Get to know our author of our book of the month for December, Rebecca Armitage. As an ABC journalist, Rebecca Armitage has reported extensively on the royals and became fascinated by Harry and Meghan when they chose to step away from the royal family. She is the digital editor for the ABC’s International Desk. She was previously a multiplatform producer with the ABC’s Specialist Reporting Team and a producer at 7.30. She lives in Tasmania with her husband.
To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born and raised in Liane Moriarty country (aka Sydney’s northern beaches), though we spent a chunk of my childhood living overseas for my dad’s job. We were in Seoul for a while, where I attended a school for the children of American soldiers. The only thing I remember about that school is we spent a lot of time reading the Old Testament, which I loved because the stories were so dramatic and gory. Then we moved to Dubai, and I went to a little international school in the desert that sent us home every day at noon because it was too hot to study in the afternoons.
What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
The answer to all three is a journalist! When I was very little, I wanted to be an author, but that didn’t feel like a practical goal. Writing a book always struck me as a magical event that didn’t occur in real life. Journalism seemed like the next best thing as I would still be allowed to write for a living. When I was eight, I wanted to be Jana Wendt. When I was eighteen, I wanted to be Geraldine Brooks or Marie Colvin. And when I was thirty, I wanted to be my dear boss and ABC mentor, Dee Porter. Through it all, I had a secret writing practice, but it wasn’t until my late thirties that I decided to stop letting my fear get in the way and attempt to write a novel.
What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc – you can now say had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?
1. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier – I was named after this book, which is very funny since Rebecca is such a villain (if Max de Winter’s version of events is to be believed, and I have my doubts!), but my Mum just loved it and she gave me the gift of reading voraciously. I read Rebecca every couple of years and keep an old copy on my desk because I find the cure for writer’s block is reading some really good prose or poetry. It gets the juices flowing and I adore everything about DuMaurier’s style.
2. tolerate it by Taylor Swift – I am an unapologetic Swiftie and I think she’s the most talented songwriter of our generation. If you have any doubts about that, listen to her album Evermore. Every song is a story, every verse is a poem. tolerate it is just amazing, and the bridge in particular makes me wish I could write something that powerful and unsparing.
3. Simone Biles has had to contend with more than most athletes, something her critics don’t understand by Russell Jackson – I’m not sure if journalism counts as art, but this 2021 analysis piece from Russell, a sports reporter at the ABC, is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read. He’s easily the best writer at the ABC. His copy is not only gorgeous, but imbued with humanity and empathy and insight. I don’t follow sports at all, but I will read everything Russell writes because I want his words to wash over me.
Please tell us about your novel (which is also our BOTM!), The Heir Apparent.
I’m so honoured to be Booktopia’s Book of the Month!! The Heir Apparent is about a wayward British princess called Lexi who becomes estranged from the royal family and flees to Tasmania to live a quiet, private life as a medical resident. It was a huge scandal when she left, and she is constantly smeared by the British tabloid press for her defection. But after a decade living in Australia, tragedy strikes and Lexi is forced home – as the new heir to the throne. Will she step up and embrace this new fate? Can she take the throne given that she has a terrible secret she’s been carrying around with her for years?
What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
I’ve covered the royals a lot as a journalist, so I hope this book feels like a peek over palace walls to understand a family that deliberately shrouds itself in mystery and ritual. I hope readers reflect on the value of long-running power structures, on the perils of fame, on duty, and the way the modern media environment can obscure the truth as much as it can reveal it. But I mostly just hope to sweep readers away for a little bit. If I entertain you, I will be absolutely thrilled and honoured.
Whom do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?
Trent Dalton forever, because he’s wildly talented, but he also just seems so damn happy to be alive. Holly Ringland for her mastery of landscape, Celeste Ng for understanding that families are the best settings for stories, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for keeping me in a chokehold with every book she releases. But the writers I admire the most are those who get up every day brimming with ideas, who scribble them in notebooks or on their phones for the pure joy of it, who only want their work to exist, whether it’s read by anyone else or not. All writing is magic. All of it is vital and important.
What advice do you give aspiring writers?
1. You need a regular writing practice. For me, it’s every day, but it doesn’t have to be, especially if you have unpredictable shifts or caring responsibilities. Writing does need to be part of your regular routine though.
2. Put Google Docs (or your preferred app for writing) on your phone. Every time you’re in a doctor’s waiting room or the line at the supermarket, write a few sentences rather than doom scrolling.
3. Stop trying to make your first draft as good as something you can buy in a bookstore – a first draft’s only job is to exist. Once you have completed your first draft, the business of making it good can begin.
4. Join the Australian Society of Authors, take all their courses, and when you have a completed manuscript to pitch, sign up for Literary Speed Dating.
5. Believe in yourself. Plenty of people will tell you no. Plenty of people will make you feel embarrassed for trying. That’s their problem. This is your life and you get one shot at it. Don’t waste your fleeting time on Earth worried about tiny, petty things like other people’s opinions.
The Heir Apparent
Lexi Villiers is a 29-year-old Englishwoman doing her medical residency in Hobart, working too hard, worried about her bank balance, and living with friends. It's an ordinary, happy kind of life, and getting even better, because as the dawn is breaking on New Year's Day, Lexi is about to kiss the man she loves for the very first time.
But by midnight, everything will change. Because Lexi is in fact not an ordinary young woman. She is Princess Alexandrina, third in line to the British throne - albeit estranged from the rest of her family and living in voluntary exile on the other side of the world. But following a terrible accident which has claimed the life of her father and her twin brother, Lexi - the black sheep of her family and, until this moment, always destined to be the spare - is now the heir apparent, first in line to the throne once her grandmother, the elderly Queen, dies. Called back to do her duty, she arrives in London to a Palace riven with power plays and media leaks, all the while guarding painful secrets of her own, not knowing who she can trust.
Palace waters are treacherous, rumours are rife, and selling each other's secrets is a family tradition. And with the Crown just within her grasp, Lexi must choose what bonds she will keep ... and what she is willing to leave behind.
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