ME/CFS Victoria member releases first novel

It began in darkness. As Jeremy Chambers lay in bed, too weak to read or write, voices and images, stories from a decade earlier flooded his memory.

From the time he was 15 until his second year as a student at the University of Melbourne, Chambers spent his summers and school holidays as a vineyard labourer in Victoria's northeast. During his long illness, which began in 1997, he recalled that work, recounting to himself the stories the workers told to pass the time. Eventually he started composing a novel in his head.

The whole thing just came out, Chambers says of his debut novel, The Vintage and the Gleaning. "I know this sounds a bit like Soviet poets in prison, but I did actually write in my head and memorise long passages. My brain was working. Just nothing else was."

Click here for the full article from The Australian, 14th August 2010.