Envision this. You’re in your 20s and have moved into a cheap flat by yourself. It’s the kind where you share a laundry, and your neighbours in the cul-de-sac are a colourful bunch that has given you enough content to write a book.

No need to imagine any further because Gunnedah’s own Jade Punch has already released her book The $100 Flats.

“I sort of unwittingly became part of a very bizarre family,” she reminisced.

“Lots of really interesting things happened while I was living there, and I’ve quite often said to people, ‘I should write a book’.”

While most people just say they are going to write a book about the weird and wacky things they have experienced, Jade has actually done it.

Her dedication went to one of the gentlemen living in the flats who passed away but had no funeral. Her way of doing something to remember him by.

“He was an elderly man and he lived a full life and had a lot of really great stories to tell,” she said. “Some of his stories are in the book as well.”

While all the stories are true, names have been changed to protect privacy.

Each chapter tells a story of the flats with each ‘character’ receiving at least one.

Her favourite story was that of a gentleman who decided he wanted to grow cucumbers next to his door.

He brought seeds from a discount store and planted them in his little patch of garden.

A very strange vegetable emerged – a cross between the anticipated cucumber, but also what was potentially a pumpkin.

“The whole street was forced upon what we call ‘pump-cumbers’ and they were terrible. We tried everything to cook them,” she reminisced.

It was a funny-shaped yellow soft pumpkin and Jade said the only way to make it palatable for the cul-de-sack family was to roast it and eat it straight away.

It took years for the book to be written but now it is done and ready for everyone to experience the world of The $100 Flats.

“I used writing the book as my little escape,” Jade said.

The book’s release was celebrated at the Next Edition Cafe and Book Store last month.

She wanted the book to have a magazine layout and pictures which required her learning a whole new skillset.

The copies she released was a special edition with a magazine layout and images added to it, wanting to give something back to her Gunnedah audience.