Author feature: Outback Promise by Maggie Bolitho

Sometimes, before you can find yourself, you must lose yourself in the desert. 

Broken Hill sunset (from www.maggiebolitho.com)

How would you describe Outback Promise? I’m not a lover of slotting books into genres, but who would it appeal to?

This book is hard to slot! A recurring description in reviews is ‘heart-wrenching.’ Many people say it packed an emotional punch for them. People who like grand backdrops and searing love stories will enjoy it.  One reader compared it to The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold: another person told me it reminded her of some of Wally Lamb’s work. I think the book has some elements of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. 

Some perspectives in the start of the book are shown from different angles as the story unfolds. Readers who liked Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret may enjoy the way the layers of half-truths and secrets are revealed as the story progresses. I am unsure about these comparisons. I would be flattered if it got anything close to those writers and their fabulous work. It delves into loss and estrangement but is also filled with hope and love.

With all that wonderful material at your disposal from your globe-trotting life, your first novel Lockdown looked at earthquake survival. Tell me a little about why…

Life in Australia first made me aware of emergency preparation. Our house in Frenchs Forest (Sydney) backed onto Garigal National Park and was classified Red Zone in terms of bushfire risk. After several fires came close to our property, my husband organized a Community Fire Unit supported by Fire & Rescue New South Wales. We, along with a dozen neighbours, trained with professional firefighters in methods of protecting our home in the event of fire.  

That ‘be prepared’ mindset came back to Canada with me. I now live on the Canadian edge of the Pacific Rim of Fire. We hear the message ‘be prepared’ for a major earthquake often. Some people say a megashake is long overdue. Theoretically it could decimate the entire west side of the continent. In California they worry about the San Andreas Fault. In BC, our threat is the shifting plates of the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Again I trained in emergency preparation, leading to the first draft of Lockdown during NaNoWriMo in 2010. 

In early 2011, there was a devastating earthquake in New Zealand followed by the massive tsunami in Japan. These events heightened my disaster awareness and contributed to my world-building. I watched reality TV shows like Doomsday Preppers to get a sense of the father in Lockdown. I took a first aid course, learned to handle a shotgun (that part was redacted from the novel) and attended more Emergency Preparedness sessions sponsored by the local governments. The story evolved from many angles.

Postscript: in December we had an earthquake here. It surprised me how unprepared I was for it mentally. It was small, four-point-something but it took a minute to figure out what was happening. I was lying in bed reading. A sharp cracking sound rang out, the bed shimmied, all the glassware in the kitchen rattled. Very little damage occurred. But what if…

And Lockdown was published for the teen market. Was that always your intention? And how would it appeal to an adult reader?

Yes, it was always intended for the teen market. I wanted to contemplate how teens might cope in an emergency of grand proportions. But it was about more than the physical coping. It was about how disasters change people, make them stronger or more anxious. Anxious people make silly mistakes.

I love reading teen fiction myself, as do many of my adult friends. In 2012, The Guardian reported that 55% of readers of YA fiction were adults. Often YA/teen books are faster-paced and have more satisfying endings than adult fiction. They also have less graphic violence and sex than books aimed at an older demographic. I trust that Lockdown fits that bill.

Was writing fiction something you’d always wanted to do? And when the moment came, did you just sit at your keyboard and write?

I’ve written all my life, but mostly for personal consumption. Because I moved around a lot in my younger life, I became a habitual letter writer. When I first moved to Australia, I wrote 10, sometimes 15 letters a week. I didn’t consider myself a writer though. That was a title or role I thought was out of reach. When I got a bit older I decided I didn’t care. It was now or never. 

And tell me more about the path to publication with your novels…

It’s been a low, slow road. I did things backwards: wrote novels, submitted them, got rejected, and finally thought, hey maybe I should take a writing course. More revisions and more rejections. After I studied writing a little longer and found a couple of good critique partners, the journey became a lot more fun and more productive. 

And how do you write – are you writing full time, or fitting it round a busy life?


I have a quiet life but I’m a slow writer. To quote Fran Lebowitz, I write so slowly I could write in my own blood and not hurt myself.

And what’s next? Are you already writing again?

I have four YA novels in varying stages on my shelf right now. Some are at only first draft but one is almost ready to submit to my publishers. I’m polishing that one. Those, and a few other secret writing projects, are keeping me off street corners for now.

Maggie, thank you – I wish you every success with Outback Promise, Lockdown and all your future writing projects.

Buying links for Outback Promise

Amazon UK  |  Amazon.com  |  Harper Collins

More about Lockdown

When disaster strikes, where do you turn?

Rowan Morgan thinks she’s ready for the rare great earthquake that devastates the Pacific Northwest but she quickly finds out there is more to emergency preparation than stockpiling food. Disasters change people, make them anxious. Anxious people make bad decisions, take silly risks. 

At their father’s insistence Rowan and her brother have taken first aid courses, learned to fish and hunt, and know to close ranks around the family in emergencies. When she has to put that training into practice, Rowan discovers many situations are not covered in survival manuals.

Buying links for Lockdown: 

Amazon.com |  Great Plains Teen Fiction | Via Amazon UK

Author links

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