Simply Beside Herself #author Judith Katherine

When 72-year-old Elizabeth sees a dead body - her own - on a park bench, she knows it's a sign that it's time for her to make some big changes in her life.

She has recently moved into the heavily regimented nursing home The Cloisters and, after becoming a widow, has lost all sense of herself and her life. Jolted suddenly out of the greyness of her life, she performs a daring abscondence from the suffocating Cloisters and sets off in search of a better future - and a reconnection with her past.

Elizabeth's sudden disappearance throws her daughter Ellen's life into disarray - she has to frantically search for her mother while trying to hold her fracturing family together. Overwhelmed and feeling isolated, the two eventually come together to make a series of audacious escapes to better futures. They each discover how easy it is to get lost, and how important it is to be found again.

To connect with Judith ...
https://www.judithkatherine.com.au/
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Simply-Beside-Herself/Judith-Katherine/9781761637841 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Yes, good morning, Judith Catherine. Welcome to Yellow Shelf, Judith. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Great to meet you, Jo.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Oh, likewise, and great to share your debut novel with our audience. Judith, tell us all about your new book, Simply Beside Herself.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Well, Simply Beside Herself is a gentle novel about reclaiming independence at every stage in life. And it addresses some complex issues in an oversimplifying way. So I've tried to write about serious things in a funny way, but use compassionate humour in doing so.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah, and definitely a journey of self-discovery. I think when I when I got the book, the publisher sent it to me. Lots of lots to love about these characters.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Well, that's good to hear. I think that initially my story opens with Elizabeth in her 70s, and I don't think she loves herself very much. I think she's really lost touch with who she is. And so as somebody who's written the characters, it's lovely to hear that you you think that they like that they're likable.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah, well, and I yeah, I guess I connected with yeah, her vulnerability and her frailness, and I wanted to keep reading, Judith. That's the way I felt.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Well, that's good. It's a fairly confronting start where she finds her own dead body sitting on a park bench. Um so the level of dissociation is quite high.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, and and twists, there's twists in this novel, so you you you deliver lots in your initial in your initial novel. Tell us um, if we're curious about like the genre of books, how do you how would you describe this book?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

I always struggle with genre. It's sort of somewhere to put it, and I think it's one of the things that um and certainly I've experienced working with the phone press, they're not um too concerned with putting it in a in a pigeonhole. So broadly speaking, it's literary fiction, um, it sits within women's fiction, I think it sits within humour, um, but there's also very sad bits in it. Yeah, so you know it doesn't really particularly fit in one one little box.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And look, and as the audience knows here, I love that cross genre. I think that delivers for so many people. So yeah, great to hear that you just don't describe it in one genre. Judith, do you want to tell us a little about you, about your journey as an author, and what inspired you to write?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Um, well, I think I've always written, but I it's tended to be emails and and letters. I used to love writing at school. We did creative writing at school, but then I went to university, and essays don't make people laugh and cry so much. Um, so you know, I'm happy to get the grade back if it's reasonable, but the feedback's quite different. So once I started working, I was working within HR departments. I worked for the BBC in London and then I worked for a bank. So lots of writing there, but but pretty procedural. And so doing creative writing, I didn't take it seriously at all until the pandemic when there was some time. So we had this great sort of structured routine with our family. We had five people all at home, and I realized quite quickly that we would all need time apart from each other. So my time apart was going and sitting in a small study and thinking, oh, this is a time I could sign up for some online writing courses, which I did, um, and I really just started taking it from there. The other people doing the courses were generally more experienced in writing very, very different things, and I was encouraged to continue doing what they were doing and followed them onto another couple of courses, and that's how this book developed. I wrote a um difficult to um expand 500 words that I was quite interested in, and then as a result of doing the courses, actually did develop it over those courses and it turned into um a novel.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yeah, wow. Congratulations. I mean, and I'll just I'll touch on the fact that you and I both have backgrounds in HR functions. So it is really great that you know you and I get to use a creative side of our brain, um, you know, as as a side project. It's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Well, absolutely, and I think just sort of looking how at how people relate and how they relate with each other within team environments and how much they identify in their roles, who they are at work, who they are at home, whether they wear different masks. Um, yeah, it's it's it's interesting, and that's definitely what's happened to Elizabeth. She's decided that she's a mother and she's a wife, and then when her circumstances change, she isn't really very sure who she is anymore. And I think this is quite a commonly experienced um circumstance. It's it's often talked about for women alongside the invisibility that goes with that as you age, but it's not predominant, it's not although it's predominantly for women, it's not exclusively that of women. I've got male characters who are also a bit lost in this novel.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah. Judith, uh, is the plan? I know you're allowed to enjoy this book launch. I know it's available pre-order pre-order now, out really soon. You're allowed, you're absolutely allowed to enjoy the craziness of launching a book. But would you plan to write more? Is is there that burning desire?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah, you know, it's really, really um funny. When I got signed for this book, I went into sort of I really wasn't very sure where to put myself at all. And then for about three days of this extraordinary experience when other stories started just going like hell for leather in in my head, and so I've got another one, so probably more than roughed out now. Um, and it just sort of sits, it's sitting independently, just waiting. So I if I'm feeling overwhelmed in any way by this one, which seems to be going on its own track now, then I just look at the next one and tinker around with that.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Well, when when you do launch the next one, I'd love to have you back. This chat has really been wonderful. Judith, if we're watching anywhere in the world, I'm gonna put some links in the show notes um to connect with the book where it's available. But are you on socials? Do you want to point us in a direction of where we can get curious about you and the book?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, I'm not on socials. I um could I've got a website, so I'm at judithcatherine.com.au, and um that links to my author page with Simon Andruster, and you can certainly get in touch with me through the publisher, which is a foreign press Simon Aschuster.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Oh, I will put links in uh what you mentioned just to make it easy for people to connect with your website and with the publishers. Judith, all the best. Thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. It's been fun. Cheers. Bye.