Mid-North Coast author and regular visitor to the Hunter, Kaneana May, will return to the region this weekend to promote her latest offering, All We Have is Now.
The busy mother-of-three is scheduled to appear at the Belmont branch of Lake Macquarie Libraries on Saturday 29 May from 2pm.
May studied television production at university, graduating with first-class honours in screenwriting.
She went on to work in TV, including roles as a script assistant on All Saints, a story-liner on Headland and a scriptwriter on Home and Away.
Since becoming a mum, she’s turned her attention to fiction writing.
So, what inspired May to pen All We Have is Now?
“I wanted to write a calmer story that was different to my first book The One and that setting came to me while I was reading through magazines in the local library,” she said.
“I was keen to create something that was real and shows the bad pathed in life and, that in the end, you can get through with support from family and friends.”
In All We Have is Now, health and wellbeing brought Olive, Elsie and Bree together.
After five years, their bustling wellness centre is demanding expansion.
A beautiful federation house nestled among the picturesque backdrop of their small town is the perfect place to grow their business.
But, they don’t count on their personal lives getting in the way.
Practical and pragmatic, Olive keeps her past hidden from her friends. However, when an old high-school flame shows up, the secrets she’s worked so hard to bury threaten to tear her carefully constructed world apart.
Bree is the fun-loving one, although family tensions lurk behind her free-spirited facade. The reappearance of her troubled sister Winnie brings Bree’s priorities into sharp focus. Will she have to shelve her own happiness to save her sister?
Kind and maternal to all those around her, Elsie’s role as the practice’s counsellor comes naturally. But, when tragedy strikes, her world tumbles down like a house of cards. With everything they’ve built in disarray, their friendship is on the line…
“I feel like I’m closest to Olive because I wrote a short story about her teenage years and I felt like I really knew who she was and how she would react,” May said.
“I also had a soft spot for Elsie’s stepson Jonah because he was innocent and vulnerable.
“The setting of All We Have is Now is really close to where I live and somewhere I felt had the right vibe for me, a town called Wingham.
“It has large wide streets, federation houses and the community embraces wellbeing.
“So, I felt really comfortable writing a place I knew.
“I wanted to be able to have a small-town vibe with access to farms.”
May said friendships also played an important role in the book.
“I purposely wanted to explore the meaning of friendship with all its highs and lows,” she explained.
“How different personalities can respond to things differently.
“I wanted to have a story that portrayed women’s friendships quite truthfully.
“In The One, my characters were connected by circumstance.
“So, when I wrote this book I wanted to have different points of view but I also wanted to show how each character complimented each other and how their friendship grew while creating a business with a shared vision.”
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