Media Release – The Gaze Of Dogs

March 5, 2019

Why have burning dogs come from the past to haunt Ned Sheridan and what is their connection to the man who delivered Ned to an orphanage when he was five years old?
Do the answers lie in the alien world of a Queensland sapphire mining field 2,000 miles away?

In the tragi-comic spirit of Lawson, Paterson and the early bush balladeers of outback Australia, Leon Saunders’ story of Ned’s search for identity unfolds against a backdrop of natural beauty and elemental catastrophe. In its graphic depiction of the small miners’ battle against the greed of the machinery men, with its richly evoked sense of place, its finely drawn characters and its unfailing humanity, The Gaze Of Dogs will captivate all who venture into its forbidding landscape.

The Gaze Of Dogs is an enthralling novel by prize-winning Sydney writer Leon Saunders who presents stories with powerful visual clarity. He takes the reader on Ned Sheridan’s journey to experience the beauty and contrasts of outback Queensland and its fascinating characters who live there, as Ned searches for answers about his identity, and the unforgettable man who holds the key to it.

To be launched in Sydney on March 14, 2019 by Australia’s best-known playwright and dramatist, David Williamson AO, The Gaze Of Dogs is a book that is virtually impossible to put down once the reader joins in the journey.

Multi-award winning Australian novelist Peter Carey AO says: “(This is) a quest and a mystery that takes us deep into the Anakie sapphire mines of Central Queensland, and the gritty lives of ex-boxers, immigrants, and the resilient Kairi people. Here, with its kindness and treachery, naked loyalty and cold malice, is one writer’s hard-earned truth. I devoured it.”

Leon Saunders began his writing career with Shadow People, a book on the inhabitants of Sydney’s Skid Row that he met around the streets of the city in the 1960s. He has had a productive career as a television scriptwriter on popular shows such as Home and Away, Flying Doctors, A Country Practice and many others.

Leon Saunders also scripted the feature-length documentary With Prejudice, on the infamous ‘Hilton bombing’ trial that followed what has often been described as Australia’s first terrorist event, which took place in Sydney in 1978.

He has won four Australian Writers’ Guild ‘Awgie’ awards, a ‘Penguin’ from the Television Society of Australia, and a Media Peace Award from the United Nations Association. In 1995, he won the ‘Suspended Sentence’ award from the James Joyce Foundation, which earned him an eight-week residency at Trinity College, and his entry in that award was the catalyst for his shift from script writing to prose fiction, which led to this first novel.

The Gaze Of Dogs can be ordered through Valentine Press www.valentinepress.com.au.
It will also be available after its launch on March 14, 2019, through selected independent bookstores around Australia and via e-book platforms.

Valentine Press is an independent, print-on-demand Australian publisher which provides a low-cost Australian publishing service where the author comes first.

Valentine Press aims to enrich Australia’s cultural past, present and future and to help authors benefit from their work and bring it to Australian society as part of Australia’s own story.

NOTE FOR MEDIA

Any media wishing to cover the March 14 launch by David Williamson, to interview author Leon Saunders, requiring advance copies of The Gaze Of Dogs, or needing further information, please contact:

April Pressler – 0412 271744 april.pressler@valentinepress.com.au

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