2021 ~ Helen Hagemann

Saturday, December 25, 2021

Insights into The Ozone Café - my 2nd novel

The Personal Story behind the Ozone Café

The old black & white photographs might reveal a little of the setting of my 2nd novel The Ozone Café. The literary world often states for writers, “write what you know”. I have used my hometown in the setting of the novel, however the names have been changed to protect…yes no novelist wants to be sued or face undue litigation esp. when one writes about a corrupt shire. It was common knowledge in the area, that because the Ozone Café sat on prime property (a stone’s throw from the beach), it attracted the moguls and thus disappeared through dubious means.

Ettalong was and has always been a small community lifestyle: a population of less than 5,000, an older community with shopfronts like the cake shop, chemist, newsagents, banks and supermarket. It hasn’t changed in 50 years. There’s fishing, prawning, oysters in the myriad of waterways that is known as Broken Bay which sprawls to Gosford and is known as the Brisbane Water District. What has replaced the café is a very large monolith resort-type building that I understand is not liked nor valued by the locals. Well, it’s a holiday venue for the “rich”.

I went to Ettalong Primary, and then later attended Gosford High School. As a teenager and even younger I frequented the café with girlfriends, esp.one in particular named, Heather. We would have a milkshake, buy lollies, click on the jukebox and if we had any money left we’d slide a twenty shilling piece into one of the pinball machines. Looking back, it was actually a challenge to enter the Ozone café as it was daily occupied by Bodgies and Widgies. They were the rock-n-roll gangs of the sixties, rather harmless, but I guess it was the leather jackets, the chewing gum and sneers that made you feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the café was so close to the beach, that after a swim that being hungry we often bought an icy-pole or ice-cream. So, my local teenage haunt was a vivid memory that I would never forget.

When my younger brother, still living in the area, told me that the Ozone had been pulled down, I wanted to write the story of life inside its walls and its ultimate destruction.

The Ozone Café, with three separate owners therefore, is the nemesis of my story and its demise through council corruption.

The Ozone Cafe: Out now!

The Ozone Café, a historical novel with three separate owners, is about the café’s demise through council corruption.

Vincenzo Polamo, a Calabrian, builds the Ozone Café with his builder-brother in 1957 in fictional Satara Bay. He meets three children, Winifred, Casey, and Nicolas, creating a seascape mural on a café wall that includes them. The café changes from Italian to Australian cuisine. However, due to long hours of hard work and Vincenzo’s wife unwilling to migrate to Australia, Vincenzo sells the café.

Joe Pendlebury suffers setbacks with too few customers, poor health and problems due to a violent storm causing structural damage close to the mural. In major scenes, Pendlebury goes missing, and Nicolas dies from muscular dystrophy, heightening Winifred’s concerns to keep the mural sacred.

Con & Dion Lasaridis experience problems with the damage. Unable to convince the Heystbury Shire the café is sound after a rebuild, they lose ownership in a court battle; the Shire evoking a Demolition Order, 1946. The Lasaridis believe this is due to an undercurrent of well-known council corruption; Mayor Tyrone being a principal player in corrupt land and property dealings. Vincenzo (et al) removes the mural reinstating it at his home. The mural becomes a lasting memorial to Nicolas Battersby, as well as the sole surviving piece of The Ozone Café.

Available soon on Amazon & Adelaide Books, New York

My Experience with KIRKUS REVIEWS - did not have a pleasant experience!

This post is mainly to alert Australian authors about my UNPLEASANT experience using the services of Kirkus Reviews to attract a national, US or international readership.

You may have seen the Australian eBay advertisement on TV called eBay Tuesday where customers who do not use eBay are denigrated. The actor’s spiel is a mantra called, RIPPED OFF, ROZ. Let me tell you if I were to do an advertisement on KIRKUS REVIEWS I would use the same spiel, yes – this author is a RIPPED OFF, ROZ!

Several, well in the main, disadvantages that I have faced by getting published in the United States, New York City, has been due to COVID, the lockdown events, its restrictions, and the disadvantages of being unable to achieve an American promotion of my novel over there.

Unable to travel to New York, I sought the services of KIRKUS REVIEWS. Firstly, I paid for a review. It was so, so. In the opening sentence, my young couple were “feckless”. The rest was slighly positive, except for the very negative comment by the reviewer saying it was :-

An often entertaining, if unevenly executed, tale of the extraordinary lengths that people can go in pursuit of their dreams.

That didn’t bode well for me, since the idea of a review is to sell the book, esp. in the US. I thanked Kirkus Reviews for their effort, but $400 later, I now realise I was a RIPPED OFF, ROZ!

My other effort was to place a book advert on their website. $1,600 later, I was again a RIPPED OFF, ROZ! Not only didn’t the ad appear the first time, the 2nd time on contacting them asking for a refund, OR what transpired was a second screening in November. Again, the advertisement which was meant to be on several pages as follows, Homepage 970×250: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (third integrated) – Review pages 970×250: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/discover-books/fiction (third integrated) – News and Features 970×250: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/genres/fiction/ (third integrated) -Book List 970×250: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-lists/ (third integrated) – only appeared a couple of times on “DISCOVER BOOKS” – a quick flash and it was gone! I spent hours scrolling through only to find it twice - once near their magazine and the other above a novel by Isabel Allende.

I have since written to Kirkus, complained that the ad should have been a fixed/static showing for 2 weeks, and asked the ad girl to let the company know about my book ad expectations and criticisms. Of course, a RIPPED OFF, ROZ, should not complain to an American Company – how dare she!

So folks, save your money. Don’t use KIRKUS REVIEWS as your book advertisement will only be A FLASH IN THE PAN, that neither ‘you” or ‘book buyers’ will see.

Writing Residencies Await in NSW & WA

I am pleased to announce that in October 2022 I will be spending time as a KSP Fellowship recipient for rwo weeks working on my next novel *The Tattooed City* /Tattoo City (a working title).

I was not expecting to receive my acceptance email as the Katharine Sussanah Pritchard Writers Centre is highly competitive and prestigious. The centre has announced all the successful writers. They are: Demelza Carlton, Anne de Monchaux, Terena Boniwell, Leni Shilton, Shannon Meyerkort, Mark Keenan, Leigh-Michel Hobbs, Brooke Dunnell, Trish Versteegen, Karen Herbert, Jacie Anderson, Emma Hall, Miranda Luby, Emma Pignatiello, Anna Fursland, Narelle Hill, Ashleigh Hardcastle, Danijela Kambaskovic-Schwartz, Adele Tan, Kylie Boltin and Helen Hagemann.

March 2020 - May 2022

Prior to Covid-19 I was accepted into the Eramboo Artist Environment and was to spend three weeks
working on my novel *The Ozone Cafe*. My position is still valid & awaiting my presence.Hopefully I will be able to attend the centre sometime in 2022. So Mark McGowan (Premier) I am hoping that you open the West Australian borders in time for me to arrange my trip to Terrey Hills, NSW - without quarantining, without wearing a mask and that my two Covid shots will allow me to travel, freely!

A TOXIC ENVIRONMENT FOR WOMEN

While I'm on the other side of the country (I wish I could march), I am very supportive of women who have come forward with reports of sexual assault, violence, rape, and harassment in the workplace. It appears that we all need to band together FOR MUTUAL SUPPORT. I am a writer and will continue to speak my piece here on this blog. It may go unnoticed, but at least I am a small voice in the dark saying, too! "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"

Two main things have caught my attention recently and that is the Honourable Kate Sullivan - inspired by Brittany Higgins, one of Australian parliament's longest-serving women has come forward with sexual assault allegations for her time spent in the Old Parliament House. She was a Liberal parliamentarian for 27 or so years, serving through the Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard.governments.

Totally inspired most recently that Kate has been included in the ABC's July 2021 documentary with Annabel Crabb.titled "MS REPRESENTED". I did look for review sites to add my comments, but alas none were forthcoming, not unless I joined a myriad of websites like MMB Ltd, but who has the time to join etc. etc.?

SARAH HANSON YOUNG did us women proud on MS REPRESENTED. There she was in Parliament naming the politicians who harass, invade privacy and who are drunk in Parliament, pointing the finger at their irreprehensible behaviour including Cory Bernardi. I am so proud to call myself a Greens voter and very proud of that young woman who stood her ground and told it like it should be told. Firm, tough, strong, eloquent, calling them LESS THAN MEN. I stood up in my lounge room and clapped continually, then rewound (on iview catch-up) and watched her performance several times. So proud and heartwarming to see her actions in this #METOO - TOXIC ENVIRONMENT a Greens Senator who can give those dudes some necessary scthick.

JULIA GILLARD, KATE SULLIVAN, BRONWYN BISHOP, ROS KELLY, PENNY WONG, LINDA BURNEY, ANNE ALY, NATASHA STOTT DESPOJA, AMANDA VANSTONE, MARGARET REYNOLDS, JUDITH TROETH, AND JULIE BISHOP - You were all fantastic.

Read The Big Hush my previous post on Brittany Higgins & Dorothy Hewett (1923 – 2002)

Acknowledgements: to the ABC (good program),BBC and the Guardian, thanks guys!

BRITTANY HIGGINS per se DOROTHY HEWETT AWARD in Literature

The Dorothy Hewett Award - Name remains by UWA

In our current #METOO generation, for the life of me, I cannot understand why the University of UWA hasn't changed the title of their manuscript award. I wrote a letter back in 2018 insisting that they change the name of the award, only to be fobbed off. It smells like corruption! It seems to me, and it's only speculation, but in "speaking out" about their mother's pedophile pimping when they were children, Hewett's daughters must have been threatened by some hierarchy in the literature world, esp. a well-know publisher. And how many women in high prestige jobs has this happened to? Just thousands folks!

BRITTANY HIGGINS - Another #MeToo - A quote from the ABC. Ms Higgins had originally decided not to pursue a complaint with police as she felt that the pressure of going public about the rape "would affect her job".

Brittany Higgins has alleged being raped by a federal staffer in Parliament House, and the matter is now due for the courts. And "justice matters". Since speaking publicly about the allegations, she has referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police.Says ABC news. "The ACT's Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold confirmed he received a partial brief of evidence and a request to provide advice on any prosecution."

Here is a link to my previous post titled Dorothy Hewett Exposed as a Miscreeant

YES - As Glen Kirchner (a US Federal Prosecutor for 30 years) would say - "Justice Matters."

The Ozone Café - 2nd Novel due October by Adelaide Books

Synopsis – The Ozone Café

The Ozone Café is about three separate owners of the café and its demise through political corruption.
‘I never thought of this place as a ship,’ said Winifred.
‘Rennie and I, we had a few drinks the other night when we organised the wall. He told me a few things I didn’t know. When the café was first built, I just said to Rennie I wanted the outside walls curved like a woman. I wanted two stories with a deck on top, and have it rendered smooth as a woman all over. Rennie said he had trouble at first wondering how he would do it, but he eventually found a style, it’s called a P & O Orient. Like the large ships of the thirties. That’s why the building has the top deck and rails. It’s based on the bow of an ocean liner. All this time, I never knew, and he didn’t tell me, he just said, ‘you got the curves you wanted.’

Middle aged Vincenzo Polamo has migrated to Australia to start a new life. He has left his family back in Calabria, but hopes they will join him when they are ready. He eventually settles in fictional Satara Bay and with the help of his builder brother, builds the Ozone Café in 1957 in an ideal beach location in this popular holiday town. When Vincenzo comes to terms with knowing that his wife Maria will never set foot in Australia, the long hours of making a success of the café with an Australian cuisine, and without familial help, he sells the café, as well as being with Mandy a new woman in his life.
Unbeknown to Vincenzo, the previous property that was owned by Stan Sawbridge (Stan, the Man) still holds a Demolition Order that his Real Estate Agent Ronny Williams fails to remove during the sale. In the meantime, Vincenzo meets three children, Winifred, Casey and Nicolas Battersby (wheelchair bound) and creates a seascape mural on an outside wall, a dedication to them.
Joe Pendlebury is the second owner. However, he suffers setbacks with too few customers, poor health and a violent storm that causes wall damage close to the mural. Winifred, who has worked in the café, believes that Pendlebury is dismantling the mural and tells Vincenzo. In suspicious circumstances, Pendlebury uncharacteristically disappears and therfore his wife Shirley sells the café to Con and Dion Lasaridis (Greek boys).
Con and Dion Lasaridis (Greek boys)
In this act, Nicolas Battersby dies from muscular dystrophy and this heightens Winifred’s concerns to keep the mural sacred in his memory. While the Ozone is a success, the cracked Ozone wall is a serious problem for the Greek boys who cannot convince the Heytesbury Shire that the side courtyard wall has been professionally rebuilt. They lose the café in a court case when the Shire enforces the unrevoked Demolition Order of 1946. The Greek boys believe it’s due to the undercurrent of political corruption, but cannot afford to fight them in the High Court.When the Shire takes its time to demolish the Ozone, Vincenzo, with the help of his brother’s industrial machinery, removes the mural from the café. In broad daylight they act as a bogus demolition team reinstating the brick seascape in Vincenzo’s front yard. Still intact, a fountain wall is built, becoming a lasting memorial to Nicolas Battersby, as well as the sole surviving piece of The Ozone Café.

The Ozone Café is an exploration of power and control and of those who survive the most powerless of unfair situations. It is a David and Goliath story; the café just as fragile as the people who inhabit it, does not survive while Shire authorities prepare to tear it down. One small glimmer of hope remains - with the reinstatement of the mural as the last surviving piece of the cafe.