On Friday 23 May Waimakariri Libraries hosted the last of two Mystery in the Library events to be held in Canterbury. It took place in Rangiora, at the stunning new Trevor Inch Memorial Library. It was a well-attended event and a masterclass in process and publication.
Mystery in the Library is a series of free-entry panel discussions held the length and breadth of Aotearoa, to celebrate the growing number of terrific, versatile crime and thriller writers in the genre. Organised by Craig Sisterson, founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, these are a taster before the Ngaio Marsh Awards longlist announcements.
Rangiora got their slice of the pie with Stef Harris, Heather McQuillan, Syd Knight and Karen Zelas, all showcasing fabulous new books. Programmes co-ordinator Anna Patterson was a relaxed and confident interviewer and included many questions from the audience.
Where did these authors get their beginnings?
Syd Knight hails from Wellington. He's a self-confessed outdoors type, into mountain-biking and hiking. He began working in film, then moved sideways into cinematography, favouring emotional narratives.
Story was to Syd the most exciting thing about film. He did a masters using stories intended for film, and ended up writing Lie Down With Dogs, his debut crime novel. It's about a detective recovering from a case that got him shot and his lover killed, when he is given a cold case that might just give him the opportunity of revenge. Dark, fast-moving and fun, Its bursting with corrupt cops and dastardly drug lords.
Karen Zelas is from Christchurch: a former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, working with children in her field. She has been writing poetry, drama and novels to great acclaim for fifteen years.
Wanting to write from an early age, Karen's first published work was a poem in the local paper, aged 11. To date, Zelas has written five volumes of poetry, one of which, The Trials of Minnie Dean, was made into a play. When it came time to decide who she wanted to be, Karen followed her father's urging into medicine.
A retirement project, Safekeeping is the second instalment of the Rebecca Eaton trilogy; a legal-procedural series featuring Rebecca, a lawyer who in this book has left her mentors and former employers in the city to open her own legal practice where she can practice her skills in child advocacy. With engaging description and characters from the first page, Safekeeping is set in a very recognizable Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Stef Harris is an ex-policeman from Motueka who was once awarded a Commissioner's Commendation for Bravery. As a child, he loved Biggles, and as a youth he wanted to be Ernest Hemingway. While on a mad mission to Africa to follow this goal, Harris ended up writing his first novel in hospital recovering from malaria in Nairobi.
Also a film-maker, his satire The Waimate Conspiracy, based on his story The Waikikamukau Conspiracy, won awards internationally, while his short film Blue Moon, shot entirely on an iPhone in his native Motueka, was shown at Cannes.
Stef's newest book is The Girl From Sarajevo: a novella that includes the story, The Other Jasmine. Both stories that feature strong women protagonists, manipulated and manipulating the world in their determination to get what they want out of it. Stef's previous novel, Double Jeopardy, about a wise-cracking ex-cop in the U.S. has been compared to Jack Reacher in pace and gritty content.
Heather McQuillan is also from Christchurch. Heather, a teacher who wrote, is now a writer who teaches at Write On School for Young Writers. She's also been involved with the Flash Fiction community, and has been a dance and drama teacher. When a librarian told her about the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon Award for an original junior novel manuscript she entered and won!
Heather's new book, Truth Needs No Colour is written for youth but has appeal for adults as well. It's a prescient novel imagining a post-climate-disaster society in Aotearoa, exploited to advantage by an authoritarian government running schools and the basic needs of its citizens as a commercial venture. The star of the story is a young woman who expresses herself through art; the story highlighting the many ways that women commit acts of resistance.
Where do you start? Character or Story?
For Karen, a book starts with character, place, or an experience, with a mind to writing something that is supportive to others, such as her nonfiction work.
Syd's first published book begins with story but was originally going to be a film about detectives in Wellington. Syd is a plotter, not a 'pantser' (someone who flies by the seat of their pants) - preferring complex, non-linear plots.
Heather is a pantser. Most of her ideas come from a 'what if?' Truth Needs No Colour, however, came from the post-earthquake proposal of merging schools that were closed or damaged. It was a time when students were stressed, teachers were leaving Christchurch. Marianna 'materialised' in the form of a fifteen-year-old girl behaving ungratefully on her birthday, then reappeared on her sixteenth birthday in prison. Heather's job was to fill in the 'puzzle pieces.'
Stef starts with 'spike stories' (filler stories) in the newspaper. One story came from a 'pink combie beach bomb hot-wheels car sold at auction for two-hundred-thousand dollars.' It was a eureka moment - he wrote the whole story up late that night.
Past, present tense, he, she or they?
Karen uses both but advises you have to go with it, becoming the central character, getting inside them. Pronouns and verbs make you live in the character you've written, affecting how the story is told.
Heather's stories are usually in the third person but Truth Needs No Colour is in the first-person, which gives privileged knowledge to the reader. When writing Flash Fiction, Heather uses the present tense. Novels are mostly in past tense, but she says the second person is lovely for short fiction.
Syd finds the first-person scary; he writes in the third person, looking over a character's shoulder, like 'a torch in the darkness.'
Stef uses a third-person close perspective, 'like a blowfly.' Frank, in Double Jeopardy, is 'a hard-boiled detective' while the central character of The Other Jasmine is formal, saying 'you become her.'
All advise to play with tenses, rewriting them to find the right fit.
What kind of relationship do you have with your editors?
Heather: 'Love them! It's a trust relationship, but sometimes you have to stand up for yourself.' She's thankful when her editor finds mistakes, or 'plotholes'. 'It's a myth that we do this all on our own, it takes a village to write a book.' Editors don't have the time or money to nurture writers. To get published you might have to pay an editor - about $1500.00.
Syd: Editing is like sculpting a statue: you're chipping away at a rough image. It seems endless but keeps getting better.
Stef says he has a brilliant editor. A writer is like a director, who doesn't work all the time, whereas a cinematographer is shooting every week. 'Your book is a prospectus - you've got to sell the film rights to make money.'
All say that when you sell a book, you get about two dollars back on each copy sold.
Karen says 'It's one thing to write a book, another to get it out.' She started Pukeko Productions to publish her own plays and poetry, and to help other writers step into the publishing world.
Do you have an agent?
Heather says it's hard to get an agent, there's only one in New Zealand. Karen doesn't need one. Stef would love to publish overseas, but it's hard to get contacts. A lot of agents will put your work in a 'slush pile' for an intern. Heather got an agent after she'd written two books. Flash fiction sold well in the U.K., but she couldn't get published in New Zealand.
What's the process?
The audience, many of whom are writing, were keen to know how to get published. The panel shared the secrets behind the bookshop. If a book gets picked up by a publisher, the publisher has a rep who takes the book to distributors such as Wheelers, or Bateman Books, who will buy a run of copies from the publisher. We mentioned the $2 average profit that the author gets but if the books don't sell, the bookshop can return them.
The best thing, says Heather, is the government fund that subsidises lending rights for public libraries. Just before Christmas, authors receive a cheque. Syd is self-publishing via Amazon. Stef advises that the winner is to get your book optioned for film which equals a lump sum.
Favourite books?
Karen loves AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh stories. Heather's favourite is Moomintroll. Syd's a big fan of Wilbur Smith and was read Lord of the Rings at an early age by his mum. Stef says he was a voracious reader in his youth, finding Erica Jong's feminist novel, Fear of Flying, which was not about planes, under his mum's bed.
There was so much more to this event than can meet the page. If you get a chance to attend an author talk, it's well worth your time -especially if you're writing yourself.
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