Speaker 1: The first time I ever interviewed an author in front
Speaker 1: of an audience was at Melbourne Writers' Festival in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: This year twenty seven and Bella's twenty five.
Speaker 1: Jesus four twenty four. Yeah, that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: It's twenty years for you and I going, that's.
Speaker 1: Right, Charlotte's now the age I was when we're met.
Speaker 1: The author I spoke with for that first interview was
Speaker 1: also a first timer, kind of. His name was Michael Robotham,
Speaker 1: and even though we'd written over a dozen best selling books,
Speaker 1: his career up until then had been in the shadows
Speaker 1: of anonymity. He was a professional ghostwriter, Tony Bullymore, Jerry Halliwell,
Speaker 1: he even wrote Rolf Harris's autobiography. But this was his
Speaker 1: first book in his own name, a crime novel called
Speaker 1: The Suspect, And it was, as they say in the
Speaker 1: industry generating buzz. I was nervous. He was nervous, but
Speaker 1: between us we muddled through. And look at us now,
Speaker 1: how far we've come. Two decades on. Michael Robotham is
Speaker 1: a crime writing rock star, and I'm Michael Williams. And
Speaker 1: this is read this the show about the books we
Speaker 1: love and the twenty year stories behind me a little
Speaker 1: bit of context for the crime writing rockstar label. In
Speaker 1: the intervening twenty years, Michael has written eighteen books published
Speaker 1: in twenty five languages around the world. Stephen Kingsafan the
Speaker 1: other day he tweetled about Michael's new novel, storm Child,
Speaker 1: the latest of his series featuring criminal psychologist Cyrus Haven.
Speaker 1: King called it brilliant and propulsive and it's already sitting
Speaker 1: high atop the best seller lists for crime officionados. A
Speaker 1: new Michael Robotham book is a key date on the
Speaker 1: reading calendar. Stormchild is true to form and brings in
Speaker 1: refugee politics and intergenerational trauma, unfurling more of the mysteries
Speaker 1: behind his troubled heroine, Ev Cormack. It's a gripping read
Speaker 1: and its author is clearly no longer a first timer.
Speaker 1: Michael Robotham, I want to take you back to that
Speaker 1: first Melbourne Writers Festival as a baby author. You're out
Speaker 1: there for the first time, and I know at that
Speaker 1: festival you had some very exalted sessions. You were from
Speaker 1: memory on a panel with Harlan Coben and Michael Connolly.
Speaker 1: You know you did enter the world of crime writing
Speaker 1: as a rock star in the making, but arguably the
Speaker 1: most prestigious event you did at that festival was with
Speaker 1: a young, upstart interviewer. Do you remember what it was like,
Speaker 1: that feeling of finally putting your name on a book.
Speaker 2: I remember when I first saw my name on a book.
Speaker 2: I was actually because i'd go Stretten fifteen autobiographies for
Speaker 2: the Great and the Good and the Less Good, Thank you, Rolf.
Speaker 2: But I remember the very first time I saw my
Speaker 2: name on a book was in Amsterdam, because the Dutch
Speaker 2: had got two translators working on the Suspect and got
Speaker 2: it out before the English language version. And I was
Speaker 2: in Amsterdam when it was launched, and my first reaction
Speaker 2: was that made a dreadful mistake, because my name shouldn't
Speaker 2: be on a book. I'm a ghost writer and I've
Speaker 2: always been the hidden hand. And then I remember being
Speaker 2: in London when the book launched, and I had the
Speaker 2: most astonishing, surreal experience of walking down onto a train
Speaker 2: platform and there was a huge poster on the opposite
Speaker 2: side of the tube station and it showed this silhouetted
Speaker 2: man beside a Canal underneath the Bridge very moody, and
Speaker 2: the caption read, He's had eleven Sunday Times best sellers
Speaker 2: and sold to me in books, but you don't know
Speaker 2: his name. Meet the man behind the ghost and I
Speaker 2: remember being shocked by that, thinking they can't do that,
Speaker 2: they can't do that. But it's such completely surreal, and
Speaker 2: it took my long while to get used to seeing
Speaker 2: my name on the book.
Speaker 1: It's funny because the ghost writing as a background meant
Speaker 1: that you were when you wrote your first novel, you're
Speaker 1: already a past master at crafting a story, at thinking
Speaker 1: your way into a character's head. But I remember you
Speaker 1: talking about what that process of ghostwriting involved, and they're
Speaker 1: sitting down and talking to people and they kind of listening,
Speaker 1: and the understanding they're finding the voice and finding the
Speaker 1: way in and strikes me as a fundamentally building block
Speaker 1: for any novelist, I think absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the reason that pretty much in my
Speaker 2: entire sort of career as a fiction writer, as a
Speaker 2: crime writer, I've written in the first person because I
Speaker 2: did these fifteen books in the first person, and if
Speaker 2: I did my job well as a ghost writer, then
Speaker 2: you know, Jerry Halliwell, or Lulu or you know, Tony
Speaker 2: Buller more, whoever it was, it would look and sound
Speaker 2: and feel like them, and no one would recognize my
Speaker 2: fingerprints on the page. And very much I approached fiction
Speaker 2: the same way. I remember the moment when I captured
Speaker 2: Joe Locklan's voice, you know, in that first book, The Suspect,
Speaker 2: And it's not the opening line of the book. It's
Speaker 2: a line where I wrote that Joe Locklin, because he's
Speaker 2: got early on sat Parkinson's is brilliant psychologist. And Joe
Speaker 2: Locklin's voice he says, when I wake up in the
Speaker 2: morning and get out of bed, I know if it's
Speaker 2: going to be a good day or a bad day,
Speaker 2: if I can bend down and tie my shoes, And
Speaker 2: that slightly self deprecating sense of humor in amidst the
Speaker 2: adversity that was Joe's voice, And from that moment I thought,
Speaker 2: I have his voice now.
Speaker 1: Then faculty with kind of dialogue and with humor, and
Speaker 1: it characterizes your work. Your most recent book, Storm Child,
Speaker 1: has a moment of high drama where things are coming
Speaker 1: to a head, the you know, good evil kind of
Speaker 1: clash of all these things, and the vaguely villainous character
Speaker 1: not even vaguely stops to say, is that a cliche
Speaker 1: or a trope like a has a moment in the
Speaker 1: same way it just wants to talk about words and
Speaker 1: an idea. And it's such a finely observed moment about character.
Speaker 1: That doesn't break the tension, that doesn't it just kind
Speaker 1: of adds to it.
Speaker 2: Many many years ago, when I was a feature writer,
Speaker 2: before I became a ghost writer, I was a journalist
Speaker 2: and a feature writer, and I picked up a book
Speaker 2: called Stalking the Feature Story. I can't remember the name
Speaker 2: of who wrote it now, but it was probably the
Speaker 2: best book I'd ever read on on the art of
Speaker 2: feature writing. But it actually used a Hemingway example. Hemingway
Speaker 2: once described a character as having a dimple deep enough
Speaker 2: to drop a marble into. And it was just, I mean,
Speaker 2: in that one line, it didn't matter whether you read
Speaker 2: another two hundred pages, you remembered that character. And so
Speaker 2: that's sort of what I strive to do at times,
Speaker 2: is to just think of you can't do every line
Speaker 2: like that. Every line can't be a zinger, so to speak.
Speaker 2: I mean, but you're just trying to do the one
Speaker 2: line descripture at times that will cement a character in
Speaker 2: the reader's mind, and that reader will remember that character.
Speaker 1: That also has significance in the context of genre fiction
Speaker 1: when it comes to seeding plot points that are going
Speaker 1: to be important afterwards. You know, Agatha Christie was a
Speaker 1: great one for talking about playing fair with the reader,
Speaker 1: that you know that you have this contract with your
Speaker 1: reader where you can set stuff up, but the reveals
Speaker 1: when they happen, the twists when they happen, can't come
Speaker 1: out of the blue. They have to be carefully seated
Speaker 1: through the book beforehand. And I'm curious about the ways
Speaker 1: in which that for you has changed in your plotting
Speaker 1: as you've gone on in your career, whether you're now
Speaker 1: like more schematic or less schematic than you were when
Speaker 1: you started.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've changed. That was the great challenge
Speaker 2: with writing Storm Child is when I created the series
Speaker 2: with Cyrus Savan and Needy Kormack, with Good God, Bad Girl,
Speaker 2: I mean ev is this young girl was found hiding
Speaker 2: in a hidden room in a house where a man
Speaker 2: had been tortured to death. And when you reach the
Speaker 2: end of Good God, Bad Goal, everything you thought you
Speaker 2: knew about Evie gets turned on its head, But you
Speaker 2: don't know who put her in that room, and that's
Speaker 2: still a mystery that's got to be answered. And readers
Speaker 2: would come to me after that saying, but you know
Speaker 2: who put her in the room, don't you going? No idea,
Speaker 2: no idea. So I had to write the second book
Speaker 2: when She was Good, based upon the clues that I
Speaker 2: created in the first book, and going all the way
Speaker 2: through to Storm Child, where all the details of Evie's backstory,
Speaker 2: her creation story are revealed. In Storm Child. When I
Speaker 2: began the first book, I had no idea about Evie's story.
Speaker 2: There was no character arc. I had to create that
Speaker 2: after each book.
Speaker 1: Is that important to you to have mystery? To you?
Speaker 1: When you write that, you're happy to set up a scenario,
Speaker 1: but you're not writing to a point of s You're
Speaker 1: writing to a point of kind of curiosity.
Speaker 2: Totally. I mean, I understand why people like you know,
Speaker 2: Jane Harper and Jeffrey Deaver, they plot the entire book
Speaker 2: out in advance before they begin writing it. I mean
Speaker 2: to me, the idea that I would know what I
Speaker 2: was going to be writing next Tuesday at four o'clock,
Speaker 2: I would find credibly sort of boring. And the beauty
Speaker 2: is that, you know when I come in from you know,
Speaker 2: I have this writer's room which my daughters in the
Speaker 2: previous house they refer to my writing room as Dad's
Speaker 2: pit of despair. I now work in the kabana of cruelty.
Speaker 2: But when I come in from the cabana of cruelty
Speaker 2: and say to my wife, you would not believe what
Speaker 2: just happened. I mean, if I haven't seen the twist coming,
Speaker 2: then I think I don't imagine the reader will see
Speaker 2: it coming. So it's a very organic way of writing.
Speaker 2: It's a very exciting way of writing. It's a very
Speaker 2: scary way of writing. But it means that when my
Speaker 2: main character is hang by their fingertips from a cliff,
Speaker 2: I'm hanging there with them thinking how the hell am
Speaker 2: I going to get them off this cliff? And it
Speaker 2: makes it an exciting journey.
Speaker 1: Do you have a sense of having to play fair
Speaker 1: with yourself or do you like pushing the limits of
Speaker 1: where that goes? All right, I'm going to blow everything
Speaker 1: up purely because it's going to give me that frissle
Speaker 1: of how do I fix this?
Speaker 2: No, I think it's got to be believable. I appreciate
Speaker 2: how clever readers are, and I always accept the fact
Speaker 2: that there are some readers that are going to pick
Speaker 2: the villain or pick the ending. I mean, you can
Speaker 2: try your best, you know. I think one of the
Speaker 2: great problems though, is if you you know, you don't
Speaker 2: want a situation where the villain is beamed down at
Speaker 2: the last chapter and you haven't given the reader any
Speaker 2: any as you mentioned earlier, any chance of You're not
Speaker 2: played fair with them at all. So you accept the
Speaker 2: fact that some readers are going to going to guess
Speaker 2: the ending. Some really set out to guess see any
Speaker 2: others you know are quite happy to just go along
Speaker 2: for the ride. My wife thinks that watching any crime
Speaker 2: drama is spoil for me because literally five minutes in,
Speaker 2: I'll go that person, they're the villain. She's quite happy
Speaker 2: to just let it roll over her and just enjoy
Speaker 2: the journey. But I mean, I think I do play fair.
Speaker 2: I don't tend to blow things up. I think initially
Speaker 2: I give readers too much credit and I don't put
Speaker 2: enough clues in. And what I do you know, through
Speaker 2: the many many rewrites, I go back and I plant
Speaker 2: more clues in and I refer to the not soo
Speaker 2: much as clues as land mines. I bury land mines.
Speaker 2: And the thing is I put a flag on it
Speaker 2: and say there's a landmine here, But then I distract
Speaker 2: the reader. So at some point they step on the
Speaker 2: landmine and it blows their leg off and they go,
Speaker 2: damn him. You know, I saw him plant that mine.
Speaker 2: And so that's what it's about.
Speaker 1: There is a comfort, I mean, is one of the
Speaker 1: things about reading genre where you don't want it to
Speaker 1: run away from its own conventions. You know that actually
Speaker 1: part of the thrill of it is knowing the tradition
Speaker 1: into which it's being written and kind of understanding that
Speaker 1: that being done in an original way or a surprising way.
Speaker 1: That's where the play not in kind of completely undermining
Speaker 1: all those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, I mean, I have a I
Speaker 2: hate three word slogans for all sorts of reasons, but
Speaker 2: I have three words that I sort of write by,
Speaker 2: and that's make them care.
Speaker 1: I thought it was stop the boats, make them care, right,
Speaker 1: that make them care?
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, not the other one. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I'm in awe of people like Gillian Flynn and gone
Speaker 2: girl who could create two completely odious characters in Nick
Speaker 2: and Amy and pull that off with the Unreliable and Radar.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's astonishing piece of writing. And you know
Speaker 2: Trisia high Smith did it with the Ripley novels, or
Speaker 2: you know Paula Hawkins Girl on a Train. I mean,
Speaker 2: every so often people break the rules and get away
Speaker 2: with it, and I'm in awe of that because, you know,
Speaker 2: because I tend to stick to the premise that I
Speaker 2: want to give the reader a chance. I want to
Speaker 2: make the reader fall in love with my characters, and
Speaker 2: then I will do terrible things for those characters.
Speaker 1: One of the ways you do that and one of
Speaker 1: the tricks that you've played right through your twenty years
Speaker 1: of crime writing. It's certainly writing series and series characters,
Speaker 1: but it's the sideways step. It's the kind of moving
Speaker 1: the focus to other characters in the same world that
Speaker 1: you've done kind of several times through your career. And
Speaker 1: what it means is you afford yourself a kind of
Speaker 1: different lens through which to look at characters you've previously created.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Joel Lochlan before he was kind of your
Speaker 1: key protagonist early in your career. Joe still looms in
Speaker 1: the background of these books, but as seen by others
Speaker 1: rather than in his own head.
Speaker 2: When I set out to write, I didn't intend to
Speaker 2: write a series. So when I wrote The Suspect and
Speaker 2: created the Joe Lochlan character, I mean, if I thought
Speaker 2: I was going to write a series, what sort of
Speaker 2: idiot would have given their main character early on set
Speaker 2: Parkinson's I mean, I mean, I thought I was creating
Speaker 2: this man with a brilliant mind whose body was abandoning
Speaker 2: him bit by bit. Loved the tragic irony of that,
Speaker 2: but I didn't imagine I'd write more Joe Lachlan books,
Speaker 2: and so I fought against it doing the series. So
Speaker 2: I did take another character, like Vincent Luis became the
Speaker 2: main character of Lost, and then Alicia Barbara Young Policemen
Speaker 2: became the main character in The Night Very. And the
Speaker 2: one thing I've always wanted to avoid is writing the
Speaker 2: same book twice and we all see it and without
Speaker 2: naming names, you know, we pick up and we read
Speaker 2: a writer who always admired and we might still enjoy
Speaker 2: the book. But there's a sameness to it, you know,
Speaker 2: and there's a comfort in that there's also a they're
Speaker 2: not surprising you to be.
Speaker 1: A coward, Michael, names.
Speaker 2: You want to I'm not going to name names. No,
Speaker 2: I know too many of these people.
Speaker 1: I know fair enough, and you know, to be fair
Speaker 1: to Lee Child, they've got his brother to start writing
Speaker 1: him at some points.
Speaker 2: So you said that, not me, Michael, I mean I
Speaker 2: want someone to tap me on the shoulder when I'm
Speaker 2: sort of if they feel as though I'm posting it
Speaker 2: in or on I'm not trying new things and new
Speaker 2: voices or and I get bored. So I want to
Speaker 2: try always to create something fresh in year.
Speaker 1: When we return, Michael reveals ways never set a book
Speaker 1: in Australia and why that might be about to change.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute. A phrase that comes
Speaker 1: up in this book and that is relevant to Evie
Speaker 1: and her story is truth wizards. And I want to
Speaker 1: ask you if truth wizards are a real thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are, because ev Cormac is a has got
Speaker 2: this ability to tell when someone is lying. And you know,
Speaker 2: present company excluded, of course, Michael, the majority of people
Speaker 2: lie between ten and two hundred times a day. And
Speaker 2: when I said earlier that you're looking good.
Speaker 1: That's so hurtful. Michael.
Speaker 2: So that's so interesting, interesting you should ask that, Michael,
Speaker 2: what a great question, whether it be you know I'm
Speaker 2: five minutes away, I bought it on special, or I've
Speaker 2: read the terms and conditions. We lie all the time
Speaker 2: to people we love, So for Evie it's not a gift.
Speaker 2: It's a curse because three little words like I love
Speaker 2: you or I miss you become incredibly damaging if you
Speaker 2: know they're not genuine, and so Evie is what's known
Speaker 2: as a truth wizard that The term was coined by
Speaker 2: Professor Paul Eckman, who is the world's leading expert on lying.
Speaker 2: About one in five hundred people have the ability to
Speaker 2: tell when someone is lying. They invariably have come from
Speaker 2: law enforcement or child services, or many of them are
Speaker 2: school teachers, because I mean, if you're lied to for
Speaker 2: a living, you tend to be able to pick it
Speaker 2: up a bit better. Evie is a bit of an anomaly.
Speaker 2: But when they do find young people to have the ability,
Speaker 2: they often come from very violent or dysfunctional backgrounds where
Speaker 2: they've had to work out within a split second whether
Speaker 2: they're going to be hugged or hit, and they then
Speaker 2: pick up on the signals, and so truth wizards do exist.
Speaker 2: I hate the term. It sounds very JK. Rowling, Harry Potter,
Speaker 2: but they do exist in society, and they have the
Speaker 2: best one to have about an eighty percent ability to
Speaker 2: pick the verbal lie or the emotional lie or the
Speaker 2: physical lie.
Speaker 1: With Cyrus Haven, you've gone back to the psychologist. Well,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I'm interested in what it is about
Speaker 1: psychologists in particular, rather than conventional law enforcement characters that
Speaker 1: you do seem drawn to. You seem drawn to the
Speaker 1: person who's on the periphery. At one point, someone in Stormchild,
Speaker 1: one of the cops, points out that Cyrus is a
Speaker 1: kind of second rate Hercule Poirot, and there is something
Speaker 1: about someone who's outside the system that must be appealing.
Speaker 1: But why psychology that kind of slightly dates back to
Speaker 1: one of your ghosts written books for you, doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It does. I mean, I think police procedurals there,
Speaker 2: I mean, there are so many of them out there,
Speaker 2: and there are so many rules and regulations that the
Speaker 2: police have to follow and detectives have to follow. I
Speaker 2: yearned for the days of the Sweeney, where you could
Speaker 2: kick indoors and you know, and slap suspects around the head,
Speaker 2: all of which is impossible now, I mean everything's by the.
Speaker 1: Book, sent crime book.
Speaker 2: That's the only way to go. But no one of
Speaker 2: the people I go strot for. And I guess my
Speaker 2: knowledge of criminal psychology comes from having worked with a
Speaker 2: man called Paul Britton, who was a pioneer of offender
Speaker 2: profiling in the UK, who had spent twenty thirty years
Speaker 2: working in broad Moor and ramped and with the deciding
Speaker 2: whether people could ever be treated or released. So he's
Speaker 2: knowledge of human behavior came from that background. And I
Speaker 2: did two books with Paul. I go strough to book
Speaker 2: called a Jigsaw Man, and he'd worked on over one
Speaker 2: hundred murder cases, Friend Rosemary West, the House of Horrors,
Speaker 2: you know, Jamie Bulger, the Little Boy in Liverpool. I mean,
Speaker 2: just endless numbers of incredible cases. And then we did
Speaker 2: a second book called Picking Up the Pieces about his
Speaker 2: clinical work, and a lot of the novels have been
Speaker 2: seated in those cases that Paul did. I mean, even
Speaker 2: The Secret She Keeps, which was turned into the TV
Speaker 2: series you know that was based upon the kidnapping of
Speaker 2: Abbi Humphrey's little baby, that was kidnapped from the Queen's
Speaker 2: Medical Center in Nottingham by a woman who faked a
Speaker 2: pregnancy and dresses and earths and stole and the baby
Speaker 2: was missing for seventeen days. And so I created an
Speaker 2: entire sort of fictionalized that sort of event. And so
Speaker 2: many of the novels have been seated in poor Britain
Speaker 2: cases or stories that we maybe couldn't mention in the books,
Speaker 2: but I thought still would make great novel material.
Speaker 1: Does that been At some point there's going to be
Speaker 1: a You're going to write a crime novel from the
Speaker 1: perspective of a Jerry Halliwell style character, and you just
Speaker 1: like mind those stories.
Speaker 2: Now I do mind. It's funny, I still mind those
Speaker 2: stories of all my ghost written books. One of the
Speaker 2: people I did who you know, I go straight for
Speaker 2: was Ricky Tomlinson, a British comedy actor who was most
Speaker 2: famous for comedy series called The Royal Family written by
Speaker 2: Carolyn O'Hearn. And Ricky had spent time in prison when
Speaker 2: he was a builder's laborer and he was rested on
Speaker 2: a picket line and there were a couple of stories
Speaker 2: that he told me from his time in prison that
Speaker 2: have turned up in books like Life or Death or
Speaker 2: so I do mind all of those All of those
Speaker 2: things finish up being fodder.
Speaker 1: Really your career, your meteoric career. Obviously most of it
Speaker 1: you owe to me interviewing you early in it. But
Speaker 1: you know that picture of ads in the tube station,
Speaker 1: bidding wars in multiple territories. All of that stuff is
Speaker 1: a kind of rare story of success. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: for you about the relationship between being an international author
Speaker 1: and being an Australian author, what that success feels like
Speaker 1: at home, and what it feels like when you're out
Speaker 1: in the world on the circuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I did have an incredibly fortunate start. Most
Speaker 2: of my publishing contacts were in the UK because that's
Speaker 2: where i'd goes stritten for for many years, even though
Speaker 2: I'm born and bred Australian. I mean, I was sold
Speaker 2: internationally from UK, and I'm always regarded myself as more
Speaker 2: international sort of writer anyway, But more and more it's
Speaker 2: the question I get asked most often is you know,
Speaker 2: a y, I don't set my books in Australia. And secondly,
Speaker 2: when are you going to set a book in Australia.
Speaker 1: And it's I've got this right. It's because you hate
Speaker 1: Australia and Australians. I'm pretty sure you've said that to
Speaker 1: me off Mike, But are you happy to say that
Speaker 1: on the record.
Speaker 2: Nothing, No, none of the above. That's such a slanderous.
Speaker 1: We're going to edit out. You're applied. Now.
Speaker 2: What happened was I have I have in my bottom
Speaker 2: drawer at home the greatest ever unpublished Australian novel, and
Speaker 2: it was almost published by Penguin in the UK in
Speaker 2: about nineteen ninety five, and I missed out by a
Speaker 2: single vote in a publishing meeting was set in a
Speaker 2: small fishing fishing town on the coast, and I missed
Speaker 2: up by a single vote. And I was told afterwards,
Speaker 2: if I'd set that book in England, Island, Scotland or Wales,
Speaker 2: they would have published it in a heartbeat, But because
Speaker 2: I've set it in Australia, it was just too hard
Speaker 2: for them to sell. This is well before, which was
Speaker 2: pre Jane Harper having blown the doors off and opened
Speaker 2: the world up for Australian crime writers. And so when
Speaker 2: I sat down to write another book, which became The Suspect,
Speaker 2: I thought all sat it in the UK, and of
Speaker 2: course it triggered the Bidding War and the rest is history.
Speaker 2: And since then, for twenty odd years, I've had publishers
Speaker 2: asking me about this novel in the bottom drawer. And
Speaker 2: the thing is, while it remains of my bottom drawer, Michael,
Speaker 2: it will always be Australia's greatest ever unpublished novel.
Speaker 1: Schrodingen's novel.
Speaker 2: You can't open that draw out. But saying that I've
Speaker 2: it's this is something I've only I've just been to
Speaker 2: the UK on a pre pre publicity sort of tour
Speaker 2: and it's amazing. How you know, fifteen years ago I
Speaker 2: had a British publisher told me they would be happy
Speaker 2: if I set a book anywhere in the world except Australia,
Speaker 2: and this time around it was odd. I was in
Speaker 2: the UK and I said, listen, I think I'm going
Speaker 2: to set a book set write a book set in Australia,
Speaker 2: and they went, what a brilliant idea. So hearing it
Speaker 2: now that my twentieth novel, So not next year, but
Speaker 2: the year after my twentieth novel, I'm coming home.
Speaker 1: That's pretty exciting and standalone or do you see yourself
Speaker 1: kind of launching into a whole new this one.
Speaker 2: Would you believe I'm taking the book out of the
Speaker 2: bottom drawer and I'm rewriting it. So it's a book
Speaker 2: that really is going to be something like thirty odd
Speaker 2: years in the making.
Speaker 1: So I'd like that a good gestation period on a
Speaker 1: book is a nice thing. I think a robotm thank
Speaker 1: you for your.
Speaker 2: Time, Michael Williams, it's an enormous pleasure. Let's not wait
Speaker 2: twenty more years.
Speaker 1: We'll do it again. Michael Robotham's latest novel, Storm Child,
Speaker 1: is available wherever you buy your books. Before we go,
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you what I've been reading this
Speaker 1: week and given Michael and I met on stage at
Speaker 1: a writer's first of all, it feels like nice timing
Speaker 1: to be able to praise a book by someone else
Speaker 1: I first met at writers' firstivals. Elsa Piper is an
Speaker 1: absolutely fabulous moderator of literary events and a wonderful and
Speaker 1: astute reader, so it's hardly surprising that she turns out
Speaker 1: to be an accomplished writer herself. Her book is called
Speaker 1: for Life, and it's an account of the death of
Speaker 1: her husband and the role that the natural world and
Speaker 1: the written word can play in how we grieve and
Speaker 1: how we heal. It's beautiful. You can find it and
Speaker 1: all the other books we mentioned today at your favorite
Speaker 1: independent bookstore. That's it for this week's show. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it, don't forget to subscribe and tell your friends
Speaker 1: and rate and review. It helps a lot read This
Speaker 1: is produced and edited by Clara Ames, with mixing and
Speaker 1: original compositions by Zalton Fetcher. Thanks for listening, See you
Speaker 1: next week.