It’s all about me
Photo by Chesser Studios
Hachette Australia Author Page
Hachette Australia Media Release - click here to view
Online Interview Australian Literary Review June 2010
Online Interview with Helene Young
Online Interview with The Style Tree
Online Interview with Beauty and Lace
Online Interview at the Pitch Parlour
Interview with Lorraine Mace, WQ magazine, May 10, 2010
Phillipa Fioretti’s first novel, The Book of Love, was recently published as part of a two-book deal with Hachette Australia. She puts her good fortune down to having the right book, at the right time, in the right place.
Tell us about how you secured your publishing deal.
‘As I was finishing my third manuscript, I saw an ad for the Hachette Australia/Queensland Writers Centre Manuscript Development Program.Applications were open to all Australian commercial fiction writers.Eight were selected and we attended a five-day retreat with two publishers from Hachette, an agent, a published writer, a bookseller, and the head of QWC.It was a brilliant opportunity and a great five days.‘We were all told at the start that no-one would be offered a contract straight away, but to submit the improved manuscripts when ready.There were no guarantees because, of course, the manuscripts had to go to an acquisitions meeting and run the gauntlet of sales and marketing.
‘Two of the key words for this program were “commercial” and “development”.No matter what the merits of the manuscript, if it didn’t present a viable commercial proposition then it wouldn’t be taken on.’
What was the timeline of events leading up to your book deal?
‘I submitted a week after returning from the retreat in November 2008 and in early January I was offered a two-book contract.’
What would you do differently if you could repeat the same experience?
‘Nothing.I’ve been very fortunate and my experience perfectly illustrates the definition of luck – preparation meets opportunity.I worked very hard on the manuscript and had it polished and ready to go.It fell into the hands of a publisher who liked it from the start and was looking for quality women’s fiction.I think it was a situation where all the pieces came together at the right time.I could have submitted the same manuscript to other agents or publishers and nothing could have happened except the same old bounce back.’
What are your goals as a writer?
‘I don’t really have goals, other than to develop and grow in every aspect of writing – which actually encompasses dozens of mini goals, I know.But, put simply, I’d like to get better at it.I’m happy writing mystery/romance/comedy and I intend to stay in those genres.I think it can be done with intelligence and wit, and there is enormous scope for plot, atmosphere, humour, and, best of all, characters.So I’ll just take things as they come for now.’
How long did it take you to write your books?
‘I’ve been writing, full-time, since late 2006.I wrote three 85,000 word manuscripts in two years and I’m just about to complete my fourth.The Book of Love, after a false 20,000 word start, was written in two weeks – the first draft, that is.Then four or five months of editing and redrafting took place.This current book, the sequel, has taken almost a year to get the first draft down. I’ve had many other things to deal with, so it’s been a very unsatisfying stop/start affair, but it’s written now.’
What was the first thing you ever had published?
‘My background is in visual art so I’ve never had any writing published before. The Book of Love is it – the first.’
Do you have any advice to give to aspiring writers?
‘There is a lot of advice out there for aspiring writers – so much it’s overwhelming. If you sift through it all you see the same advice repeated over and again.And that’s because it is good advice, based on experience and insight.So get out there and start sifting.If you’ve come from another career or life and have started to write, it can become tiresome trying to hide your new fixation, trying to cover for all the things you haven’t done because you were writing, and answering people’s questions like “Do you have a publisher?” That last question has a burn to it, and it’s a question only non-writers would ask.
‘So, for me, one of the best aspects of getting published is not so much the book on the shelf (I know I could be stoned for saying that), but the fact that publication means validation.I’ve had my ticket stamped and I can keep doing this now and not have to fight for time, or have to fight to be taken seriously.I get to write every day and that’s a fantastic outcome.’
Lorraine Mace is a columnist for Writing Magazine (UK) and deputy editor of Words with JAM (e-zine). She is a writing competition judge, a tutor for Writers Bureau and co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam, of The Writer’s ABC Checklist. www.lorrainemace.com
Interview with Gillian Bramley-Moore, The Courier Mail, Brisbane, April 10,2010
It was just another day at the supermarket when Phillipa Fioretti got the call that changed everything.”I was reaching for the tomato paste when the phone went off,” she says. It was the Queensland Writers Centre,telling her she had been chosen for the inaugural Manuscript Development Program in partnership with publisher Hachette Australia. “I wanted to run up and down the aisles,” she says. After the five-day workshop with seven other writers from across the country, she returned home to Adelaide to work on her manuscript before sending it to Hachette and being offered a contract early last year. “It’s a great confidence booster and confirmation I’ve got some ability. It’s allowed me to do what I love,” she says.
A romantic mystery, The Book of Love is Fioretti’s first novel.It tells the story of 29-year-old Lily and her petulant boyfriend Robbie, who run a secondhand bookshop in Sydney. When a shipment of old books arrives from Nairobi, Robbie discovers a rare collection of Pompeii erotica worth $20 million. He plans to sell it but is disrupted by William,a handsome Londoner hired by an art firm to discreetly retrieve stolen works.When Robbie disappears, a dangerous quest to find him and the book is complicated by Lily and William’s feelings for each other.
Fioretti was born and raised in Sydney, where she studied humanities, visual arts and museum studies. She later worked as a printmaker and taught drawing and media studies at tertiary institutions before moving to Adelaide and becoming a full-time mother. Several years ago when the youngest of her two children turned
nine, she decided the time was right to return to a creative practice. Art,however,had lost its appeal.”I didn’t feel like going back to art. I wanted to try something different, learn a set of new skills and challenge myself. I wanted to see what writing was like,” she says. In two short years she completed three manuscripts. A new passion had been discovered.
Her lawyer father and homemaker mother were both avid readers.”This is how my family spent their weekends- noses stuck in books,” she says. “Sport was never mentioned. We’d all scurry off to our cubby holes and read, and birthday presents were always books. It was just the norm for us.”She writes at home in her study surrounded by books.
“It’s not very tidy. It’s disordered but cosy. I have to have a good coffee but I just enjoy writing so much, when I sit down I don’t need to be pushed,” she says. She got the first draft for The Book of Love down in three weeks before hearing about the Manuscript Development Program.
“I wanted the book to revolve around something I found really interesting so I’d have to research areas I love,” she says.”I was always interested in the Classical world. That’s how I came up with the idea of Pompeii erotica.” Fioretti travelled to Italy with her husband and children before starting the book. She integrated places they stayed into the story. Although she loves reading thrillers and mysteries, Fioretti plans to keep writing romantic comedies for now. She has written a sequel, The Fragment of Dreams, which looks at the realities of relationships after romantic and lustful beginnings. It is due for release next year.”I haven’t exhausted this genre yet,” she says. “And I don’t want to write things that depress me. I don’t want to be in a dark headspace all day. I like to have a laugh while I’m doing it.”
The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, March 26, 2010, Jane Southward
When Phillipa Fioretti, was finishing high school at SCEGGS Redlands she used to spend her weekends trawling through racks of second-hand clothes at the markets in Paddington and Balmain. Now she has brought to life her passion for vintage fashion in a novel called The Book of Love, to be published by Hachette next month. She has also launched a website filled with vintage products as well as anecdotes and photographs that have inspired her.
It just made sense, Fioretti says, that the novel’s heroine, Lily, would choose vintage clothes. Lily, the romantic co-owner of a second-hand bookshop, is stuck in a relationship with a caddish boyfriend who disappears after the pair discover a rare and valuable volume among second-hand books destined for sale.
“Lily is a romantic and loves living in the past,” Fioretti explains. “Vintage clothes allow her to dream of the stories of the women who once wore them.” Fioretti’s personal passion for vintage fashion continued beyond her student days at the University of Svdnev, where she majored in philosophy. On a holiday in Paris in the early 1980s she discovered a favourite item in a flea market - a handmade silk dress in ivory with blue and green stripes and a lace petticoat sewn into it, which the author says ” looks like something out of a Renoir painting”. That’s the beauty of vintage shopping, she says from her home in Adelaide: “You never really know what you will discover. [It allows you to] shop with a hunter-collector mentality.” Another reason for buying vintage clothes is they often have an elegance that mass-made, contemporary clothes lack, she says.
Related posts
for a good feed ...
