We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Meryl Brown Tobin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Meryl Brown thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How do you think about vacations as a business owner? Do you take them and if so, how? If you don’t, why not?

Vacations are important for any business owner, but, in my case, as a writer, I get an extra benefit in that they are also field trips where I consciously or subconsciously gather material for my writings.
Here are some general advantages of vacations:
1. They get you away from everyday concerns and allow you to disconnect, unwind, relax and refresh.
2. Unplugging and focusing on what you want to do––traveling, beachcombing, bushwalking or whatever––is good for your mental health, stops you feeling overwhelmed, improves sleep, as does increased physical activity.
3. According to research, spending time in natural environments, as I do, is especially good for your brain. I also do a lot of writing on the environment.
4. It is good for your health to have a break and/or a change of lifestyle, especially a less-stressful one. You can recharge your batteries, and it peps you up. It may also help protect you against high blood pressure and high blood sugar levels, which can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.
5. Mental health benefits come from disconnecting from everyday affairs and focusing on activities you enjoy, and it can enhance personal relationships. For instance, it allows you to enjoy uninterrupted time with loved ones and/or people who share your interests. You can also do things you want to do but wouldn’t normally have time to do, and it creates memories. In my case, it also gives me background for stories, as it did for my novel ‘Broome Enigma’. Visiting Broome gave the setting for my story, and Outback trips gave me the inspiration for my hero around whom I built a backstory, parts of which related to my own experiences in Broome.
6. A break gives you a chance to reset your priorities; gives you a better outlook on life.
7. Vacations enable you to mix with people you might not normally mix with and get different perspectives of life from them.
8. They allow you to experience different experiences from your usual lifestyle and maybe learn new things, for instance about your own and other cultures. International travel might help you to a better appreciation of similarities as well as differences between yourself and people of other cultures.
9. They might remind you how fortunate you are to have been born where you have and be who you are.
10. As they give you renewed vigor on your return, it sustains you, so helps makes your work sustainable and makes you a better worker. This is a win for a self-employed person, an employee or an employer.
11. Again, in my case, vacations provide me with inspiration and material for my travel writing, poems short stories and novels. However, it gives any workers the time and energy to think about things and to enhance their creativity.
My vacations have included
1. Camping trips
2. Campervan trips
3. Tours in cars and coaches and staying in cabins
4. Coach tours overseas
5. Visits to places many don’t get to experience, such as Aboriginal cultural sites. In my case, I got to visit Russia and China when it was relatively uncommon for a Westerner to do so.

Our family’s first big trip was a trip around Australia. My husband was taking his first long service leave, and, a few weeks before we were to leave, he couldn’t see us being ready in time and wanted to call it off. I refused. For the first week we were away, he didn’t stop thanking me.

Meryl Brown, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a child of eight, with the strong support of my father, I sent off material to children’s clubs in national newspapers and magazines. I graduated to working on school magazines.
When I took time off from teaching to bring up my family, I used to do crosswords in newspapers. I had already made up crosswords for my schoolpaper, but reckoned I could make up better ones. So I taught myself how. First I sent off children’s puzzles to educational magazines. That paid well. Then I sent off a selection of them to a book publisher who invited me to prepare an activity book. Between them, my first three books sold over a quarter of a million copies, mainly in Australia but also in New Zealand and Canada.
Later, as a teacher I used a black-line masters book of educational puzzles on grammar. I was so impressed with it, I made up my own on other aspects of grammar and spelling. The first print run of 1000 copies of my BLM, ‘Puzzleways: Grammar and Spelling’, sold out immediately, and a second run of 1000 followed. I wrote more educational BLMs for four educational publishers.
I already had a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education plus experience in secondary teaching. I resigned from teaching to have my family and bring up my children to school age. During that time, I did a two-week journalism course. When we took my husband’s long service trip around Australia, I wrote travel articles based on our experiences, and they included information my husband and I would have appreciated knowing before we set off. All travel articles I sent to travel editors of national newspapers and magazines sold, as did my travel crosswords.
When I sent a selection of published articles off to a publisher, he asked me to prepare a travel book. Before publication of my book, ‘Exploring Outback Australia’, a book club snapped it up. So, instead of a 3,000 book run, it became a 6,000 book run. The publisher sent out review copies to various publications and radio stations I recommended to him, and my book and I and my husband, who did the photography and maps, got lots of publicity. Our national broadcaster interviewed us on two programs so we got national coverage.
Sadly, because of a credit squeeze, a mooted paperback version of the hardback book didn’t eventuate, or the book would have done even better.
Then a children’s book publisher accepted one of my picture story books, ‘LEFTY’, got Christine Lott, their top in-house artist to illustrate it and brought it to camera-ready stage. At the same time an educational publisher accepted my first educational BLM, ‘Puzzleways: Grammar and Spelling’, and brought it camera-ready stage. Unfortunately for me, both publishing houses were taken over, and the new owners did not choose to continue with publication of my books. My author’s union helped me get the best possible deal from the breaking of the contracts and I received all rights to the camera-ready copy. Another publisher took the BLM and, if it had suited his list, he would have taken the picture story book as well. Because I felt validated by publishers accepting my material, I set up my own publishing house and published ‘LEFTY’. I sent around review copies of ‘LEFTY’ and got an interview on a national children’s TV program and read the book with one of the presenters. Later, when the rights reverted to me, I republished ‘Puzzleways: Grammar and Spelling’.
Through my publishing house I also published a collection of my published poems and a haiku book for a society of writers to which I belong. Apart from co-editing the haiku collection, I was also one of the five contributors.
Later I made up primary school workbooks for an educational publisher.
Once I gave up part-time teaching to write full-time, I had the time to write novels. If an editor gave useful comments, I rewrote the relevant novel and, if relevant, some of the others as well. In 2023 NY publisher, The Wild Rose Press, published my debut novel, ‘Broome Enigma’. Now I am rewriting my other novels in the style this publisher favors.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Thanks to publishers accepting my BLM and picture story book, I had enough belief in my writing to set up my publishing house to publish them. I also promoted one of my self-published books enough for a TV producer to feature it and me on national TV.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Writing is something that is in me, something I have to do, it’s a vocation, part of what some people would call the authentic me. The act of writing in itself is rewarding, but seeing something I have written gives me a great sense of achievement and satisfaction.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sites.google.com/view/merylbrowntobin-author
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meryl.tobin.18
• Other: https://amazon.com/author/meryl-brown-tobin23
  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6422807.Meryl_Brown_Tobin

Image Credits

Author Profile photo: Hartley Tobin
1. Meryl Brown Tobin with husband Hartley Tobin on vacation at Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) in Australia’s Centre (Ph supplied by Meryl Brown Tobin)
2. Sturt Desert Pea growing in Australia’s Outback (Ph Meryl Brown Tobin)
3. Cover of ‘Broome Enigma’ designed by Kristian Norris, The Wild Rose Press
4. Gantheaume Point, Broome (Ph Meryl Brown Tobin)
5. Cable Beach, Broome (Ph Meryl Brown Tobin)
6. Cover of ‘Puzzleways: Grammar and Spelling’ (Ph Hartley Tobin)
7. Cover of ‘Exploring Outback Australia’ (Ph Hartley Tobin)
8. Cover of ‘LEFTY’ (Ph Hartley Tobin)