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Author David Hall overcame adversity, from a life-altering accident to Paralympic glory.
This is his autobiography....
A panther has stalked me, I crowd-surfed in a wheelchair, jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and won a gold medal. I hit tennis balls with royalty, won eight US Opens and been face-to-face with Hollywood starlets.
I received the Paralympic flame from the Prime Minister, finished the year world number one six times and appeared on a postage stamp with great hair. I was also inducted into the biggest Hall of Fames tennis has to offer.
These are things I never could have imagined as a sixteen-year-old when the surgeon walked in to that hospital room and said, “Unfortunately we’re going to have to amputate.”
Despair can be lonely, but beyond it the sweetest things are the ones you don’t even know of yet, but only if you’re willing to find them.
To connect with David ... https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100018435383038#
SPEAKER_01
Good afternoon, David Hall. Welcome to Yellow Shelf, David.
SPEAKER_00
Good afternoon, Joanna. It's great, great to be with you.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, the pleasure is all mine. David, congratulations. You have a book that's available now. Tell us all about your book. It's called Super Beast.
SPEAKER_00
That's right. It is called Super Beast, uh, which I think is a great name, if I'm being honest. Uh, it's an autobiography, and it it's interesting because I'm a former uh Paralympic athlete and I won gold uh at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics for wheelchair tennis. So there's that obvious tennis sporty angle to it. Uh, but yeah, it just details the the night of my accident and recovering from that uh through rehab. I had two amputations, and and so I had to make that tough transition back into society. Uh, but it also details my uh the way I grew up in a small beach town on the central coast of New South Wales, and then the goofy teenage years, uh, and then yeah, the night of the accident, and then recovering, and then discovering wheelchair tennis, and and eventually moving to America and making wheelchair tennis uh a career, and just being on that crazy tennis tour, which was like a traveling circus from town to town, country to country, and and I was just following my dreams and my passions of I wanted to win the US Open, I wanted to win other majors, I wanted to become world number one. Uh, but as I said, it's not just about uh tennis or sport, it's also about you know relationships and and you know, I wanted to put in into the book um not just the glorious victories and the incredible moments, but also yeah, the sacrifice and and the pain uh that that came along with the accident, but but also what it's like to be a professional uh athlete as well. And then afterwards, like after I retired from wheelchair tennis, like the the transition to what was next, which was you know a pretty big deal because I retired at 35. So I had to to move through that uh dark space and then yeah, get to to whatever was next.
SPEAKER_01
And David, you know, I think you know, when I was when I was looking at the book and you know, planning to talk to you, I was yeah, I mean, it's easy to reflect on your successful career, but as you mentioned, you've got this life altering incident when you were young. And it made me think about the journey, yeah, the mental, the physical journey that you went through. So not only after the accident, but obviously to get you through the transition of what how life would look different. Then it like you said, the transition into sport, um, traveling the world, that transition, and then transitioning out. So no wonder you wrote a memoir.
SPEAKER_00
Well, the the crazy thing is that I've always loved reading and writing. Yeah, and as my life took different turns through the accident, uh discovering wheelchair tennis, becoming world number one, retiring, like all throughout those various stages, people would say, like, your story is quite unique and interesting, and you might want to think about writing a book at some point. Well, as we all know, life can take over, yeah, and years can tick over, and you still haven't written anything. And so after I retired, I I'd say I would have been probably about 38, 39 years old. So four or five years after I retired, I took a writing class, and that was through the Australian Writers Center, and it was about you know how to how to write your life story, and it was me and nine women in the class. And every Monday morning uh for six weeks, we would all meet at the center, and the teacher was great, she would give us exercises and and whatnot, how to write dialogue and things, how to introduce characters, and it was invaluable that that class. And pretty much the the the teacher said to me, David, you're a storyteller, and I think what would be beneficial for for your style of writing the book would be if we went to the pub and we had a couple of beers and you started telling stories. Yeah, and so that's that's kind of the the genesis of how this this book came together.
SPEAKER_01
And and thank you for sharing that. Because I think you know, as a writer and as an author, you you have to work out your style, but there's so much you don't know about writing when you start that journey. Um, it sounds like it was a really valuable experience to um to sort of connect with the group.
SPEAKER_00
It was, it was fantastic, and I realized that no matter, like all the ladies were wonderful and great, and we would sit in like a circle of trust every Monday and and read out the exercise that we had for the you know the previous week, which was kind of a bit daunting, uh somewhat exciting because you'd get interesting feedback and and whatnot. But but of course, yeah, life took over and I didn't do anything for like the next you know six or seven years. And then it wasn't until yeah, a few years uh later where I thought I've got to get serious. And so I I committed, like I started writing every day, no matter what. And so I did that for a whole year, and by the end of that, uh I was on the fourth draft, and I thought I cannot write this thing any better. And so I rang John Nuke from uh Ten of Legend, and I said, Nuke, me, I've got this manuscript, I don't know what to do with it. And Nuke said, Dave, we're gonna call a guy called Larry. And I'm like, no, I'm in some kind of Sopranos episode or something. Larry, who's this Larry guy? And he Larry is an author, uh, Larry Ryder, great, great guy. He'd written books on uh Rod Laver and John Newcomb and uh Chrissy Amflet from the Divinals. So I sent Larry the manuscript, and because no one had read, yeah, obviously. And Larry sent me an email back uh a couple weeks later, and he said, Dave, this is the best raw manuscript I've ever read. Yeah, and I was like, Man, this is it. I could be actually onto something with this this manuscript. And so here we are now, a few years after that, because after that it took four years to actually get it into you know production, yeah. But yeah, it's so interesting how books can take on a life of their own.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. Oh, look, thank you for sharing that. I think that's a really powerful share, you know, about you know, writing and then the journey. And none of that happens overnight, does it?
SPEAKER_00
It sure doesn't. And I've had a few people when I started writing the the manuscript, I've had a few people say the writing of it is almost the easiest part. And which is kind of I didn't really believe it as I'm grinding through you know pages and chapters and redrafts and all that kind of stuff. But but in a lot of ways, yeah, it was, especially if you're self-publishing something, which I did with this book through uh Amazon, because you have to put on a lot of hats, like a lot of different hats, you know. So after you know, it didn't get picked up by by a traditional, uh, then I had to yeah, find an editor, cover designer, get testimonials, get a lawyer, track down photos, get rights to photos, you know, learn formatting through Adobe. So there's just a lot of things that I had to juggle, but yeah, after five years when I actually pushed that publish button, man, I get tingles like right now, just talking about it, that it was so satisfying because I'd put like an enormous amount of work into this thing to get it out there into the the the world.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, well done, David. I think there's there's a big audience out there for you. There's lots of tales, lots of stories, but you know, it's your journey, and you should be incredibly proud that uh it's available. David, if we're curious, if we're watching anywhere in the world and we want to know more about Super Bees, how do we connect with you? Are you on socials? I know the books you said it's not available on Amazon, but do you want to point us in the direction? And I'll put that in the show notes.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, fantastic! Yeah, it's available uh through Amazon in paperback, hardcover, uh, Kindle. And you can connect with with me through uh Instagram uh or X or Facebook. It's at let's roll tennis, or you can track me down, just type in David Hall, you know, in any of those uh portals. And we've got events coming up the rest of this year uh and into next at at different libraries and and tennis clubs, you know, around New South Wales. So yeah, I'd love to love to see a listener, uh a viewer of this show turn up in a library at a library event, you know, three months down the track. Like that'd be that'd be fantastic. But yeah, it's just really, really satisfying for me that I've had you know really nice feedback from from people since since the book's been released.
SPEAKER_01
Well, David, congratulations. Thank you for joining us. I you know, I'm putting it out there to the Yellow Shelf audience to get curious and to go and meet you at a local library or an event coming up in the coming months. David, all the very best. Thanks for your time.
