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When Tiffany’s best friend joins Jacko’s gang Tiffany feels lonely and
miserable. For awhile it seemed she could have her own boyfriend, Dave
Trung. But Jacko’s gang label him a nerd and a wanker because he’s
Vietnamese. She drops him and is invited to join Jacko’s gang on a six
day beach camp. A holiday away from parents, police, and adults; where
they can be free to do whatever they like. But the beach camp turns into
a disaster. The boys are nearly always drunk, and when Tiffany—trying
desperately to be one of the gang—gets drunk, two boys take advantage of
her.
When they return to school things are worse than ever: she is no
longer in the gang, her best friend has found someone else, and her
potential boy friend, Dave Trung, has now got a new girlfriend. But it
is when she reports one of Jacko’s gang to the police for selling drugs
at school that all the students turn against her. Well—almost everyone—a
nerd joins her in her stand against Jacko’s gang with surprising
results.
Most importantly, this story is about learning to have the courage to
stand up when everyone else is sitting down; to be an individual.
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I was born in the mid-1940s, and grew up in Sydney, since then I have lived in various cities in Australia.
I became interested in writing because I loved to read. I joined the local library when I was eight years old, and rarely stopped reading.
At the age of 17 I was reading copiously, and at the same time I was wondering what career path I should take. I had already embarked on an apprenticeship as a telephone technician, but that was not where my head was. The work was okay, boring mostly, but many jobs are. It seemed mechanical, repetitive, and of little real value. In retrospect, I see that it was of value-- it was the hardware of the internet.
The problem for me was, that day to day, it was not connected with the greater world where my thoughts were. I was interested in the things that were shaping the world: history, ideas, philosophy, discoveries ... not just physical but mental discoveries, such as hypnosis, suggestion, psychology.
At 17 I had read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Brave New World, any number of books on the Occult/ Mysticism, and novels of all kinds. Unfortunately Ayn Rand and Occultism were never going to be reconciled to each other. Yet I could see value in both philosophies. (Just not at the same time!)
But in writing, it could all come together. I could explore ideas, and create characters who would be subjected to interacting with other characters. And I would be connected with books that I loved.
So that's why I wrote. That's why I still write. I write because I become passionate about contemporary history, about ideas, events, people.
As an example, back in the late 1970's I started reading newspaper reports about Vietnamese boat people who were fleeing the harsh regimes in Vietnam and Kampuchea, their boats were attacked by pirates as many as ten different times before they reached Malaysia. The women were raped, children thrown overboard, men murdered, they were robbed again and again, even their food and clothes were stolen by the pirates.
I began to gather information about the situation in Kampuchea and Vietnam. While Australian and American troops were in Vietnam, there were plenty of reporters, cameramen, and TV crews, but after 1975 their was little information getting out. But it did come out from the refugees fleeing.
And that became the basis of my book EXIT VISA.
There are literally more than a thousand books written about Vietnam in English. Unfortunately most of them were written by combat soldiers or journalists. They nearly all told the story from that perspective. Very few (in English) ever told the story from the Vietnamese point of view.
And that is what is different about my book Exit Visa. Although it is a novel, it was drawn from the lives of the oppressed. When it was being published (1989) the publisher asked me when I was in Vietnam. I said, I've never been there. He looked puzzled. But because I had never been there, I was able to write the novel not about my experiences, but about the Vietnamese experiences. It made a world of difference.
