DOUBLE THE FUN
AUTHOR TANYA MOIR (47) – AKA HOLLY FORD – SPENDS HER DAYS IN IMAGINARY WORLDS
Tanya Moir’s romantic alter ego
You hear about authors who jump out of bed in the morning and are so disciplined, they immediately sit down at their desks and knock out lots of wonderful words. I do that sometimes, when I’m particularly excited by a person or event I’m writing about, but generally I try to get household chores such as the breakfast dishes and walking the dog out of the way before I sit down to work. Otherwise, my husband Ian comes home to an utter mess and that’s hardly fair on him!
When I finally sit down to savour my morning coffee, inspiration usually comes to me and I make notes on my phone, then dedicate the rest of the day to writing. Some days it’s a few words; others it’s a lot. When I do get writers’ block, I try very hard to work through it.
I usually give myself the weekend off, unless I’m so utterly immersed in an imaginary world that I simply have to stay there.
I was born in Invercargill and grew up in the rolling Hokonui Hills in Dipton, Southland. So here in Akaroa on Banks Peninsula, where we live in a paddock on eight hectares, I feel right at home and constantly inspired.
The landscape certainly comes into my work and my new novel The Last McAdam
– my fourth writing as my alter ego, Holly Ford – is set in Central Otago, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the years, during my childhood and more recently when researching for my books.
I’d always been a keen writer, even as a little girl, and I worked in the media for many years – including a stint as fashion editor at The Press in Christchurch. But my first romance-writing ideas actually came to me in Europe, where I worked in the PR industry. I walked an hour each day to get to work and I found myself creating characters for the first book of my Blackpeak saga in my head, but it was quite a while before I committed them to paper.
Ian and I worked in the media in Rome for four years and in London for 10, where there were usually lots of other things going on, so I ended up playing around with those particular characters for a long time.
When my first serious novels appeared, after moving back to New Zealand, I told my publisher about Blackpeak and they asked to see the original manuscript. It was quite a while before I managed to find and rework it, but I think it turned out well.
When I finally, really got started writing in my mid-30s, I was hooked right away. I love the process of imagining a character and bringing him or her to life. We all know how you can finish a good book and really miss one or more of the people in it who you identify with or like, and as a writer,
I feel exactly the same way.
I have general ideas, but it’s fleshing them out that’s the great challenge and I love the
process of getting to know those fictional people. I’m lucky that I can more or less make a living from it now and I love the balance I get from juggling two genres: romance and serious literature.
Actually, I was writing The Last McAdam while my brother, comedian Jon Gadsby, was dying at the end of 2015. It was a terrible time for us as a family, but I guess in a way, I was lucky as I had another world to escape to when things were so grim.
I think that’s what I really want for my readers too. We all have dark days in our lives and if I can take a reader out of a miserable present, even just for a short time, I feel very satisfied.
Ian and I were actually in Auckland when both of the big Canterbury earthquakes happened, but I was here alone for some of the aftershocks and it doesn’t take too much imagination to understand the living nightmare many Cantabrians were going through. I really felt for them.
Like so many other people, I suddenly understood that life can be short and achieving goals and having fun while you can is incredibly important.
I’m working on a new romance novel [under the pseudonym] Holly Ford now and, as always, I’m enjoying the experience enormously.”
As told to Louise Richardson