Remember June

Remember June

Mattie Finch is a kid living with his aunt in Ireland in 1990. He often talks to his mother, but he hasn't seen his father, Dave, for six months. Dave's been trying to face his family, but there are just too many demons. He can't forget how he and his brother, Stephen, escaped the troubles of Northern Ireland ten years earlier. He is haunted by what happened when they met June and her sister, Susan, and the irreversible changes that the town of Stonebridge brought to their lives.

The novel's themes intertwine with Damien's newest album of the same name. 'It's sometimes difficult to separate yourself from the two forms of writing,' explains Damien. 'I might write a strong or emotional chapter in the book and later that evening, subconsciously, write a song of a similar theme - it's so easy to get attached to your characters.'

Damien Leith shot to fame in 2006 after taking out the title of Australian Idol. Since his meteoric rise to stardom, his songs have captured the imagination of millions of Australians and garnered numerous awards and endless praise.

In 2007 Damien further enraptured the Australian public with the release of his debut novel, One More Time, a touching and eloquent story of courage and survival.

Now Damien returns to writing with a stunning story of Ireland, hope and family. Remember June is a shattering and redemptive tale about fathers and sons and the power of memory that combines Damien's lyricism with deep characters and a potent storyline.

Remember June
HarperCollins
Author: Damien Leith
ISBN: 9780732286828
Price: $27.99

Interview with Damien Leith

Was it music and songwriting that sparked your passion for writing?

Damien Leith: No, it was actually writing plays. When I was very young I used to love drama and writing little plays and I can remember right back to when I was around nine, I wrote three pages, just something simple for my school and then all of the kids in my class acted it out. I just loved all that and it as actually that inspired me to get into music because I went from drama into musicals.


Which do you prefer writing or singing?

Damien Leith: I don't actually; I'm kind of torn between the two. I love them both an awful lot and they both kind of give different things to me. Writing is a great outlet and it's a great way of escaping I suppose from the whole music side of things. The music is such a public sort of thing and its all adrenaline based, so it's nice after doing music to go and do some writing just to relax and get away from it for a while.

How does your album correspond with the Remember June novel?

Damien Leith: Well, basically I had about 100 pages of the book left to write when I had to start writing the album, and I just found that there was quite a bit of pressure there writing the album and every song I seemed to write seemed to have some sort of link to the book. In the end I just decided that I would take one theme in particular from the book, which is that of a relationship, the coming together and the letting go of things in relationships, and I used that theme to follow with the album. They're linked, but only by a theme, sort of a key theme in the book.


Can you explain the layout of the book, Remember June?

Damien Leith: It's broken down into characters and time. It's from the perspective of each character over about 10 years, from 1980 to 1990, and it moves between both dates an awful lot. You can be reading about 1990 and it will immediately jump back to 1980, so to keep it flowing and to make sure no one gets lost, I thought it was a good idea to actually break it up into each character's perspective and as you read through the book, slowly and slowly you start discovering what it's all about and where it's all leading to. It has a final plan act and it all leads to that point for the reader to discover how all these lives cross over each other and how they all met at this major point.


Was it difficult writing a book that goes through the times differently and also begins in 1980?

Damien Leith: It wasn't difficult it was just something I had to be very mindful of. Definitely moving between the two tenses meant that I had to storyboard the whole book and make sure that everything linked and nothing was forgotten about.


Did a lot of research go into writing the book?

Damien Leith: I did research back in Ireland. It's set in Ireland so even though I'm originally from Ireland I actually didn't grow up in Ireland I lived in Africa for about 13 years, so I definitely went back to some places in southern Ireland and also some places up in Belfast just to make sure the scenery and the places I described in the book were pretty accurate and correct, and there is also some links to the troubles of Ireland in there and I only brush over it to be totally honest, I don't talk about it in too much detail in the book, but even at that I still wanted to make sure that my facts were correct. It was good; it was nice writing about Ireland even if it wasn't from my own perspective.


None of the book is based on personal experience then?

Damien Leith: No not this time. With my first novel One More Time there was a lot of me in it and this time around I really wanted to, for myself I suppose more than anything else, show that I could write about all things that had nothing to do with me whatsoever, so I kind of set it as a challenge more than anything else. It's often you do feel more inclined, I even find it with songwriting, that I'll write about my own life and things like that. I just didn't want to with this novel; I just thought I needed to really learn how to write straight up fiction.


Are any of the characters based on anyone you know?

Damien Leith: No. The only looseness that would appear in the book I do find is that of the father and son relationship in there. There are elements I suppose, certainly when the son is just a baby, of when I was first a father, about fatherhood, and all the different things that you have to learn very very fast with being a new dad. So there are elements of that which came from my own life. I suppose there are characters in there, I might have been writing about them and something would spark a memory or a memory would spark a characterisation, and it could be a memory of someone I met along the way or someone I saw back in Ireland, but overall I was very careful of making sure that this really didn't link to my own life. Especially because of the themes and all the rest, it's very specific so I just didn't want those sort of themes to have anything to do with anything real or me.


When you're writing a book and songwriting do you keep them very separate in the sense, finishing the book before writing a song?
Damien Leith: Yeah, I've found in the last while I have to dedicate certain times. There was a time where I'd be able to just sit down and write a song or write some stories, but I find now, life's starting to get a lot more hectic and I have to specifically dedicate time to song writing and story writing and likewise anything else I'm doing, and make sure they don't cross over at any point because it just gets too complicated and I find that nothing ever gets finished. I end up dong a little bit of a song or a little bit of a story and it just gets very messy.


Are you writing another book at the moment?

Damien Leith: I am. I've started my third one now and it's only early days now, but it's feeling good from the initial few chapters. It's a long way to go and it wouldn't come out until next year at least, but it's good to get a head start on these things. I find I always have to be well on the way with things otherwise too much time can disappear.


What should we expect next from you?

Damien Leith: There's definitely a psychological theme running through my stories. My new book, it is about relationships but overall it's about the psyche of all these relationships and how people think and how they speak when they're confronted with their own personal demons, and that was the same with the first novel One More Time. I'm probably going to keep a psychological theme with the third novel aswell, it's much more of an epic, it's set from 1945 through to the present day and there will be that psychological angle to it, but it will also be one of those stories of self discovery between two main characters. I pretty much have the plot set out and know where I'm going with it so it feels good to be in that position.


What's next for your music career?

Damien Leith: Well the new single has just gone to radio this week. It's just been released, it's called Forgive Forget and on iTunes we've bundled it with Hallelujah aswell and I've never released that before, so it's an exclusive with iTunes that people can actually go on and get Hallelujah, because people request it all the time but I've never recorded it. So, we'll obviously continue working the on new album and then after that start recording another one.