28 Days: The Reluctant Doorkeeper Trilogy, Book 1
By Sue Parritt
A series of short-term contracts with various media outlets had seen her almost entirely employed for the ensuing year and a half. Still, since her seventieth birthday, work had been impossible to find. Decades ago, she would have been pensioned off, but since the 2075 Employment Act, a full-time job has been obligatory for all citizens until age eighty. She recalled her grandfather’s forced retirement in ‘45 from an executive position on the National Tourist Board, his primary concern being the loss of discounted holidays. At fifteen, she had empathised but failed to understand why a seventy-nine-year-old wanted to keep working. Surely her white-haired, craggy-faced grandfather had earned some leisure? Her grandmother had died two years before, so Pop came to live with Emma and her parents and spent his remaining years writing memoirs of global travel in the days when young Australians could swan off overseas as if they had all the time to choose a career.
There was no such liberty for today’s youth, destined to join an endless cycle of study, work, and re-skilling. Emma thought of her nineteen-year-old son, Jack, beginning his second year of Dramatic Arts at the University of Melbourne. At least he would be assured of a secure career as government-sponsored entertainment increased.
‘Mum, where are my black jeans?’ Jack called, interrupting her breakfast.
‘On your bedroom floor?’ she suggested, knowing his tendency for discarding dirty clothes in a corner of his room.
‘Nope.’
‘Try the washing basket,’ she shouted, over the irritating preamble to yet another audio reminder.
Jack appeared in the doorway clad only in crumpled boxer shorts. ‘What? I can’t hear you!’
She turned to face him. ‘I said try the washing basket.’
‘This is a GAUP bulletin for Citizen EC 9450,’ an automated voice intoned. ‘Your unemployment benefit terminates in twenty-eight days.’
‘How long is that bloody thing going to persist?’ Jack asked.
Genre: Science Fiction
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Sue Parritt
Biography.
Originally from England and now living on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne, Sue worked in university libraries until taking early retirement in 2008 to concentrate on writing novels. Creative writing has been a passion since her teenage years, with short stories, poetry and articles published in magazines and anthologies in Australia, the US and the UK. To date, Sue has written nine novels:
Sannah and the Pilgrim is the first in a trilogy set in a future dystopian Australia. It focuses on climate change and the harsh treatment of refugees from drowned Pacific islands. Odyssey Books, 2014. It was commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award, 2014.
Pia and the Skyman. Along with Kaire, pilgrim and skyman, Sannah’s daughter, Pia continues her people’s fight for freedom. Odyssey Books, 2016. Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award, 2016.
The Sky Lines Alliance: three groups join forces to overthrow the brutal Australian government. Odyssey Books, 2016.
Chrysalis is the story of a wise girl growing up in a Quaker family in Swinging Sixties Britain. Morning Star Press, 2017
Re-Navigation recounts a life turned upside down when Julia, aged 40, journeys from the sanctuary of middle-class Australian suburbia to undertake a retreat at a college located on an isolated Welsh island. Creativia Publishing, 2019.
Feed Thy Enemy, based on Sue’s father’s experiences, is an account of courage and compassion in the face of trauma as a British airman embarks on a plan that risks all to feed a starving, war-stricken Italian family. Creativia Publishing, 2019.
A Question of Country explores the migrant experience through the protagonist’s lifelong search for meaningful identity. The next Chapter will be published in April 2020.
Sue’s recent project, The Reluctant Doorkeeper Trilogy, set in Melbourne, 2100-2105, explores the problem of overpopulation and extended life expectancy in an increasingly climate-challenged world and the inhumane solutions adopted by a government determined to rid Australia of unproductive citizens.
Book 1, 28 Days, sees Emma, aged 70, emerge from a life of compliance to one of civil disobedience when the Employment Positions Portal is disabled during the final 28 days of her Government Allocated Unemployment Period: next Chapter, 2021.
Book 2, Next Step, follows Emma’s first year as a Trainee Doorkeeper, her role in assigning appropriate positions to unemployed citizens, and her unofficial work for political change. Next Chapter, 2022
Book 3, Exposure, drives the narrative towards a citizens’ revolution as the population learns the truth about the role of Doorkeepers: next Chapter, 2022.
For her next novel, Sue will return to the 1990s with a narrative focusing on one year in the lives of two middle-aged Australian women whose partners – one female, one male – are killed in a road accident on New Year’s Eve. Working title: The Year of Living Rainbow.
Passionate about social justice, Sue’s goal as a fiction writer is to keep writing for as long as possible, believing the extensive life experiences of older writers can be employed to engage readers of all ages.
Sue Parritt
