the The Gift of Life.
Josephine said that the idea for her latest novel first began 20 years ago when she saw an episode of The Phil Donahue Show, in which a heart transplant recipient described her incredible connection to the donor of her heart.
“Not long after her operation, she had intense cravings for chicken nuggets, something she never ate. When she later tracked down her donor’s family, they confirmed that the young man whose heart was in her chest, had been riding his motorcycle when he died, and he’d just been through the drive-through of a fast food chain and had a packet of chicken nuggets down his jacket. That really affected me and it stayed with me for all those years, until I saw another episode of a different television show, in which a young woman contracted a virus, which went to her heart and meant she needed a transplant. It reminded me of that first show I’d seen and I knew straight away I wanted to write about that,” she said.
In The Gift of Life, Josephine delves into the complexities of life, love, loss and the bond that connects humanity.
“I’m so excited to launch this book out into the world. It’s always an amazing moment to see so many months or years of work, mostly in isolation in my writing room, somehow transform into a beautiful novel that people will pick up and read and, hopefully, enjoy. It’s a metaphorical ‘birth’ of a book and each one is so different,” she said.
As with all of her novels Josephine spent a lot of time researching the topic, having interviewed two heart transplant recipients.
“One of them had had the unique experience of also donating his young son’s organs decades earlier. That really struck me, that ‘full circle’ nature of organ donation. It really showed me that being on either side of that journey (either as a donor or a recipient) could happen to any of us at any time. It made me want to write from both the recipient’s and the donor family’s point of view because, just like an actual heart, there were two halves to the whole,” she said.
During her research Josephine was surprised to learn just how low the organ donation rate really is in Australia.
“Around 1400 Australians are currently wait-listed for an organ transplant, with just 554 deceased donors giving organs in 2018,” she said.
According to the Australian Government Organ and Tissue Authority, just one in three Australians are registered donors despite the majority of people (69 per cent) believing that registering is important.
Josephine is already working on her next novel for 2020, which follows an Australian woman’s journey to a small village in the Cotswolds in England.
“An experimental community project is underway there to bring a dying village back to life by sponsoring people from around the world, who have genetic ties to the area, to come and live in a cottage and work to revive the town,” she said.
Josephine felt these same genetic ties to the Noosa area, having had a dream goal to live in the Noosa hinterlands since she was a child, after holidaying in the area with her family from Brisbane.
“My husband and I bought a renovator’s delight in Cooroy in 2012, which we worked on for a few years, then sold and moved to the other side of Cooroy. I have the best of both worlds, mountains and sea. We love it here so much,” she said.
“My third novel, a mystery called The Beekeeper’s Secret, was written just after we’d moved here and it is set between Noosa and Eudlo and is very much a love letter to our new lifestyle up here. I love that we’re in a small country town but so close to Noosa River and the beaches, cafes, walking trails, festivals, restaurants and markets.”
Josephine’s gratitude for the area is a true reminder of exactly why Noosa is one of the most popular beachside holiday destinations in Australia.
“I love Main Beach on Hastings Street. I love food, so I spend time growing it, reading about it, cooking it and eating it. And I love just hanging out with my husband and son on weekends,” she said.
“This is truly our perfect lifestyle. We couldn’t ask for better.”
