CAMILLE BOOKER “Remember that your story already exists inside you. If you sit down at the keyboard, the words will come.”
Kelly’s Writerly Q&A March 2025 Author Interview is with Camille Booker, multi-award-winning historical fiction author, creative writing teacher at the University of Wollongong, and my dear writing friend. Camille and I met when her debut novel, What If You Fly?, was published by Hawkeye Publishing in 2021, and we’ve been swapping manuscripts and cheering each other on ever since. Her second novel, The Woman in the Waves, is an absolute triumph, also published with Hawkeye Publishing, and it’s out today! Welcome back, Camille!
Kelly: Thanks for taking the time to answer some more writerly questions. First of all, congratulations on the publication of your second novel, The Woman In The Waves. I loved it, but can you tell everyone who hasn’t yet had the pleasure of reading it what it’s about?
Camille: Thanks Kel! The book would not be here today without you. The Woman in the Waves is PEAKY BLINDERS meets Robert Eggers’ THE LIGHTHOUSE, with a feminist spin. It’s a dual-POV atmospheric murder mystery with a psychological edge, set in a sleepy seaside village in 1921. It’s filled with unexpected twists, romantically charged tension, evocative descriptions, an unreliable narrator, and characters hiding deep dark secrets.
Here's my elevator pitch: This gothic historical fiction novel takes place in the fictional town of Widow’s Peak on the south coast of NSW. Missy Green is the lonely fisherman’s daughter who encounters a mermaid claiming to be her mother - a woman who mysteriously died in the waves when Missy was a child. She realises that she is hallucinating and that the mermaid is actually a dead woman washed up on shore.
Missy gets pulled into the investigation with Detective Shaw, an Irish immigrant and WWI veteran, and together they are forced to grapple with the town's criminal underbelly - a grimy bootlegging operation that may be linked to her beloved grandfather, the town’s reclusive lighthouse keeper.
While Missy descends deeper into the murky waters of the case to find the killer, and what really happened to her mother all those years ago, she begins to question everything she's ever known...even her own sanity.
Kelly: OMG, you give me too much credit. But I must say, it was an absolute pleasure playing a small part in helping you shape this manuscript into what it is today. What inspired you to write The Woman In The Waves?
Camille: The plot, the characters, the themes – all of these elements originated from the setting. I was inspired to write my story while I was living on the south coast of NSW, in Wollongong, the only town in Australia with two lighthouses. I began with a vague idea about a lighthouse and a spooky mermaid, and the story slowly grew from there.
I’ve always had a lifelong love affair with and fascination for lighthouses. However, the bones of this story were dreamt up when the world was first plunged into isolation due to the outbreak of the pandemic, when I was pregnant with my second child. I drew heavily on the concept of the lighthouse to explore themes of isolation and loneliness, of navigating through life’s challenges and difficult times, but also as a way of finding light during darkness and uncertainty, because it reflected what I was feeling at that time.
Kelly: You are a master at setting and mood. I also love how the lows of motherhood were part of your inspiration and features in the book. How long did it take you to write The Woman In The Waves?
Camille: Hmmm, I think I wrote the first lines of chapter one in about March 2022. I submitted the first 3,000 words to the Curtis Brown Creative 6 Month Novel Writing Program, not believing I stood a chance of getting in, and was surprised when they offered me a spot in their April intake. With the help of that course and the wonderful fellow CBC students in my cohort, by October 2022 I had written a rough first draft. There were many, many rounds of rewrites afterwards, though. But that’s what I love about writing a novel. With each iteration, the layers of meaning get deeper and deeper. With every draft, the story gets better, and the writing more polished.
Kelly: Thank you for sharing those dates. It’s great to understand the years it took from first line to publication. Your debut novel, What If You Fly?, was longlisted for the 2019 Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and was runner-up in the 2020 Hawkeye Publishing Manuscript Development Prize. The Woman in the Waves was shortlisted for the 2023 Varuna/Affirm Press Mentorship Award, runner-up in the 2023 CYA Conference Competition, won the 2022 Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest, and won the 2023 Hawkeye Publishing Manuscript Development Prize! You are the queen of winning manuscript competitions and a judge for Hawkeye now, so what is the secret to success?
Camille: As cliché as this phrase is, I think the motto: “You’ve got to be in it to win it” really sums it up. It can be scary to put your work out there (people’s opinions, rejection, imposter syndrome), but competitions are also fabulous opportunities and one of the best ways to move forward in such a difficult industry.
As a judge, as well as approaching the competition with an enticing storyline or idea and a clear understanding of where your manuscript would sit in the market, I would say to writers aiming to enter literary competitions that the most important aspects to nail are:
First lines (these need to be original and impactful, while doing multiple things simultaneously – for example, revealing character, or immersing readers in a sensory way, while also being action-driven and hinting at the overall tone or theme of the novel).
A focus on ‘showing’ and not ‘telling’ – avoid information dumps and excessive backstory in the first chapter, and try to use strong, active verbs and phrasing.
Rising tension (inner and outer) with gripping opening and closing lines that compel readers to keep reading.
Deep POV (the more you can make the reader/judge resonate with the characters, the better).
Coherent use of voice – the words you choose, your tone and your writing style can really be what sets your work apart, and as a judge there’s nothing worse than being jolted out of a story I’m loving because the writer has failed to keep the voice consistent.
Kelly: Those are some brilliant tips! You know how much I love a great first and last line, but deep POV has challenged me and I’m grateful for all your help with that. There’s nothing like celebrating a publishing win, but I believe it’s even more important to talk about what came before, can you share a rejection story?
Camille: Yes! The Woman in the Waves was rejected many, many times (I screenshot some of my agent rejection emails and keep them in a folder to remind me how hard I’ve worked to get here).
Their responses ranged from the tone being too grave and some of the language being too old-timey/sailor towny-y, to being unable to connect to the setting and wondering whether it might have worked better if the story was set in the present day.
These are all key components to the atmosphere of the novel, and I knew I worked hard to get them right, so I just kept trying, and eventually, through persistence and a bit of luck, found the right fit.
I think what I learned from this process is, if you have a strong idea about what you want for your story, when those rejections come through, you can let them wash over you a bit easier. It’s important to have a strong sense of this, so that you can either agree or disagree with agent/reader feedback, and move on.
Kelly: What I love here is that in the end you took creative control and found the best home for the story you wanted to tell. When you gain that confidence, rejections don’t hurt as much.
Kelly: Let’s talk about manuscript blindness, how are you helping writers as a manuscript assessor?
Camille: I really love helping writers elevate their manuscripts. I’ve helped writers at all stages, from newbies just starting to experiment to best-selling published authors.
Having a manuscript read and assessed by someone with knowledge of the craft and industry experience is an invaluable way to elevate the story before submitting it. In today’s extremely competitive industry, agents, publishers, and even literary competitions, are looking for manuscripts that are structurally-sound and publication-ready.
All of my assessments reveal what’s working in a novel and, more importantly, what needs further development.
By taking the time to learn what a writer is hoping to gain from a manuscript assessment, what goals they have for the story and the type of feedback they’re hoping for, I tailor my approach to meet each writer’s needs.
Through honest, objective and encouraging feedback, I help writers polish their manuscripts and get closer to their dream of publication.
Kelly: Yes! When I first started submitting I thought I just needed to get my manuscript over the line and then I’d get to work with an editor and they would help me get it publication-worthy. But what I know now is that manuscripts must be publication-ready when submitted. And the writer often cannot see what’s missing, hence the manuscript blindness. Working with an editor like you can be a game-changer! We connected through a love of peaches and have discussed what they mean to us and how you featured them in your last book launch. Lately, I’ve been seeing lots of mermaids on your Instagram feed, what can you tell me about mermaids?
Camille: Oh, Kel, you really miss nothing, don’t you!
I’ve always loved mermaids (I grew up watching movies like Hook, Splash, Mermaids, and Disney’s The Little Mermaid), but I’ve never really been interested in writing a fantasy novel, so I decided to take the concept of a mermaid and turn it into something a little more gothic/horror. I suppose my idea of a mermaid is a little bit inspired by HP Lovecraft: the depiction of monstrous beings from other worlds, emphasising the horror of the unknowable or incomprehensible, and the fear of the ocean and the unknowable aspects that lie beneath its surface. So rather than fantasy and wonder, I wanted the mermaid scenes to feel a little bit like a fever dream, to take something traditionally beautiful, and make it horrifying.
I think this relates in a way to how society views and depicts women: they want us to remain safely inside the box of beauty, femininity, and sensuality. But mermaids are also known for luring sailors to their watery deaths, and so I wanted to explore the idea that women can be both beautiful/feminine but also a little bit mysterious, otherworldly, beguiling, untameable, unknowable, wild and free.
Kelly: I love the way your brain works. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
Camille: There is so much good, practical advice out there – and so many great podcasts on the market for aspiring authors (my favs are Writes4Women, The Word Count, The Book Deal, So You Want To Be A Writer). So, rather than repeating what has already been said, let’s stick with the more philosophical advice you shared on Write Till Christmas last year:
“Remember that your story already exists inside you. If you sit down at the keyboard, the words will come.”
Kelly: What a quote! What are you currently reading and loving?
Camille: I recently read The Lamb by Lucy Rose. She’s a debut author but her novel is so beautifully written, brave and strange. I love that she’s not afraid to explore darker aspects of ourselves. I recently read a blog interview with her, and her advice is: “Be vulnerable and write honestly about the things that scare you.” I loved this so much that I printed it out and have stuck it above my writing desk to remind me to be brave while I’m writing
Kelly: I’m excited about what this quote will bring out of you. So, what can we expect from you next?
Camille: Code Name Funnel Web will be released in April next year. It’s a revised second edition of What If You Fly? and is basically a whole new book.
In early 2024 my publisher asked me to cut 10k words from the original manuscript ahead of its third print run, and rather than cutting the word count down by skimming words from each page, I decided to cut the story right back to its core plot beats, and then rewrite the entire novel, scene by scene.
Along with a new and improved title and creepy, spine-tingling cover, it’s now a much richer, deeper, and slightly darker version of the original, with a whole new third act and a completely different ending! I’m excited for readers to see how much the story has changed, but also those elements that have remained.
And honestly, Kel, it was thanks to the support of Edit Till Easter and Write Till Christmas that I found the courage to undertake those massive rewrites. Without that encouragement, I never would have been brave enough to start.
Kelly: Amazing! I’m so happy to hear that WTC and ETE helped spur you on and I cannot wait to read the revised edition! Thanks so much for your time.
Read our first interview here.
