Floaters

The floater is Adelaide's contribution to world cuisine: a meat pie floating upside down in a bowl of pea soup, and deluged with tomato sauce. Though I've lived in Adelaide for some years, I've never been game enough to risk eating one of these monstrosities. I have seen one, though, from a safe distance. It seems the only place they're still available is from the Cafe de Wheels, the all-night pie-cart, to be found on the Franklin Street frontage of the GPO - and only in the depths of night. For a floater recipe, check out the Lard website, complete with grisly photo.

The meat pie drowning in soup reminds me of Australia, a child afloat in the ocean, abandoned by mother Britannia since her remarriage to Europa (while that lecherous Uncle Sam eyes the nubile youngster). "Perhaps I should marry cousin Asia," Australia wonders. "But do I truly love him?"

Bearing all that in mind, Floaters seemed to be a suitable name for my octalogy about life in and around Australia.

When I first moved to Australia, the people seemed much the same as in New Zealand, and the language was almost identical. But after a few years, I came to realize that there's something different about the Australian way of thinking. Then I started noticing the differences in the way that people in the various states of Australia see the world.

Hence the Floaters: my equivalent of Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart. The complete set will eventually be a record of life in this part of the world - before the dromes took over.

An octalogy (if the word existed) would be the name for a set of eight novels. I'm planning to write one for each Australian state, and one for New Zealand. So far, three are finished, and another almost so:

All the Floaters are interlinked: minor characters in one book turn up in another, revealing themselves in different lights. Though each book is self-contained, you need to read the whole set to fully understand the series. At the rate I've been going (finishing about one a year, with a long pause while I finished my massive doctoral thesis) you'll be able to read the full set sometime around 2010.

"What type of novels are these?" people have asked. Unfortunately for publishers, they don't quite fit any type. They're sort of science fiction, but the fiction overwhelms the science. They're humorous, but there's not a joke on every page. They're mysterious, but not enough people get murdered. They're a little fantastic, but so is life in Australia: what appears to be fantasy is often social realism. Try them out, and see what I mean. On this website you can read the first few chapters of each completed Floater.

These books are written for adults. I'd classify them as M-rated - as distinct from G-rated or R-rated. If you're younger than about 18, you won't yet have the life experience to understand the Floaters fully. Instead, try Dromeworld, for a picture of life in the future.

Midnight Deli

Are people who work at night and sleep by day a different species from the rest of us? This novel, which happens mainly in the dark, is the story of Danny: a night person.

In the summer of 1974, life was sweet for Danny. He had almost everything a young printer could desire: a well-paid job (on the nightshift, of course), an amateur blues band for fooling around at weekends, and a girlfriend who was everything he'd ever dreamed of - except that she was a day person.

His main problem in life, he thought, was finding hot food at midnight, when he had a half-hour break, but all the shops were closed. So when the Midnight Deli opened near the newspaper where he worked, Danny and his friend Bernie were its first customers. Danny was intrigued by Sylvia, the young woman who served him, but his attempts to befriend her were discouraged by her uncle Stavros, the manager of the deli. Sylvia was supposed to be engaged to a cousin back in Cyprus, and no rumours were permitted to sully her virtue.

Gradually Danny was drawn into Sylvia's world, impelled by an attraction to her which he didn't understand and would hardly admit to himself. Sylvia's family had a desperation that Danny's suburban upbringing had totally lacked. People who crossed the Midnight Deli tended to die in mysterious circumstances. Danny's friends advised him not to get involved, but his fascination with Sylvia kept pulling him onward, to an bizarre but almost believable ending.

Midnight Deli paints a picture of Melbourne in the 1970s, when the city closed down after dark, when Anglo-Australians were struggling to come to terms with an influx of determined migrants, and when the future seemed limitless.

Moods change constantly in this book, a little like a blues song: the sad, the sexy, the idyllic, the gruesome - but the underlying feeling is one of wry humour, ranging from sardonic (Simone telling Danny what's wrong with blues) to ridiculous (hunting for musical Africans on the streets of Melbourne).

Midnight Deli grapples with some of the most serious intellectual issues of our day. Cultural icons such as meat pies, classic Australian cars, famous explorers, restaurant customs, kitchen decoration, Melbourne drivers, and the Australian desert are examined with a jaundiced eye. Pride is shattered, reputations ruined, and myths undermined.

You can read Midnight Deli right here. [June 2004: all chapters now online.] Begin with Chapter 1.

GONE: NO ADDRESS

Have you ever moved into a house and found intriguing traces of the previous occupants? Was there an urgent phone call for them, the moment you moved in? Did their friends drop in, wondering where they had got to? Did you receive letters for them, with intriguing postmarks? And did you dare to steam the letters open, because you desperately needed to know what they were about?

When Nimue moves to the most average suburb in Sydney to hide from her ex-husband and rebuild her life, she's caught up in the strange affairs of the previous occupants. They'd left in a hurry, without a forwarding address. She needs a new identity - so why not borrow theirs?

Over the next few months, she becomes more and more entangled in their web - until, finally, it all becomes too much, and she finds herself fleeing once more, in a way she never imagined.

This book will be welcomed by those interested in Pre-Raphaelite art, Arthurian legends, practical time-travel, sexual mores in Hurstville, postal history, the works of Christina Stead, Sydney in the 1920s, state-of-the-art telemarketing, antique yachts - and everybody who is paranoid about government databases.

The first few chapters are now on-line.

Gone: No Address - Chapter 1

Cloud of Universal Light

In a Queensland country town, a mining executive named Bram Thorzin is captured from a motel. Though he considers himself kidnapped, his captors claim to be rescuing him. They tell him he is their prophet, the founder of their religion: the Cloud of Universal Light. As he has no interest in religion, he keeps telling them they have the wrong person, and that he must have a namesake. This amuses them greatly.

After a few months in the wilderness, the Cloudists relent, and let him return home to Brisbane. He finds nothing left for him there: his family, his home, his job, and his friends have all evaporated. His only practical option is to return to the Cloudists and become their prophet after all. But a prophet, to earn his keep, has to make prophecies - and prophecies, to be believed, must now and again come true....

You can read all sorts of messages into this novel. It could be read as a satire on Queensland politics, or a parody of an "airport" novel, or an exploration of social stereotyping. Probably all of these are true. But that's not the way it evolved. I simply began with a hypothetical group of typical Queenslanders, and conducted a thought-experiment: if these people were put in this situation, what could happen? Whatever happened, it would only do so in Queensland. People think differently there.

Start reading Cloud.