While watching the demolition of his old school Placidus College, Simon Hickey looks back on ten turbulent, life defining years, when the first crop of Australia’s baby boomers were awakening to their sexuality. Seduced by the power of the pulpit, the Aquinine Brothers, and an ever¬present fear that Satan would snare him in an unguarded moment, Simon’s attention is directed toward a religious vocation. At the vocational training college, he encounters a serial paedophile, with far reaching and shocking consequences. A few years later, Simon becomes one of the `unlucky ones’, balloted into the Army for two years National Service in 1965.
A heartfelt, humorous, and poignant story, these two vastly different experiences are linked by a tender romance that defies Catholic conventions of the day, and reveals how two people who choose not to be conformist, cope with the social, religious and political nature of their time.To buy in North America, go to: http://amazon.com

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In 2007, self-publishing author, Amanda Blackburn accepts an assignment in Japan to help exonerate the name of a former soldier who served in the post-war Australian occupation army in 1946. The soldier’s damning exploits are revealed in a journal written by an unidentified veteran. On arrival in Japan however, Amanda soon discovers that things are not quite as she expected.
A tender love story set against the background of the all-but-forgotten Australian military contingent, which made up the bulk of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, sent to Japan in February 1946 following Japan’s surrender at the end of WW2. Assigned responsibility for the Hiroshima prefecture by General Douglas MacArthur, thousands of Australian soldiers disarmed the Japanese war machine, and helped repatriate Japanese soldiers returning home. They were ensconced into an area devastated by a nuclear bomb, where civilians were suffering serious physical and psychological trauma. Inevitably, some of the soldiers fell in love. This is one such story.

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