Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey
It’s difficult to understand, on this assessment, how anyone could be entertained by such writing. Nevertheless, they are. On Amazon, there are six 5-star reviews and ten 1-star reviews. The 1-star reviews agree with Joomi Kim. I recommend Joomi Kim’s channel.
I had not heard of Russell Guy before reading this essay. Two things strike me in this engaging reflection. First, he tells the story of the writer struggling to have his writing known in a time when ideology predominates over truth and worth. Second, he presents a rebalancing of the narrative about European settlement and its effect on Aboriginal people. The inevitable historical meeting was not one-sided, and Christianity is given its rightful place. I’ve noted the titles of his two novels with the intention of reading them.
*****
Russell Guy: ‘Two things of which I’m certain: a nation that rejects its Christian foundation will go the way of Great Britain, and fiction that focuses on the spiritual consequences of individual lives can effect its redemption.
Russell Guy, Quadrant, Jul 08 2026
Adapted from talks given by the author at the Alice Springs Public Library and Winton Writers Festival in June 2026.
I’m interested in spirituality and modern Australian fiction because that’s how my writing has developed and been influenced. The last three verses of Henry Lawson’s ‘The Good Samaritan’, written in 1904, is, I believe, because he was so often desperately in need of one, a classic example:
‘Once on a time there lived a man,’
But he has lived alway,
And that gaunt, good Samaritan
Is with us here to-day;
He passes through the city streets
Unnoticed and unknown,
He helps the sinner that he meets —
His sorrows are his own.
He shares his tucker on the track
When things are at their worst
(And often shouts in bars outback
For souls that are athirst).
To-day I see him staggering down
The blazing water-course,
And making for the distant town
With a sick man on his horse.
He’ll live while nations find their graves
And mortals suffer pain —
When colour rules and whites are slaves
And savages again.
And, after all is past and done,
He’ll rise up, the Last Man,
From tending to the last but one —
The good Samaritan.’
Verse as good as any Bob Dylan has written.
In 1978, I wrote a story, published in Tracks surfing magazine, called What’s Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me. I adapted it to radio for Sydney’s 2JJ and it crossed-over to Radio National. Since then, it’s been pirated via the Internet and a perpetual link at the ABC.
Rangoon contains glimpses into New Age spirituality, with fragments of Christianity and Islam, as the anonymous protagonist, driving all-night from Brisbane to Sydney, ponders the Second Coming of “you know Who”, while jellyfish flap across the Pacific Highway in a nod to surrealism.
Some positive news for authors.
Thriller author Lee Child sells millions of books per year. Few authors sell more books. I was immediately interested in the video below that challenges some of the rules most editors and book experts prescribe for beginning writers – and there are many on the internet – because I’m sceptical of some. One rule I think is overdone is the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule. Lee Child thinks so, too. This video is one of a series that Child has done for the BBC on writing.
Love in the Counterculture, Book 5 in my Sixties Series, has been released on Amazon in paperback and ebook and on many other internet platforms.
Apart from the gushing over Richard Armitage/John Thorton, for which I have little feeling, I found this a very interesting presentation that came out of the blue on my feed. I agree with the presenter. North and South, the television series, based on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of the same name, is one of the best of its type. Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe are perfect in the roles of John Thornton and Margaret Hale, whose lips are mesmerising. As for Fitzwilliam Darcy, I think there’s enough in Pride and Prejudice to suggest he would have been pretty tough as a landowner.
All my titles are available at 25% discount
This is an interesting account of how the university English Department drifted from its original purpose, which is the study and assessment of the Canon of English literature, but there is no doom prediction in the survey. Indeed, Adam Walker senses a renewed interest in reading and literature, but outside the university.
This description was sent to me by someone offering author services. I suspect it is AI-generated. It is very good – spot on.
The Counterculture Goddess is a layered, character-driven historical novel set against the cultural and spiritual upheaval of 1960s Europe, where shifting beliefs, personal rivalries, and political tensions collide inside a rapidly transforming society.
Through Anneke and Nienke’s intertwined relationships, the story explores love, jealousy, ideology, and identity within the broader backdrop of post–Second Vatican Council Europe and the rise of countercultural and spiritual movements. The result is a narrative that blends personal drama with historical and philosophical transformation in a very textured way.
As part of an ongoing Sixties Series, the book also benefits from a larger narrative framework that tracks the transition from postwar innocence into cultural revolution and moral disruption across multiple interconnected stories.
With 5 books in the series already established, there is clear long-form storytelling momentum here, but also a natural challenge many multi-book historical series face — sustained discoverability between releases and consistent visibility across evolving story arcs.