Samuel Ridley, author of Cara’s Law took some time out to have a chat with Beauty and Lace.
Get to know Samuel in this interview.
Tell us about yourself…
I’m a coastal kid from Warrnambool in Victoria, having emigrated here with my wonderful family from the UK as a small child. I spent my twenties discovering this blue planet of ours to the tune of 26 countries across six continents. Passion for travel and human history threw me into that self-perpetuating world of books and stories that we all adore. A bachelor and a half of tertiary education taught me the art of writing.
At 33 I now have a small child of my own, Evie (5), and she’s the only thing stopping me from becoming fully engrossed in literature, rugged coastal treks and shiraz cabernet. I measure myself on only one scale: the consistency of the smile on my little girl’s face week after week. We are a quiet little book-reading, beach-going army of two and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tell us a little about Cara’s Law…
Cara’s Law is the result of a google search by myself looking for a novel about Australia’s Family Law system. There was none.
I endured over two years in the Family Law system as a self-represented litigant, having had my life savings, and my credit with the banks, drained in paying for a self-interested law firm to represent me. Although my own matter had a happy result in the end: the life and death stakes of Australia’s Family Law system cannot be understated.
Buried in text books and case law, statute and anguish, I wanted to read about this system as an outsider looking in, hence the google search. Finding nothing, I wondered if other parents and interested parties would feel the same. Evidently they did.
Cara Grace, our protagonist, is every parent that enters the gauntlet and colosseum that is the system; zero experience, 100% fear. Beautiful in soul and skin, and vulnerable to be preyed upon by legal professionals while simply begging to be present in the life of her children.
Through Cara’s Law, the reader will be exposed to those systems you hear about but never actually see: legal aid, family dispute resolution, family court, social services, barristers, judges, police… A never ending cycle of government funded chaos that loses purpose the deeper and deeper one goes.
The payoff? Finding out how far a mother will go to protect her children from a seemingly absent and violent father, leaving one to question why on earth Australia’s Family Law system exists in its current state.
What is your schedule like when you’re writing?
In a word: ad hoc. I write when Evie is at kindergarten, or when she is asleep at night. I did take six weeks off work during the worst months of the pandemic which afforded me large amounts of time to write. Fortunately, but unfortunately through my experience, I had already done 90% of the research required to accurately represent the social services in Cara’s Law.
Who is your target audience?
The Prime Minister of course, so they can finally reform the Family Act 1975 (Cth).
But first:
Parents, friends, relatives, professionals and anyone interested in being exposed to the Family Law system. Although this novel follows the trials of a mother, Cara, the ramifications of the Family Law system run deep and true into many aspects of Australian life.
Everyone knows someone that has been effected by the system.
Everyone that has a child knows just how far they would go for their child.
And so, Cara’s law is aimed at any family-oriented adult.
What is your favourite part of the publishing process?
Seeing my own name on an amazingly designed book cover. I have read hundreds of novels and history books in my life and wondered at the faces of those author’s names adorning their own covers. There is something truly humbling finding myself amongst the ranks of other authors that took the time to simply sit down and tell a story.
If you could invite any three people for dinner, whom would you invite?
- Guy Grossi, so he can cook me a rare steak in peppercorn sauce.
- Ned Kelly’s mother, Ellen, so I could ask her what it was like to raise not just outlaws, but also to see Australia become a Commonwealth and then send yet another son off to the Western Front in the Great War. She is a key character in our nation’s history that often goes overlooked.
- Emma Wiggle, to entertain Evie while I talk to Ellen.
Who is your favourite author?
Only one? Phillip Pullman for ‘His Dark Materials’. Only a handful of books have ever truly moved me and dictated my mood once finished. ‘His Dark Materials’ ruined me for the better part of a fortnight. Nothing has ever seemed right or normal again since I closed that final page on Lyra and Pantalaimon (my daughter’s cat is named Lyra by no small coincidence).
It is also more than Pullman’s narrative driven and direct style of story telling. He has a talent of making you feel, and that is something I only ever want to emulate.
What are you currently reading?
‘Gould’s Book of Fish’ by award winning Aussie author Richard Flannagan. I’m almost finished and so far am wonderfully lost in 1830’s Tasmanian convict life spliced with fantastical and mystical flirtations with history. I am gleefully resigned to the impression that I am not supposed to know what is happening from one page to the next and I don’t want this book to end.
Where can our readers follow you?
Instagram – I am not on any other socials at present, not do I intend to be.
What is next for Samuel Ridley?
I have two novels in the works. One exists in the same world as Cara’s Law, the other explores another side of Australian social injustice in Aboriginal Australian deaths in custody, the Koori Court and so on.
I am petrified of publishing the latter and so if Cara’s Law is a success I will play it safe and go with that one.
I am a mother of four beautiful children. I can’t leave a book unfinished which equals a lot of late nights! When I’m not reading you can find me in the garden, or helping out at Beauty and Lace.