Author and Goulburn resident Barbara Truelove has been impressed with the city’s library’s staff for connecting her to a new circle of friends, and the intergenerational groups enjoying library activities. Photo: John Thistleton.
A rising young author of sci-fi horror has made Goulburn her home and is enchanted by its “cute, quirky and charming’’ qualities.
Well-travelled for a 31-year-old, Barbara Truelove’s appetite for adventure has taken her from high school in Canberra to Brisbane, Sydney, Seoul, New Zealand, Darwin and Goulburn.
She arrived in Goulburn in 2021 to be closer to her father, a grazier in Gunning experiencing ill-health. By the time he recovered she had found Goulburn just the place to pursue a full-time career writing.
“I really like Goulburn,” she says. “People in my generation, I know a lot of people who come from Sydney, from Canberra, like that it is very walkable, it has everything you need; the council puts on nice little events,” she said.
Before she had moved to Seoul she was working for Foxtel in Sydney. Whenever she returns to visit friends there she endures a half-hour car journey or longer.
“Here (in Goulburn) if I want to hang out with my friends it’s a 10-minute walk,” she says.
“I have friends who were born and raised in Goulburn; I think they have a knee-jerk negative opinion of it,” she says.
“We get that everywhere,” she says. “Because I went to school in Canberra, my attitude is ‘Canberra is where you go to school’, or ‘Canberra is a boring place’. So I think everyone kind of gets a knee-jerk negative opinion of the place they grow up, for some reason.”
Following her education in Canberra Barbara graduated from Griffith University in Brisbane with a Bachelor of Screen Media Production and later landed a job at Foxtel in Sydney as an on-air coordinator and scheduler.
When she sought a complete change later, she opted to teach English in Seoul. So few foreigners were available to fill vacancies her application was fast-tracked. COVID-19 sent ex-pats scurrying home and caused countries to close their borders. Barbara on the other hand suddenly found herself teaching English to South Korean children aged from four to six. “I had never worked with children before, no experience teaching, it was very much trial by fire,” she said.
When Seoul was locked down in the pandemic, and she wasn’t permitted to return to Australia, she began her sci-fi horror writing as a side hustle while continuing to teach the children.
Her sideline interest quickly developed and today, as a full-time writer, she has an agent, a publisher, Bindery Books, and more publishing opportunities and contracts that will keep her busy until at least 2028.
“People get surprised when I say horror; I don’t think I look like a sci-fi horror writer, but it is what I have fun doing,” she says. “Very tongue-in-cheek stuff, kind of ghastly funny stuff.”
She has also released interactive fiction, enabling her readers to choose their own adventure games that they can play on their phone with a choice of scenarios. It’s like an up-to-date version of the 1990s Goosebump children’s horror novels.
“I am making a little bit from America, a little bit from Argentina, it’s from whoever wants to buy my stuff, they send me money directly if they are buying directly from me, or my publisher will send me royalties,” she says.
Each time she feels she is getting a handle on who her readers are, someone will email her with feedback that throws her.
“I thought, well I am writing for more younger people in their teens or 20s but then I will get an email from someone in their 50s saying, ‘Yeah, I really like this as well’ and I am all confused again,” she says.
In hybrid publishing, a term coined with the advent of the internet, the publishing world is more dynamic and full of opportunities than ever for Barbara, a writer since her childhood who chose screen writing in all her electives while at university.
While in touch with the online publishing world, she had feared living in a two-bedroom rental in Goulburn would isolate her socially, until she went to the library, joined a book club, made friends and continued widening her circle through library activities.
While the city ticks most of the boxes for new arrivals, the lack of one-bedroom accommodation can be a challenge. Barbara says some young people like her are in two-bedroom and up to four-bedroom rentals because they cannot get into anything smaller. The city’s planners are well aware of the issue and proposing solutions because of Goulburn’s popularity for a new generation of adventure seekers.
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