Listen here:
Excerpts from the interview:
Q. Isn't it amazing that you chose literary fiction—a grueling, challenging genre—as your career path, achieving the kind of recognition that only about 1% of writers reach?
A. I don’t know that I chose it—it just came naturally. As a sickly child in 1970s New Zealand, home from school often with only two TV channels, I wrote to entertain myself, creating imaginary worlds to pass the time. It felt like a natural progression to turn that personal habit into something I shared and eventually dared to publish.
Q. Isn’t there something about the depth, intensity, and beauty of your writing that makes one wonder: do you have a keen sense of observation and a deep appreciation for silence?
A. It’s interesting you say that—I do relish silence. I’m definitely an introvert, and I need total quiet when I write. I’m easily distracted by background noise. I remember a boyfriend who stayed with us while I was writing my first novel in the mid-1990s. He wanted to write a letter to his parents, so he sat in my office while I worked. But the sound of his pen scratching on a wooden tray drove me crazy. I had to ask him to leave the room, which was pretty much the end of our relationship. I also relish silence in my work—leaving things unsaid, ending a scene with white space, letting the reader fill in the gaps.
Q. Isn’t it interesting how your practice brings a sacred quality to the secular world, where silence holds an equally powerful role as words and music?
A. I’ve thought about this over the years. I was raised Catholic, and even though I’m not practicing anymore, I’m grateful for that upbringing. It definitely fed my love for poetic language, pageantry, codes, magic, transformation, musicality, and silence. The structure of a mass embodies all of that, and I know it had a huge influence on the writer I’ve become.
Q. Y our writing is extraordinary—not just in structure, but in your magnificent opening sentences. How do you craft such powerful openings?
A. I do pay a lot of attention to openings, and usually, they come to me when the first line pops into my head. I know right away it’s the start of the book. With The Axeman's Carnival, narrated by an Australian magpie, the opening sentence came to me almost fully formed. In this sentence, and in the entire book, I was trying to capture the cadences of the magpie’s song—its beautiful music, rhythm, repetition, and fluting, waterfall-like sound. For The Axeman’s Carnival and my other works, I aim to capture the book’s essence in that opening line—a microcosm of the world I want to create.
Q. Isn’t it fascinating how, in hindsight, the first line reveals a whole world within just a few words—something that seems simple at first but pulls the reader in and makes perfect sense after finishing the book?
A. I don’t want to overwork my readers, but I love when people say they had to go back to the start after finishing my book and noticed clues they missed the first time. I enjoy leaving breadcrumb trails—subtle hints that gain resonance or reveal new meaning on a second read.
Q. Is it fair to say that the different voices you inhabit in your novels , especially in the opening sentences, feel like a kind of literary ventriloquism—a remarkable mimicry?
A. It’s a tough question, but I’d say it comes from a deep dive into research. For The Axeman’s Carnival, I read dry scientific papers about magpie anatomy, song learning, diet, and distribution—things most wouldn’t find fascinating, but they drove my understanding. I learned, for example, that Australian magpies can sing two notes at once. That inspired the dual voices of Tama: one, poetic and musical, in the opening; the other, in quotes, mimicking human language from TV and the Internet—less articulate, adding humor to a dark story. Their laterally placed eyes, seeing two things at once, inspired the novel’s duality—Tama’s foot in both the human and wild worlds, exploring the tension between the domestic and the wild.
Q. How do you create distinct voices for the triplet brothers in The Book of Guilt , given their shared experiences and origin?
A. I often write notes at the start of a document or stick reminders on my laptop to get into the right headspace. For Vincent, the gentle, curious triplet who questions their origin, I focus on his wonder. Then I shift to William, prone to violence with a cruel streak, reminding myself of his language and actions. Sometimes, I even make them act against type to see what happens.
Q. Isn’t it fascinating how, in The Book of Guilt , the distinct rhythms of each character’s voice become clear, even without knowing the chapter? How do you craft each character to have such a strong, unique identity?
A. I’m glad you noticed that about The Book of Guilt. I work hard on editing, especially in polyphonic novels like this and Remote Sympathy, to differentiate voices. Much of that comes from the editing process. Writing The Book of Guilt, set in 1979 England, was interesting because my UK editor asked how I got it so right, given I didn’t grow up there. I explained that 1979 New Zealand was very like the UK—we still thought of Mother England , shared TV shows, fashions, foods, and even celebrated Christmas with a full English dinner, despite it being summer here. So recreating 1970s England didn’t feel like much of a stretch.
Q. Isn’t it interesting how The Book of Guilt feels dystopic, yet the dark elements—like the social workers and rehoming—mirror real-world governance practices? It’s unsettling how a small shift can transform that into a dark, dystopian world. How did you explore that tension?
A. I wanted The Book of Guilt to closely mirror real 1979 England, referencing actual events and TV shows so readers would easily accept its premise. If the world feels real, it’s just a small step to believe in the alternate history I’ve created. Just yesterday, a reader messaged me on Instagram—she’s so engrossed she had to Google the “Sycamore Scheme”, thinking it might be real. I was thrilled by that response; it showed how deeply she’d been drawn in.
I hope the book feels as relevant to today as Remote Sympathy does, which is set in Nazi Germany. In that book, I explored our capacity for willful ignorance—how we can look away from horrors happening right on our doorstep. I think I’m doing something similar in The Book of Guilt.
Q. It’s interesting how you link these two novels. What elements from your research or themes in Remote Sympathy did you leave unexplored, only to pursue them further in this novel?
A. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that The Book of Guilt explores what might have happened if World War II had ended differently—with no clear victor, just an uneasy truce or treaty between the superpowers.
Q. What do you discover each time you write teenage protagonists, a space that’s so intriguing to explore?
A. I love exploring that time in life when you’re no longer a child but not yet an adult—a vulnerable period full of change and possibility. It’s easy to show character growth at this stage. In Pet, a psychological thriller I wasn’t sure I was writing at the time, the narrator is 12-year-old Justine, set in dark, unsettling 1984 New Zealand. Then in The Book of Guilt, the 13-year-old triplets and Nancy begin questioning what they thought they knew. As they mature and face a new government with new rules, they wonder why villagers treat them strangely and why other kids shove them or laugh behind their backs. It’s the moment they start to realise what’s been happening their whole lives.
Q. Do you write with the intent to make readers’ hearts race, or does that just happen naturally?
Speaker A I think it’s a bit of both. I plan when to reveal or withhold information to keep readers engaged, thinking carefully about the book’s peaks, troughs, quiet moments, and dramatic highs.
Q. How do you establish your writing routine, especially while managing life’s bookends
A. My life is busy — I teach creative writing full-time at the University of Waikato and have a nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Somehow, I also write full-time. In the generative phase of a novel, I have no social life. I write first thing in the morning, then take my daughter to school, head to campus, and after dinner and bedtime, I write again. I do morning and evening shifts, usually seven days a week. I’m strict with myself, maintaining a daily word count that must be met. Even if I exceed it, the next day resets the clock, and I start over.
I wasn’t always this disciplined. Turning 50 almost five years ago, during our first covid lockdown, felt like a grim milestone. Around the same time, we faced unexpected bereavements, and I’d had a period from 2003 to 2016 when I couldn’t write or publish due to personal struggles. I never want to experience the frustration of a book taking 13 years to write again. All of this pushed me in 2020 to step on the accelerator.
Q. In an interview where you called The Beat of the Pendulum a “found novel.” What did you mean by that?
A. The Beat of the Pendulum was an experimental novel I wrote in 2016, after finishing The Wish Child. I needed a total change, so I decided to transcribe a chunk of text I encountered each day—conversations, TV shows, news, even my GPS voice—then manipulate it. I could remove words and add punctuation but couldn’t add new content. It’s like found poetry, but stretched into a novel. The experiment was inspired by my mother entering dementia and my daughter turning one—two opposite ends of language development. The book captures fleeting daily moments, distorted by time, exploring how we grasp onto ephemeral fragments of life.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q. Isn't it amazing that you chose literary fiction—a grueling, challenging genre—as your career path, achieving the kind of recognition that only about 1% of writers reach?
A. I don’t know that I chose it—it just came naturally. As a sickly child in 1970s New Zealand, home from school often with only two TV channels, I wrote to entertain myself, creating imaginary worlds to pass the time. It felt like a natural progression to turn that personal habit into something I shared and eventually dared to publish.
Q. Isn’t there something about the depth, intensity, and beauty of your writing that makes one wonder: do you have a keen sense of observation and a deep appreciation for silence?
A. It’s interesting you say that—I do relish silence. I’m definitely an introvert, and I need total quiet when I write. I’m easily distracted by background noise. I remember a boyfriend who stayed with us while I was writing my first novel in the mid-1990s. He wanted to write a letter to his parents, so he sat in my office while I worked. But the sound of his pen scratching on a wooden tray drove me crazy. I had to ask him to leave the room, which was pretty much the end of our relationship. I also relish silence in my work—leaving things unsaid, ending a scene with white space, letting the reader fill in the gaps.
Q. Isn’t it interesting how your practice brings a sacred quality to the secular world, where silence holds an equally powerful role as words and music?
A. I’ve thought about this over the years. I was raised Catholic, and even though I’m not practicing anymore, I’m grateful for that upbringing. It definitely fed my love for poetic language, pageantry, codes, magic, transformation, musicality, and silence. The structure of a mass embodies all of that, and I know it had a huge influence on the writer I’ve become.
Q. Y our writing is extraordinary—not just in structure, but in your magnificent opening sentences. How do you craft such powerful openings?
A. I do pay a lot of attention to openings, and usually, they come to me when the first line pops into my head. I know right away it’s the start of the book. With The Axeman's Carnival, narrated by an Australian magpie, the opening sentence came to me almost fully formed. In this sentence, and in the entire book, I was trying to capture the cadences of the magpie’s song—its beautiful music, rhythm, repetition, and fluting, waterfall-like sound. For The Axeman’s Carnival and my other works, I aim to capture the book’s essence in that opening line—a microcosm of the world I want to create.
Q. Isn’t it fascinating how, in hindsight, the first line reveals a whole world within just a few words—something that seems simple at first but pulls the reader in and makes perfect sense after finishing the book?
A. I don’t want to overwork my readers, but I love when people say they had to go back to the start after finishing my book and noticed clues they missed the first time. I enjoy leaving breadcrumb trails—subtle hints that gain resonance or reveal new meaning on a second read.
Q. Is it fair to say that the different voices you inhabit in your novels , especially in the opening sentences, feel like a kind of literary ventriloquism—a remarkable mimicry?
A. It’s a tough question, but I’d say it comes from a deep dive into research. For The Axeman’s Carnival, I read dry scientific papers about magpie anatomy, song learning, diet, and distribution—things most wouldn’t find fascinating, but they drove my understanding. I learned, for example, that Australian magpies can sing two notes at once. That inspired the dual voices of Tama: one, poetic and musical, in the opening; the other, in quotes, mimicking human language from TV and the Internet—less articulate, adding humor to a dark story. Their laterally placed eyes, seeing two things at once, inspired the novel’s duality—Tama’s foot in both the human and wild worlds, exploring the tension between the domestic and the wild.
Q. How do you create distinct voices for the triplet brothers in The Book of Guilt , given their shared experiences and origin?
A. I often write notes at the start of a document or stick reminders on my laptop to get into the right headspace. For Vincent, the gentle, curious triplet who questions their origin, I focus on his wonder. Then I shift to William, prone to violence with a cruel streak, reminding myself of his language and actions. Sometimes, I even make them act against type to see what happens.
Q. Isn’t it fascinating how, in The Book of Guilt , the distinct rhythms of each character’s voice become clear, even without knowing the chapter? How do you craft each character to have such a strong, unique identity?
A. I’m glad you noticed that about The Book of Guilt. I work hard on editing, especially in polyphonic novels like this and Remote Sympathy, to differentiate voices. Much of that comes from the editing process. Writing The Book of Guilt, set in 1979 England, was interesting because my UK editor asked how I got it so right, given I didn’t grow up there. I explained that 1979 New Zealand was very like the UK—we still thought of Mother England , shared TV shows, fashions, foods, and even celebrated Christmas with a full English dinner, despite it being summer here. So recreating 1970s England didn’t feel like much of a stretch.
Q. Isn’t it interesting how The Book of Guilt feels dystopic, yet the dark elements—like the social workers and rehoming—mirror real-world governance practices? It’s unsettling how a small shift can transform that into a dark, dystopian world. How did you explore that tension?
A. I wanted The Book of Guilt to closely mirror real 1979 England, referencing actual events and TV shows so readers would easily accept its premise. If the world feels real, it’s just a small step to believe in the alternate history I’ve created. Just yesterday, a reader messaged me on Instagram—she’s so engrossed she had to Google the “Sycamore Scheme”, thinking it might be real. I was thrilled by that response; it showed how deeply she’d been drawn in.
I hope the book feels as relevant to today as Remote Sympathy does, which is set in Nazi Germany. In that book, I explored our capacity for willful ignorance—how we can look away from horrors happening right on our doorstep. I think I’m doing something similar in The Book of Guilt.
Q. It’s interesting how you link these two novels. What elements from your research or themes in Remote Sympathy did you leave unexplored, only to pursue them further in this novel?
A. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that The Book of Guilt explores what might have happened if World War II had ended differently—with no clear victor, just an uneasy truce or treaty between the superpowers.
Q. What do you discover each time you write teenage protagonists, a space that’s so intriguing to explore?
A. I love exploring that time in life when you’re no longer a child but not yet an adult—a vulnerable period full of change and possibility. It’s easy to show character growth at this stage. In Pet, a psychological thriller I wasn’t sure I was writing at the time, the narrator is 12-year-old Justine, set in dark, unsettling 1984 New Zealand. Then in The Book of Guilt, the 13-year-old triplets and Nancy begin questioning what they thought they knew. As they mature and face a new government with new rules, they wonder why villagers treat them strangely and why other kids shove them or laugh behind their backs. It’s the moment they start to realise what’s been happening their whole lives.
Q. Do you write with the intent to make readers’ hearts race, or does that just happen naturally?
Speaker A I think it’s a bit of both. I plan when to reveal or withhold information to keep readers engaged, thinking carefully about the book’s peaks, troughs, quiet moments, and dramatic highs.
Q. How do you establish your writing routine, especially while managing life’s bookends
A. My life is busy — I teach creative writing full-time at the University of Waikato and have a nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Somehow, I also write full-time. In the generative phase of a novel, I have no social life. I write first thing in the morning, then take my daughter to school, head to campus, and after dinner and bedtime, I write again. I do morning and evening shifts, usually seven days a week. I’m strict with myself, maintaining a daily word count that must be met. Even if I exceed it, the next day resets the clock, and I start over.
I wasn’t always this disciplined. Turning 50 almost five years ago, during our first covid lockdown, felt like a grim milestone. Around the same time, we faced unexpected bereavements, and I’d had a period from 2003 to 2016 when I couldn’t write or publish due to personal struggles. I never want to experience the frustration of a book taking 13 years to write again. All of this pushed me in 2020 to step on the accelerator.
Q. In an interview where you called The Beat of the Pendulum a “found novel.” What did you mean by that?
A. The Beat of the Pendulum was an experimental novel I wrote in 2016, after finishing The Wish Child. I needed a total change, so I decided to transcribe a chunk of text I encountered each day—conversations, TV shows, news, even my GPS voice—then manipulate it. I could remove words and add punctuation but couldn’t add new content. It’s like found poetry, but stretched into a novel. The experiment was inspired by my mother entering dementia and my daughter turning one—two opposite ends of language development. The book captures fleeting daily moments, distorted by time, exploring how we grasp onto ephemeral fragments of life.
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