Amity & Sorrow – Peggy Riley visits for a blog tour

“ A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she’s convinced will follow them wherever they go–her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can’t imagine what the world holds outside their father’s polygamous compound.

Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley’s abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, Amity & Sorrow is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own.”

To celebrate the release of Amity & Sorrow in New Zealand we interviewed author Peggy Riley. AND we have a signed hardback copy of the book to give away – enter at the end of this post. 

1. Which writers are you inspired by?
I am particularly drawn to writers who create whole worlds and cycles of family that we can return to, book after book. William Faulkner sets his many books in the Yoknapatawpha County of the South. Louise Erdrich does the same with generations of a Native American family on and off reservation land in North Dakota. Each book enriches the others before it and after it. I’m also very inspired by John Steinbeck, whose books have such authenticity I feel that they must be real. The Grapes of Wrath is the true story of the Dust Bowl, made more true by his fiction. His Salinas in East of Eden and his Monterey of Cannery Row are surely true.

2. You used to be a bookseller – how would you sell this book to customers?
That’s a good question! I used to love a book that I could pick up and hand sell to anyone, saying – this is great – trust me. I wanted to write the kind of book that I would be happy to hand sell as a a good, solid read and a page-turner. It’s the story of a mother who takes her two daughters from a fundamentalist, polygamous cult. When they crash onto a farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle, all three have to find new ways to be family, without their faith. I’d also say it’s about God, sex, and farming – but in a good way!

3. If readers enjoy your book then what other books would you recommend?
I would recommend any of the books that I loved while writing Amity & Sorrow. First, start with John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Written in 1939, not long after the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, it still feels incredibly modern. It is pacy and compelling, and there are moments that hit you right in the gut. A wonderful read, and it was great to go back to it after reading it in high school and not really “getting it”.

Next, read Under the Banner of Heaven: a Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. It is the story of the schism in the Mormon church that led to the splinter fundamentalists creating secret compounds across the American west. Last, for an alternative take on the Dust Bowl, I recommend Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, the history of those who didn’t leave Oklahoma. It was that book that formed the history of my own farmer’s family.

4. This is your first novel; how did the idea for Amity & Sorrow come to you?
I saw a newspaper image of a wooden church on fire, on a prairie. I was working as a playwright then and I could see the image of spinning skirts, on fire, and women running from a burning church and I thought – how am I going to put all that onstage? I hung onto the image and years later, I started writing fiction, I followed the image and the story that emerged from the questions I asked of it: why is the church on fire? Who are the women? What happens next?

5. What experiences and/or research did you base your writing about the polygamous cult on?
I grew up in the California of Charles Manson and Reverend Jim Jones. I’d been thinking about the role of women in communal and “free love” societies and in cults where the leader is most often shared and fathering children with multiple “wives” since my earliest days of feminism. I have long had a fascination for handmade American faiths and had been reading about the origins and creation of the Mormon Church, which split over the issue of polygamy. Ultimately, my research convinced me that I wanted to create my own cult, ecstatic and fundamentalist, separatist and afraid of the government, with elements of Jonestown and Waco, Millennium death cults, and and the FLDS compounds that thrive throughout the American west, western Canada and Mexico, even today.

6. Even by cult standards, fifty wives seems a lot – how did you come to that number?
It is a nice round number, but it was topped by Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s successor in the Mormon Church, as well as current FLDS leader, Warren Jeffs, reported to have 78, even while in prison. David Koresh only managed 20, but he believed that God told him he was entitled to a further 120. He just ran out of time…

A warning – some of the following questions and answers contain plot spoilers… 

We’re hosting @Peggy_Riley on a blog tour #GodSexFarming

The links for the blogs in the blog tour are below so you can follow along – starting Monday.

Monday 15th April
The London Diaries
Bermuda Onion’s Weblog
For Winter Nights
We Sat Down
Dog Ear Discs

Tuesday 16th April
Beth Fish Reads
The Little Reader Library 
The Bibliomouse
The Tattooed Book
Booksellers NZ - that’s us! 

Wednesday 17th April
Booking Mama

Thursday 18th April
Linus’s Blanket
Devourer Of Books
Alison Percival
Big Book Little Book

Friday 19th April
Keep Calm and Read a Book
Booking Mama
Random Things Through My Letterbox

Behind the scenes At the Beach

Author Gillian Candler describes how she came to write At the Beach, which last week was announced as a finalist in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.

“At the Beach: explore and discover the New Zealand seashore, is the book I always wished I’d had when my son was growing up. At that time the books around on the subject seemed to be for adults or older children. We spent a lot of time at the beach and had a lot of fun, I hope that this book will encourage other families to do the same.

When we were developing the idea of the book, we realised that it was important to show animals in the context of the ecosystem, so children could see how living things depend on their environment, and of course find out ‘who eats who?’. So we came up with the ‘cross-section’ pages, which show a rock pool, the mud flats and the sandy beach ecosystems.

Keeping things short and sweet, meant that some living things didn’t make it into the book, there were some hard choices to make about what was in and what was out. The team working on the book each had their particular animal that they lobbied for. Mine was the ray, I think they are beautiful animals. We see them at our beach in the late summer feeding around the rocks in the shallows.

Our publishers came up with the idea of the identification card in the inside backcover, this is such an inspired idea and has got a lot of praise from people using the book.”

At the Beach: Explore & discover the New Zealand seashore
by Ned Barraud & Gillian Candler
Published by Craig Potton Publishing
ISBN 9781877517747

Event review: the Rocky Outcrop Writers Tour for #nzbookmonth

March is NZ Book Month; discounts on books! Events across New Zealand! Lots of news about books! Hoorah!

Last night I headed across the parched plains of the mighty Wairarapa to the great Hedley’s Bookshop in Masterton for first stop of the Rocky Outcrop Writer’s Tour. Few of the audience wore socks; many of the women wore floral tops – it was Wairarapa summer at its best with the event following suit. Warm. Relaxed. Inviting. Genuine.

Pat White

“Absolute crackers,” is how local writer and MC Pat White introduced Ashleigh Young, Kirsten McDougall and Pip Adam.

“These three women would be in the leading taxi off the rank of young New Zealand writers.” It was a charm and genuine enthusiasm that buoyed us along one of the most enjoyable events I’ve been to.

Kirsten McDougall opened the show reading from her book The Invisible Rider. Neither a novel or a book of short stories, she described her work as ‘episodes’ in her character Phillip’s life. As she read Phillip’s encounter with dickhead Dad Pedro at their sons’ soccer game we all sat immersed. We were there on the sidelines, frustrated too, leaning in to hear what would happen next… the rip of laughter from the women in the front row when Kirsten her character Phillip called Pedro a fuck-knuckle was an audible release of tension for us all.

“Every so often a character in a book acts as if you might have if you had of been quick enough to think of it yourself,” said Pat.

Kirsten McDougall

Pip Adam read from her award-winning work Everything We Hoped For, a book of short stories with a heavy dose of real-life inspiration. Poet Helen Lehndorf has described Pip’s work as ‘a kind of post-post modern fiction – nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations – the stories are flatline and searing and real’.

Pip herself mentioned someone had once asked her dead-pan whether she was a psychopath – her stories are often grim, harsh and real and it’s difficult to imagine them being imagined.

During question time Pip spoke of her process of writing and her childhood; where television and gossip loomed large, which meant her world was often one of pretend and make-believe (what the neighbours are up to, the stories on the television) and daydreams (what would it be like to be David Bowie’s niece?)

As a mother she often composed the stories and character developments in Everything We Hoped For first in her head because the time she could actually sit and write was so condensed with a young child. The way she spoke about her process was compelling; I wanted to immediately read her book again.

Pip Adam

Ashleigh Young read from what Pat called, “Just one of the best books of poetry put out by a New Zealander in years.” Her work, Magnificent Moon, is her first book and was published by Victoria University Press last year.

Quantam Leaps, The Rest is Easy and a new sonnet were on the bill last night. However, I could sit and listen to Ashleigh read for a lot longer than she did, which is the mark of a good event – it seemed short and wonderful and I wanted more.

A couple of people I know have fan-girl level worship thoughts about the work of Ashleigh Young and it was easy to see why. Pat summed it up like this, “As another poet I think ‘oh bugger I wanted to do that.’”

Ashleigh Young

Lucky for you, Hedley’s was the first stop on a tour around the provinces so Palmerston North, Napier, Whanganui and Paekakariki you’re in luck!

Seek this event out – I loved it. The writing was the best there is, Pat’s hosting was pitch perfect and combined with David Hedley’s rampant enthusiasm for books and reading it was a jolly good night out.

Written by Emma McCleary, Web Editor for Booksellers NZ.

Author interview: We chat with The Snow Child author Eowyn Ivey

To celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, we set intrepid book lover and publishing student Elizabeth Heritage the task of interviewing her. The Snow Child is in bookstores now.

EH: I loved Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons adventures as a child; thank you for introducing me to his work on Russian folk tales. What was it about The Little Daughter of the Snow that led you to write your own story?

EI: I think subconsciously I had always been looking for a way to tell a magical story set in Alaska. This place is my inspiration as a writer, and as a reader my entire life I rarely came across books that took place in a northern landscape. The Snegurochka fairy tale was a kind of lightning bolt for me – suddenly I could see the path into the story I wanted to tell.

EH: To what extent did you find that the act of retelling an existing story acted as constraint, or inspiration?

EI: It was a fun process because I knew that at any time I could entirely abandon the fairy tale and forge my own way. So instead of a constraint, it was a back-and-forth, a sort of conversation with the original tale. And frankly I was surprised when I neared the conclusion and realised that my own story would end much like the fairy tale.

EH: I enjoyed the ambiguity of Faina, the way she lives in your book as a human and a fairy. What is the significance of the way she talks – and sometimes other characters talk to her – without speech marks?

EI: Thank you — I’m so glad you noticed the quote marks. Some readers have wondered if they are the result of typographical errors, but it was intentional. When I first began writing Faina’s dialogue, it felt as if I had somehow dragged her to the ground and stripped away some of her magic. I am a fan of Cormac McCarthy, and I tried removing all the quote marks throughout the manuscript. But that didn’t feel right either. So as an experiment I decided to not use quote marks any time Faina is part of a conversation – I hoped it would allow her to remain slightly otherworldly, slightly removed from the everyday.

EH: There is a strong theme in your book of restoring balance. For example, the parallel river scenes: the suicide attempt then, later, skating together as a family. How did this influence your structuring of the book?

EI: I love it when readers notice something I wasn’t conscious of as a writer – it’s such a revelation. I think there are instincts we follow when we create art, in which we try to seek out balance and resonance. Rarely did I intentionally structure the book with these goals in mind, but instead as I wrote certain scenes, they just felt right.

EH: To what extent is Mabel’s changing relationship with the land influenced by real-life Alaskan settler stories?

EI: Because of its extremes Alaska is a challenging place to live, but it seems to take hold of some people. Jack London is a wonderful example – he was beaten down by his travels to the Klondike during the Gold Rush, and yet he spent the rest of his life writing about the north and its hardships. Throughout Alaska’s history, some people who have moved here can’t wait to flee. But for some, it is like Esther says to Mabel: “I don’t know if you ever get used to it really. It just gets in your blood so that you can’t stand to be anywhere else.”

EH: Which character did you find the easiest to write, and why?

EI: Speaking of Esther – she wasn’t a part of my original concept for the novel, and she came to me rather unexpectedly. But once she was in my story, I found her such a relief, and so easy to write. She has a strength and generosity that is very familiar to me because they are the traits I admire about so many women in Alaska.

EH: Foxes are often creatures of cunning and deception in folk tales – is this also true of the stories of the native people of Alaska? What were the influences for the fox in your book?

EI: Years ago I watched a documentary in which a man had a “pet” fox – I can’t even recall the name or anything else about the film. But what struck me is how the fox would dip and dodge and come so close to the man, and yet wouldn’t allow to be touched or petted. As I watched, I remember feeling this intense longing. It reminds me of the longing Jack and Mabel had for Faina – this sense that you want to embrace and hold on to something that it is wild and just out of reach. So this, beyond any specific legend or fairy tale, really drove my portrayal of her fox.

EH: Where do you see The Snow Child fitting in with other ‘wild child’ stories, such as The Jungle Book and Tarzan?

EI: It’s interesting because at first I spent time researching along these lines, including reportedly true stories about children surviving in the woods. And at one point, I had many pages written from Faina’s perspective that explained how she could survive in the Alaska wilderness. But in the end I realised Faina is different from these children – she is part wild child, but part something else less familiar.

EH: Your expressive descriptions of the Alaskan wilderness made me want to visit. What is the best way to butcher a moose?

EI: Very carefully! But in all seriousness, it is a labor-intensive, exhausting process. My husband and I both grew up learning how to hunt and butcher our own meat, and there is a feeling of great responsibility that comes with it. We work as a team and spend several days packing the meat out of the woods in backpacks and then butchering and packaging the meat. But it is delicious!

MEET EOWYN IVEY: NEW ZEALAND TOUR
Thursday September 13 – AUCKLAND
Time: 6.00pm – 7.30pm
Location: Takapuna Library, The Strand, Takapuna
Gold coin donation, bookings recommended. Light refreshments available.

For more information contact Helen Woodhouse 09 486 8469 or email Helen.Woodhouse@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

WIN! One of three signed copies of The Snow Child.
We drew the winners of our copies on Tuesday, 11 September – they will each receive a signed copy of the book. They are:

*Jveenis
* Maclean Barker, and
* Jemma Pirrie

 Congratulations! We’ll be in touch soon. We drew the winners using random.org a random number generator.

Author Q+A with Mark Gimenez, author of The Governor’s Wife

We asked our reviewer Tiffany Matsis to review The Governor’s Wife then come up with some questions for the author. Tiffany and Mark are both former lawyers making her the perfect interviewer to get right under the skin of what makes this writer – and his latest novel – tick.

The Governor’s Wife is in bookstores now. See a description of the plot of this novel on the publisher’s website.

(Tiffany) Reading about the colonias is quite an eye-opener for a New Zealander who is quite literally half a world away and living in a country that doesn’t have any land borders. It’s difficult to even imagine, although your book was very educational. How much of your description of the harshness of life on the border is real and how much is fiction?
(Mark) Unfortunately, it’s all real. The poverty and violence along the border is a way of life for the residents of the colonias. And a new development has been the rise of colonias farther north, outside Houston, Austin, and Dallas as Mexican workers have moved north. Colonias will soon spread to other parts of the US.

Do you see any solution to the quite dire immigration, and subsequent financial, issues facing Texas and California, and other border states?
Not in a presidential election year. The parties have staked out extreme positions to excite their bases, so the candidates are constrained to venture outside those positions. The solution is somewhere in the middle.

How aware is the average Texan of the brutality of life in the No Man’s Land between the border fence and the River? Is it something people know and care about?
Most Texans don’t know about the situation and, frankly, don’t care since most residents of the colonias are Mexicans residing there illegally.

Your Texan characters are at times quite scathing of their Californian neighbours. For those of us not familiar with American culture, what is the relationship between the two states? Does it go beyond the obvious Republican/Democrat divide and neighbourly rivalry?
There’s always been a liberal vs. conservative political divide between the two states, but with California experiencing terrible economic times and many California companies moving to Texas, which is doing much better in terms of jobs, the divide has become economic and much wider.

You’re very forthright, some might say cynical, about the role that campaign donors play in politics. Will this year’s presidential election be won by the team with the deepest pockets?
No, because both teams will spend an equal amount of money, estimated to be $1 billion each. I personally don’t care how much money someone gives to a political campaign so long as there is disclosure, but I do care that that money buys political favors, such as Wall Street enjoyed with lax regulation that led directly to the 2008 financial collapse.

Several of your characters comment, some jokingly, some seriously, that George W Bush’s record as president has meant that there will never be another Texan in the White House. Do you think someone like Bode Bonner (the main character in The Governor’s Wife) could change the public’s views of Texan politicians?
I don’t think so. The dislike of Bush in the blue states runs very deep. Also, in order to be elected state-wide in Texas, a politician must be a hard-core conservative, which makes it very difficult to move to a national stage.

Author interview: we talk to Anne Sebba, author of That Woman

When Anne Sebba, author of That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor came to town we knew the opportunity to chat to her was too good to pass up. Dr. Sean Palmer, the Chair of Monarchy New Zealand, conducted an interview with Anne on our behalf.

SP: What do you feel sets this biography of Wallis Simpson apart from the others out there?
AS: I’m most proud of treating all of the participants in this story as ordinary people. I don’t think that has been done before. There are four ordinary people at the heart of this story and they are all flawed and damaged in a way, as of course we all are. That is the human condition.

I think people have seen it as a history story and that may explain why there have been so many books written by men about it. I’m the first woman to have written a biography of Wallis. I just tried to see her in the context of her time, as a woman who grew up without a father, deeply insecure, seeing her mother work. Wallis could have had a job, if she’d wanted, but in the context of the time she decided that she would never earn enough with a job to live the life she wanted, so she decided to live vicariously through men.

I think nobody has really taken the time and trouble to understand these people as ordinary people with the same difficulties that we all have. Wallis in particular, became grasping, in the pursuit of security. She went one step too far and couldn’t stop herself.

SP: There seems to have been a tremendous amount of momentum in the life of Wallis Simpson. Could anything have been done to avoid the drama that unfolded in 1936?
AS: King George V died in January 1936 and, although he had been ill, it happened quite suddenly. I think that if Edward had had another year, he would have already been married to Wallis. If he had been married as Prince of Wales, it might have been possible for him to remain on the throne. He simply would have been married to this woman.

1936 went by terribly quickly and Wallis kept thinking, “Edward will get rid of me eventually”. She doesn’t realise how hated and vilified she already is until she goes on a trip to Greece in the summer. It is then that she realises that what she thinks is ok, adultery with the King, the rest of the world finds unacceptable. It is only when she realises how unpopular she is that she tries to call off the relationship. She says, “You and I will only create disaster together.” Edward responds to this attempt by vowing to follow her wherever she goes, and with threats of suicide. Wallis found herself trapped. There is a sort of inexorability in the whole story.

People often say, “She wanted to be Queen.” I don’t think so. I don’t think she was the hunter, she was the hunted. People have blamed her for creating this situation in the first place, but she was a victim in it as much as anyone else. She always thought that the king would dump her and that she would return to the security of Ernest. But it did happen very fast. Wallis had manipulated the circumstances in her life but went a step too far and got caught up in them, unable to adjust them any further. She played with fire and got burnt.

SP: Do you feel that in some way, Wallis and Edward got exactly what they were looking for?
AS: Yes, but it wasn’t quite what they thought it would be. Their story is a sort of dark gothic fable. I do think the jewellery was the corrosive element in the story. I think it plays the part of the Devil in a Faustian pact. If you make a deal with the Devil you don’t enjoy the results. Wallis and Edward’s story is certainly not the wonderful romance people thought it was.

Edward and Wallis were committed to the pursuit of personal happiness. In the early 21st century we all accept that this is ok. But it was very different in the early part of the 20th century. People found this pursuit of happiness at the expense of duty very shocking, particularly in the wake of World War I, in which many people had sacrificed so much. Edward and Wallis got the social life of parties they had pursued, but they ended up rather aimless people, quite pathetic in many ways.

SP: Would you say you have written a sympathetic analysis of her life?
AS: No, she was no saint. I just think it’s time that we turn the tables and looked at Edward’s role in all of this. I certainly don’t think anyone should say she was the one doing the chasing. She may not be any more likable at the end of my book, but you can understand what drove her. I think history has given her a raw deal and it’s about time that we acknowledge that there are more complex factors at play here.

As a character, if her life had been a novel, she develops. That’s why she is so interesting. She grows over the course of her life, coming to terms with the role she is going to have to play, the role that she, and history, have created for herself. Publically, she stops complaining about this role, Edward continues to complain on her behalf, but she does a reasonable job in all the roles that fall to her from then on. She does the best she can for her husband.

SP: Is there a particular reason that you wrote this book now?AS: There is quite a bit of renewed interest in Wallis and Edward at the moment, but that was complete coincidence. I hadn’t worked out that it was 75 years since the abdication in 2011. It was only when I realised this anniversary, part way through the writing, that I thought, perhaps 75 years is a good time to look back because there are still people alive who remember and yet 100 years is too far away.

It just seems to have hit the spot. I hadn’t been aware of Madonna’s film or the Diamond Jubilee this year, which, had it not been for the abdication we would not have been celebrating this year. It was the right time for me to write this and it turns out, the right time for lots of other people too.

SP: Do you think Wallace regretted the abdication?
AS: I wish I could find an honest diary of Wallis’ where she actually spells out her thoughts on the subject. I think with hindsight, she would have regretted it, but if she was reliving events again, I don’t think she would have changed anything. She was quite insightful about her own nature, a dual nature. On the one hand she was a grasping, needy, ambition person desperate for social recognition and material goods. On the other hand she was a fragile, brittle, fearful creature. She wanted nothing more than security and love, but she couldn’t resist grasping for more. Her husband Ernest understood this and answered both sides of her nature. So I don’t believe she would have been able to stop herself, but I do believe that in hindsight she would have wished that she had taken a different path. It just wasn’t in her nature to take any other path.

She hated being hated by the rest of the world. It made her existence miserable. She couldn’t go anywhere without journalists following her, she’d lost her privacy, and was generally fearful. The world did hate her for taking this “fabulous prince charming” off the throne. They believed she’d done a dreadful thing, taking him away from his people. They blamed her entirely for that. She knew that the reverse was closer to the truth, that Edward had no interest in being King, but she could never say that. If I have sympathy with her, it is a genuine sympathy for never being able to be able to say that, although she’d led him down a path, she had thought he’d have had the personal strength to turn away from it when it was necessary. She certainly had historical precedent on her side. Kings have had mistresses in the past and she assumed that she would be tossed aside as previous royal mistresses had been. It is unfair to say that it was her fault that Edward gave up on his duty, but she has been blamed for it. This book is sympathetic to that extent.

Interview conducted by Dr Sean Palmer
Dr Sean Palmer has a PhD on the importance of the monarchy in New Zealand. He is Chair of Monarchy New Zealand, a not-for-profit organisation made up of a cross-section of New Zealanders who are passionate about New Zealand’s constitutional monarchy and the democracy that it promotes.

To find out more about Monarchy New Zealand visit their website or email enquiries@monarchy.org.nz

That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
By Anne Sebba
Hachette $27.99
ISBN 9780753827390

We talk to author Mal Peet ahead of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

Mal Peet (pictured below) and his wife Elspeth Graham (who he also writes with) had been enjoying a few days of New Zealand sunshine before the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival kicks off, when I met them in Auckland city to catch up. Mal’s been a guest here before and has plenty of fans of his exciting and absorbing young adult novels, and many are not teenagers. He’s been writing books, many award-winning, for the last ten years, aimed at that youthful audience, but they enjoy a wide readership.

Photo: Justin Mcmanus

I asked Mal about what distinguishes his books as YA, a tricky and much discussed issue.
“I do sound off about this. I get very fed up with people who are more obsessed with categorising books than reading them. There are a lot of bloggy nerds out there who want to advance a rigid definition of what is teen or YA and I just think – to hell with it, it doesn’t matter. I mean I do write, in my opinion, for young adults, but not exclusively. I don’t believe that teenagers exclusively want to read about other teenagers. But there’s a very strong school of thought now, that teenage fiction should be fiction about teenagers. And I simply don’t hold to that view … which I consider entirely reductive, formulaic and silly.”

Is there anywhere you won’t go because your books are aimed at teens?
“No, not in terms of content. I think I do moderate my style somewhat, in that I just try to avoid anything that might be beyond the average well-read teenager’s reading really, so I don’t make a lot of clever literary references, and I don’t presume they know historical stuff and so on, so I either avoid it or I have to work explanation into the text.”

There is a lot of information worked into Peet’s stories, but you hardly notice that you’re learning something new when you’re so caught up with the characters. The most recent novel Life: An Exploded Diagram (Walker Books) is based in Norfolk, the countryside of Peet’s own childhood, and there are many elements from his own youth in the story of Clem, a shy boy with a love of drawing, and his rather fumbling romance with the gorgeous Frankie, overshadowed by the Cold War and its threat of nuclear annihilation.

The war itself is also full of strongly drawn characters as Peet melds together quotes taken directly from scripts on record from White House meetings before the Kennedy and Khrushchev governments finally decided not to blow the world to smithereens.

“One of the motives for writing the book was that it seemed to me that it had been almost forgotten. It seems very odd that the nearest we ever looked like we were coming to nuclear annihilation has been sort of tucked away as a footnote.

“28 October marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Cold War and thus a great time to read Life, hoping that the knowledge and renewed awareness can help prevent such events happening again, and perhaps asking questions, as Peet does in the postscript of his book, about where all those nuclear weapons are lurking now.”

See Mal Peet at Auckland Writers and Readers Festival event ‘In the Shadow of History’ with Sebastian Barry and Jesmyn Ward with chair Paula Morris THIS SATURDAY (Saturday 12 May) 11.30-12.30. Buy your tickets now.

Mal Peet was interviewed for Booksellers NZ by Crissi Blair, editor/publisher/reviewer at Silvertone Ltd.

Life: An Exploded Diagram
by Mal Peet
Published by Walker Books
ISBN 9781406335729

Q+A with Paul Thomas, author of Death on Demand

Death on Demand is in bookstores now.

When did you start writing novels and why?
I wrote my first novel Old School Tie in 1993. I’d always had a desire to write fiction but hadn’t got around to it due to a combination of laziness and life getting in the way. I was living in Sydney, having given up a lucrative but dissatisfying career in public relations and had a few sports biographies under my belt (Christmas in Rarotonga with John Wright, Running on Instinct with John Kirwan and Straight from the Hart with John Hart) and I just thought, well it’s now or never.

How long does it take you to write a novel?
That really depends on what else I’m doing. If I was doing nothing else but write fiction, I’d expect it to take about a year. In practice, given the various other things I have on the go, it would be closer to two years.

Where does Tito Ihaka come from?
The seed that sprouted into Tito Ihaka was planted by the professional soldiers from Papakura military camp who used to come to my school during Cadets Week (this was the late 1960s) and teach us how to strip a bren gun blindfolded and stuff like that. They were almost all Maori: big, tough, formidable, capable men, the sort you’d want to go into battle with. When I set about creating a cop character for Old School Tie, I came up with the idea of a guy who had the formidable core of those men but lacked their self-discipline and so led a rather chaotic private life. I also made him a loner as opposed to a team player.

How much of Ihaka is based on you or someone you know?
Aside from the above, none whatsoever.

Where and how do you find inspiration?
To paraphrase an old saying, writing a novel is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. There’s a myth surrounding the creative process that the writer or painter or whatever sits around waiting for inspiration to strike. Good ideas are usually the end result of a long, slow thought process that has produced lots of not so good ideas.

How do you research a novel?
There’s a lot of information out there, and the internet has made it much more accessible.

As a general rule, anyone who wants to write contemporary crime novels should read the paper.

Do you consult cops, criminals or other experts?
Early on I was fortunate enough that a few acquaintances got themselves into sticky situations. Generally speaking, I only consult specialists when I need very specific information.

Who are some of your favourite fictional detectives?
Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, the original tough but tender, wise-cracking private eye and still the best, and Charles Willeford’s Miami homicide detective, Hoke Moseley.

Do you have any literary role models?
I think you learn something from every writer whose work you enjoy, but I don’t have a role model as such. The early Ihaka novels were influenced by several novels by the American crime writer Ross Thomas (no relation) but I’ve shifted away from that style.

What next for Ihaka?
I’m currently in the early stages of a new Ihaka novel that will pick up where Death on Demand left off.

Interview by Greer Monkley, book lover and Facebook fan

Death on Demand
by Paul Thomas
Published by Hachette
ISBN  9781869712334

Sue Lawson blog tour

Thank you so much for asking to be visit your blog on the Forget Me Not Blog Tour. Also, a huge thank you to those people who read Forget Me Not and took the time to ask me questions. There’s only one I’ve been vague on and that was simply because it would spoil the novel for those who haven’t read it.

Let’s get straight into the questions…

VH: Do you have a favourite memory of the time you spent writing this book?
Hmmm – probably when I stumbled across my great-aunt’s autograph book, dated 1911. The moment I opened it, Eve’s story fell into place. As well as that my great- grandfather and grandfather (my great-aunt’s brother) were jewellers during that era, so I knew the style of jewellery well.

Sue's autograph book

Researching The Titanic

VH: Your book is brought alive with a wealth of historical detail about the Titanic, her passengers and crew, daily life on board the ship and subsequent sinking. What research methods did you use to find all this information?
I read everything I could find – book after book from libraries, book stores, friends’ collections and on the internet. I read hundreds of Titanic related websites and discussion boards, and visited and took copious notes at the exhibition held at the Melbourne Museum in 2009. I read non-fiction, fiction, speculation, survivors accounts, in fact I read so much, I filled an A4 and an A 5 spiral bound note book. The biggest challenge, apart from knowing when to stop researching was deciding what to use and what to discard, and which version of events to follow. There is so much conflicting information written about the Titanic.

JL: Is it coincidence of planned that the book is being published around the centenary of its foundering? 
A bit of both – the book was conceived in 2009 when my publisher at the time, Andrew Kelly, and I were discussing the Titanic Exhibition. He suggested I write a junior novel about it and the result is Forget Me Not. Its release in 2012, the centenary of the ship’s demise, is a timing decision.

JL: Obviously you studied the story of the Titanic in depth – in your opinion who was at fault? The designer/ the captain/ White Star Lines or was it just an “act of God” 
That’s a tough one – all of the above? None of the above? It was just meant to be?
Okay so that’s a cop out. In the mountains of reading, it became clear the incident was causing by a number of issues, so blame can be attributed in all kinds of places. Here’s a list, in no particular order, of where I think things went wrong:

a. Ice warnings didn’t reach the bridge or were ignored.
b. A desire to break trans-Atlantic crossing record.
c. Over-confidence in the ship and perhaps a lack of respect for the sea/nature.
d. Not enough lifeboats on board, a decision made by the White Star Line executives as they were worried they would make the boat deck ‘unsightly’.
e. The California (a ship reported to be nearby when the Titanic hit the iceberg) didn’t see or receive distress messages.
f. A new telegraph system had been introduced and could have caused confusion.
g. Many of the lifeboats were launched well below capacity.
h. A belief that the ship was unsinkable.
i. The ship was travelling too fast in icy water.
j. No binoculars in the crow’s nest.

And so the list goes on – when combined together, the disaster was inevitable.

Talking about the characters

TD: Was Evelyn really 16 Years old?
Evelyn was younger than 16 – I know her age, but I try to avoid saying it explicitly in my stories, as it can be off-putting to readers. She was younger than Thomas and Hugh.

KH: I felt that Father and Thomas got cut off too abruptly – why did you choose not to drag that part of the story out more?
Hmmm – if I tell you that, it will spoil the book for people who haven’t read it. Think about when their story ended and what was happening. Sorry, that’s a dreadful answer, but honestly, it will ruin the story for others. You can contact me via my website www.suelawson.com.au if you’d like to know more!

KH: The character of Bea – what was actually wrong with her lungs, I would have liked it if we had got to know her character a little more – did you chose not to spend too much time on her as she was a minor character?
Bea was always going to be a minor character as I wanted her to be a source of love and angst for Eve and to be the reason the family was leaving England. Also, as the intended audience is junior fiction, readers identify better with characters their own age.

Bea had what was referred to at that time as ‘weak lungs’ – she caught bronchitis, pneumonia, colds etc constantly and had a permanent cough. Know she would most probably be diagnosed as a chronic asthmatic.

TD : I found it fascinating how you told the story of Alice Gilmore , the mother, how she lets slip about not wanting to lose another baby, and this dumbfounded siblings Evelyn and Thomas. What inspired you to weave this into the story?
I added this story line after the first draft, as basically Alice was far too fierce. I knew why she was angry, but I hadn’t let the reader in on what had gone on for her before. Once my editor and I talked about the early draft, I knew the reader had to see more of Alice to understand why she was so snappy with everyone.

JL: Do you see a story for Evelyn and Hugh in the future? (also see question below)

and 

TD: Do you intend to write a sequel to “Forget me Not”, to venture on and tell the story of Evelyn and how she and her family “got on” once they arrived in America. I feel no one has ever written about what happens after the Titanic. I would love to know if Eve & Hugh eventually marry? Does Eve become a Nurse as she hoped and dreamed of? How does she build a new future? Do they stay in America?
I’ll answer these two questions together. I haven’t thought about writing a sequel to Forget Me Not, but do agree, there is little fiction written about life for the survivors. There are many actual accounts, however. As for Eve and Hugh – well, I’m a tragic romantic – does that answer your questions?

VH: If you could be transported to yet another time in history, where would you go?
Do I have to pick just one? As much as I love my life and the times in which we love, there are so many eras that fascinate me. I’d go to 1912 – the language, the clothes, the lifestyle are amazing; though I suspect I’d find all the expectations frustrating. I’d also love to visit the middle ages, feudal Japan, pre 1800 Africa – gee, I could keep going. Of course, I’d only like to visit, not actually experience the hardships – I’m not that brave!

Thanks so much for the fantastic questions. They’ve really made me think! Join me tomorrow at Novels on The Run for the last day of the Forget Me Not Blog Tour, where we’ll chat about critique groups.

About our interviewers
Our interviewers live around New Zealand; they’re all fans of our Facebook page, which is how we found them. Here’s a short profile of each one: 

Julia Leathwick is a part time actress and full time Customer Relations Manager from Auckland. An avid book reader and Titanic Aficionado, Julia jumped at the chance to review Forget Me Not and hopes it is the beginning of a “beautiful friendship”.

Vicki Harris lives with her husband on a small farmlet in Taranaki, shared with Charlie the cat, 3 hens and a sizeable flock of sheep. She enjoys shepherdess duties and also works part-time in a school library. She’s keen on photography, reading and tree-planting.

Kylie Howat from Hawkes Bay is the wife of a police officer and mother of one lovely 7 year old girl. She works in the travel industry, and enjoys socialising, reading and sports.

Tarsh Dixon is a stay at home mum to two girls aged 4 and 18 months. She has one lovely fiancée, who she will marry this December; owner of one cat, named “Twelve”, which is named because we got her on the 12th February 2012, and the wedding date is on the 12th! Book devourer with a bad book worm habit, that she refuses to kick, and also knits and sews.