Mark Smith's Visit to LSC

On Tuesday the 1st of August, Mark Smith, the Author of the ‘Winter Trilogy’, visited the year 9’s of Lara Secondary College in room 311 to discuss his journey as an author. For the past month, the year 9 cohort has been studying the first book in the series, ‘The Road To Winter’ and has been looking forward to meeting the author of such a fantastic book.  

We learnt that ‘The Road To Winter’ was originally going to be called ‘Breathing in and out’ which referenced the soothing sound of Rowdy panting, but the publishers came up with a new name, which is the one we know today.

Smith also talked about the processes that he had to undertake to get his book published as well as what he needed to do to ensure that copies of his book got sold. He also talked us through the immense amount of time and effort it takes to write a book and to get it published, only to earn the tiniest amount of money off each copy sold. 

Soon after, Smith gave us some background information as to what encouraged him. He told us that he was a total outdoors person. He loved surfing and horse riding, but wasn’t into books until one day, at the age of 15, he got bucked off a horse and dragged across the ground for several meters. 

After lying on a hospital bed for days after the incident, he was finally allowed to return home, but couldn’t do anything else, except lay on his bed for 6 months. Smith described this as “Torture”, because as you know, he loved the outdoors, so to occupy him, his mum went out and bought some books to help him pass time. 

After sharing this with the cohort, he had two copies of ‘Wilder Country’ to give away to the people who asked the best questions, which was Abby Martin who asked “Was it a hard decision to kill Rose?” and Desi Tones who asked “What inspired you to write it?”. After questions, we ended with a round of applause and everyone lined up to get their copies signed!

By Elsha Anderson