Jim Fagan
It takes a special kind of grit, and determination– after two months lying in pain in hospital and rehab wards and later in a wheelchair– to finish writing the book that has filled your mind for the last five years.
Noosa author Sheila Mason was on holiday in Cairns last year when she sustained severe injuries in a fall, breaking a leg, ankle, and fracturing ribs and an arm.
She is a bit matter of fact about doing the final chapters, telling Noosa Today, “I was in the last throes of finishing my book “The Shimla Legacy” at the time, so I suppose you could say it made me sit down and do it.”
The result is a 93,000-word saga in two parts, spanning half a century. It tells of an English family, their lives, their loves, and their heartbreak, pivoting around a key character literally getting away with murder. And of a couple about to be married, discovering they may have the same father.
Sheila (82) was born in England and first visited Shimla in the mid 1990s.
“What appealed to me was the Englishness of it. It has a Christian church and a lot of British history — as in most of India—and I began to think of the people who lived there during the summer months when it became India’s capital, so I invented a family and after a while, the characters took over the story.”
Before coming to Noosa in 2005, Sheila and her Australian husband, Peter, a former Fleet Street journalist, owned a balloon company specialising in P.R. campaigns for major multinational corporations. “He just came home one day and said he was finished with newspapers and wanted to start a hot air balloon company.
“We did this for over 20 years and it became one of the biggest of its kind in the world. We had a network of pilots and crews around the globe, as well as Peter piloting various VIP assignments.
“For headline-catching photo-shoots, we flew over the Great Wall of China, Niagara Falls, and every state capital in Australia. We displayed balloons in front of dozens of iconic world sites, such as the World Trade Centre in NY, The Sydney Opera House, and Petra in Jordan.
“Our company also organised record-breaking attempts. We were instrumental in successfully flying two balloons over the summit of Mount Everest; setting a world altitude record for a ‘special shape’ balloon, and a world altitude record for a regular balloon, in Texas.”
Shortly after coming to live in Noosa in 2005, Sheila joined the writers at Noosa Arts and Crafts Association at Wallace House. She is still there and has been one of the authors in the group’s several published anthologies of short stories.
“We critique each other’s work and it is amazing how well it works. It spurs you on to keep writing and improving.’’
Sheila is now working on a sequel to The Shimla Legacy. She has completed the first four chapters and and is working on a title. “I don’t write quickly. It could probably take me another couple of years on and off,” she said.
She writes under the pseudonym Rebecca S. Mason and her novel has been picked up by a Welsh publisher, Cambria Publishing. It is available on Amazon and other online booksellers for $30.07.
If you’re quick, you can buy one at Wallace House. She has some in the shop there at a reduced price of $20.
