Author shares dark, wintry story

AS winters arrive in Ballarat, so do darker days, and local author Robbi Neal has applied this chilling atmosphere to her latest book.

With Winter Comes Darkness was released earlier this week and explores the themes of loss and recovery.

“I really wanted to write a book about two people who lost everything that has meaning to them, and how they recovered from that,” she said.

“I would think, what can I take away from them now to really put the characters in that spot?

“I’ve given them devastating loss and looked at how they can develop resilience and recover from that.”

The idea for the novel was with Neal for many years until she felt ready to share it.

“Stories of recovery have meaning for me and give me hope,” she said.

“I’ve had a lot of loss in my life. I had cancer that was so drastic that when I was diagnosed at Peter MacCallum, that they told me I had three months to live.

“I only had a 20 per cent chance of surviving… There was a lot of loss involved in that.

“Even if you survive, there’s a lot of loss with cancer; loss of your body image, self-identity, and your confidence in yourself.

“I’ve also been divorced. I’m happily remarried, but divorce was a loss. I’ve had my life threatened, and there was a lot of loss associated with that.

“I think a lot of us go through a lot of loss that we might not talk about in everyday lives.”

Neal is inspired by and enjoys classic whodunnit stories, and English crime shows, from Midsummer Murders to noir series.

“I always wanted to write something with a murder in it,” she said. “The murder in my book is set locally in Slaughterhouse Road, Durham Lead. Yes, it’s real.

“It’s been fun to write and work around that. I also love K-dramas because they throw everything in there; murder, romance, betrayal.

“I like to create books that have a bit of everything too.”

Author of Ravenous Girls, Rebecca Burton, described With Winter Comes Darkness as a “page-turner.”

“That was fantastic,” Neal said. “I hope it’s a good rollicking read for people that has all those nasty things that make a book good to read or a movie good to watch.”

Neal is the author of previous titles, Sunday Best, After Before Time, and The Secret World of Connie Starr, and wroteThe Art of Preserving Love under the pen name of Ada Langton.

She is working on an historical novel based in the 1600s and is writing a separate book that features another murder.