Unspoken #author Denise Fletcher

In the final week before a federal election, political adviser Francis McGuire is tasked with one job: launching the Opposition’s flagship health policy.

Every detail is in place.
Until the party’s ruthless campaign strategist decides to sabotage it.

When his plan backfires, Francis is made the scapegoat. Publicly shamed and hunted by the press, she flees to a small town on Western Australia’s south coast ― the same place she escaped after her father’s fatal car accident years earlier.

But what awaits her is far more dangerous than political betrayal: organised crime; corruption reaching the highest office in the land; a coldblooded contest for power and control; and a murder that threatens to fracture the nation itself.

As enemies close in, Francis must decide how much she’s willing to risk to expose the truth.

Can she do that – or will the truth remain Unspoken?

To connect with Denise ....
https://www.dafletcherauthor.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, Denise. Welcome to Yellow Shelf. So exciting to have you here. Oh, it's so good to be here. Thanks for having me on, Joe. Oh, my pleasure. Denise Fletcher, your newest book, Unspoken, is out now. Tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Well, here it is, uh, Unspoken. So it's been out for a week. And and I I'm gonna begin with with the um right at the beginning, Joe, and my my journey through through life, really. And for the last 20 years, I was a political staffer. So I worked behind the scenes in politics, working for a politician. And um at about the halfway mark through that, so around about 2015, I sort of thought, well, I think I'm at some stage when my world opens up, you know, I have a bit of time, I think I'd like to write a novel. And it had been something that I'd been toying with for all probably all through my adult life, really, but I didn't really have a story or the time to do it. And so in 2015, I thought, while I'm waiting for my world to open up, how about I start researching how you actually write a novel? Because I had no idea really. And so I started reading book after book after book about the craft of writing, which I found, because I'm a bit of a researcher, so I actually found that interesting as a standalone exercise. It really fascinated me. And at some point, one of the books said, you know, it's good to write what you know, you know, against a world that you know. And so that's where the idea of I'm gonna write a political crime thriller is is where I um I I thought I would head. But unless you've got an engaging story sitting in front of that, you really don't have anything. You can say you, you know, you're gonna write a political crime thriller, but you know, what story are you going to tell? And I I toyed with a few ideas, but really they were rubbish. Like I threw them away very quickly. And but in 2017, the story came to me. I didn't find the story, the story came to me by way of it popping into my inbox when I'm at work. And it was a media release around the first ever um national wastewater drug testing program, which was done by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. And what that does, it goes all around Australia in the city and in the regional areas, and it tests wastewater for the prevalence of illicit drugs. And by extension, it will determine the infiltration of organised crime within our communities. And that fascinated me. I read the report and then I started reading more and more about that, and I realized I could see the story arc of unspoken unfold before my eyes, and I knew maybe that's what I wanted to tell, but from two levels. The first level was the infiltration of organised crime into our political systems. And if you believe, like there are now 23 of these reports. So the first one was in 2017, there are now 23, and the and the prevalence of organized crime and infiltration is only gone up in during that time. And so that was a story that I wanted to tell as the broad story. But also within my research, and also personally as a staffer for a politician, I actually saw the collateral damage of um drugs and drug addiction, the epidemic and those sort of things personally. And I wanted to make sure I told that story, and that was the story that was driving unspoken. So that's the background behind how Unspoken came to be.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

And I mean, you you're absolutely right. I mean, I've spoken to many authors who say write what you know, particularly when you're, you know, commencing the journey as a writer. Um, so tell us about tell us about the book now.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, absolutely. So um Unspoken begins in in Canberra as a political thriller must. So in Parliament House in Canberra, and again, I've I'm starting to get reader feedback, and and I knew that people would be fascinated if I lifted the veil a little bit on what it is like working in Parliament House, because really all people get to see is a an organized media conference, probably, or a 10-second grab on the TV or through their social media feed. And I and I really wanted to show them what the argy bargy of politics is really like. The first section of the book is an immersion into the world that I've lived for for 20 years. And it begins, as I said, in Parliament House, and we're introduced to our protagonist, Frances Maguire. And again, Frances is really reflective of the thousands of you know staffers, political staffers working for politicians that I've met over the years. And she is, you know, in her mid-twenties, she's good at her job, she's dedicated to the cause, she'll do anything for her boss. Um, and in by extension, she's committed to the cause of the political party for which she works, and she's prepared to take a hit for them if she needs to. And so her main job in this first week is, or last week, is to oversee the launch of her boss's legacy, which is the health policy. Now, Frances is really organised, she's got all the ducks in line, this is going to go spectacularly well. But it all unravels spectacularly through no fault of her own. And her own party needs it to disappear from the media, so they need a scapegoat. And what better person is a powerless, you know, mid-level woman, you know, who's had a little bit of the pie to make the scapegoat. And so they do. So they they blame Frances for the for the debacle that's unfolding. They they you know make sure her name is all over the media. She's sat, she's not supported. Everyone who should support has gone to ground, and she is a you know, a woman just thinking, what is going on? I don't understand, but she has no power to control it. And so her only option is to run, to flee, to leave Canberra and to go as far away from Parliament House in Canberra as she possibly can. And she ends up down the southwest of West Australia in a fictitious town called Arpenter, which is where the bulk of the book takes place. Yep. And she just wants to hide, she just wants to throw the duna over her head and just wait for the storm to pass. But um, the universe has got other you know options for her, and that is to put her uh her world collide with another woman who's also in hiding, who's Maxie Collins, who has had 10 years of a really toxic abusive time within an outlaw motorcycle gang.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

And between the two of them, they have a background, individual backgrounds, with a little bit of a story, but until they're together, can they start piecing their commonality of this story together? Francis' politics and and Maxie's this outlaw motorcycle gang and organized crime links. And then, of course, powerful people realize that these two women are together and they are sharing secrets, and these people, these powerful people, will kill, you know, to keep these secrets buried. So it asks the question: what do relatively powerless people do when they are in this absolute power mismatch when they're holding secrets and people you know want them buried? So that's the story in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah. Well, it sounds like it could well and truly be a true story.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I know it's not. Do you know what I mean? But it's oh absolutely. Well, that's the work of fiction, isn't it? It is to is to extend the boundaries as possibly as far as you possibly can, is to keep your readers engaged and believe that this could possibly happen, but but not extend it so far as they think, oh, this is rubbish, this could never happen. So that's the that's the art of storytelling and and and you know, and hope um for my reader feedback, the readers are loving it. They they're saying, you know, I've nailed it. Either whether they work, and the interesting thing is whether you work in politics, you've got a connection politics, or you're not interested in politics at all. People have contacted me and say, I've got no interest in politics at all, but I have loved your novel. I just could not put it down. So that that's that's good. That's exactly what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Yeah. And Denise, you describe this as a thriller, crime, organized crime and politics thriller. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

So so that that's the genre. So I I describe it as a crime thriller set against a political world. And and again, that's and I think John Grisham does that really well. When my when my publisher said, you know, who's your writing inspiration? I said it's John Grisham, and she said, Well, can you choose someone who's not middle-aged white male from you know Southern America? Yeah, and I said, uh no, because it does to the legal thriller what I wanted to do to a political thriller, which is tell a really engaging story against a backdrop that very few people get to see. And that's why again, when my publisher was really excited about it, is that she said, You are the first person I know from the inside telling this story. And she said, That's really unique, and I want to be part of it. So that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Well, Denise, well done. I mean, I think you've left a great taste for the audience to get curious about Unspoken. Um, you've got a great website. I want to point people in that direction because that's that's really handy to find out more a bit about you, a bit about the career, and obviously obtain the book. Um and I'll put those links in the show notes. But I have to ask you, will you write again?

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yes, so I I will. So I've got another two in the pipeline, and uh and so I never thought of a sequel to Unspoken, but the number of people who have and hundreds of people who said, I just need to know what happens next. And doesn't you can't resolve this issue of organized crime, it never ends, it there's never an end point, but there are a couple of characters, and Maxie Collins is one. And when you read the book, you see that there's a a story with with what happens next to Maxie Collins, who will who is the protagonist in my next book, and and so that is really exciting to prosecute. And and I also, from a personal level, I I want to go back a hundred years, a hundred over a hundred years, to do a historical political crime thriller set around the formation of the legislative council in Tasmania, because that is a great story to tell. And and so there will be um a contemporary crime thriller and then a historical crime thriller, hopefully, fingers crossed, coming out, you know, not far away from each other.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Well, Denise, you are welcome back because I have loved this chat. I've loved to you know feature unspoken and share it with the audience. Uh, enjoy the journey of absolutely book. It's it's crazy fun times. Um, but I'm sure we'll talk again about future books.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Beautiful. Thanks, Joe. So lovely to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Cheers. Okay, bye. Bye.