BROOKE CRAWFORD has been recognised in writing competitions in Australia, New Zealand and the US. Better than the Real Thing is her first novel.
AKINA HANSEN writes.
It feels almost surreal to think back to 2020 when we experienced our first COVID lockdown. Cooped up and desperate for an outlet, many of us took up new hobbies. For author Brooke Crawford, it inspired her to revisit an old dream.
‘Becoming an author has been my biggest dream for as long as I can remember. But, as with many creative pursuits, that dream was squashed by jobs I thought I should be doing and a hefty fear of failure. I realised I’d rather try and fail than always wonder what might’ve happened if I’d just given it a go,’ she tells me.
So, in lockdown, she began to write again, eventually finishing a manuscript that won the 2024 Romance Writers of Australia’s Opal Award. Today, Brooke’s dream of becoming a published author has been realised with her debut novel, Better than the Real Thing. The story follows 40-year-old teacher Netta Phillips as she faces heartbreak, financial stress and fertility issues. When she finds the childhood diary of Mo, a celebrity musician, their paths collide and the two form an unlikely connection.
‘I’m in my mid-40s, so when I set out to write this story, I knew I wanted the characters to be older than commonly found in romance fiction. Love, romance, new beginnings, adventure – they’re all things we crave and deserve well beyond our 20s and 30s.’
Many of us have felt the societal pressure to have our lives ‘sorted’ by our 30s: house, career and relationship. But how realistic is that? For Brooke (and most of us), that was not the case.
‘Now that I’m in my mid-40s I can see, with the obvious exception of biology, how these “deadlines” we perceive, or are told we need to worry about, are just rubbish. Many of us are coming into our real power in our 40s and beyond, and we can redefine ourselves in small and big ways no matter our age.
‘With Netta, I wanted to show a woman still working it out as she approaches 40 but doing so with courage and a real sense of who she is and what she wants.’
While Brooke explores these uplifting moments in Netta’s story, she also doesn’t shy away from the difficult parts.
‘Netta and Mo both have a bit of “life luggage” and are complex, messy and wonderful – like all of us. I hope their story shows that our imperfections and history aren’t blockers to finding real connection, and that facing the things that have weakened us can make us stronger in the long run.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORSome writers say they’d never even thought about writing a book until a great idea tapped them on the shoulder and refused to be ignored, and others will tell you they’ve dreamt about it their whole life.
I am firmly in the latter camp. It’s something I’ve dreamt about forever, but that was as far as I got. Just the dreaming. Not so much the writing part of it. But then, a few years ago, the trifecta hit. I turned forty (which at the time felt like a monumental giddy-up), then six weeks after that we had our third baby, and a few sleepless weeks after that, old mate Covid came to town.
So, I did what all sensible people locked down in a too-small house with three kids under five would do – I started writing my way out of it.
Fast forward a bit …
I’ve won and placed in competitions spanning Australia, America and New Zealand and my short stories have been published in three anthologies.
My stories follow relatable characters as they find their way through life and love in their forties. I hope they make you laugh and cry and that you feel like you’re hanging out with friends as you turn the pages.
I live in Melbourne’s Inner West where the creative vibes are strong, the cafes are many and the coffee is good. My partners in crime are my three young children, an accidental cat, and my leading man, who gave me a laptop for my fortieth birthday and said (probably in a much nicer way) ‘maybe it’s time to stop talking about it and just do it.’ I did, and so far it’s turning out pretty well!
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