CANCER PLOT TWIST
LIFE IS SWEETER THAN FICTION ONCE MORE FOR THE AUTHOR
Life is sweeter than fiction once more for Danielle Hawkins
If there was a handbook for writing a bestseller, Danielle Hawkins could include the tip that it’s best not to pen a new novel when you’re undergoing chemotherapy.
It’s wisdom from her own experience last year, when the popular rural romance author took her laptop to Waikato Hospital each week and tapped out the manuscript for her fourth novel, all while being treated for breast cancer. She submitted the draft to her publisher and received the response, “Ah, it’s quite bleak, isn’t it?”
“And that’s what happens when you try to write a book when you feel like crap!” laughs the 40-year-old, who is chatting to the Weekly from her family’s farm in Otorohanga.
“I was a little bit embarrassed and had to go and cheer it all up. This poor heroine in my story, nothing went right and everybody was against her.
“For me, writing it felt like I’d run a marathon – and then I needed to go back and do it again.
“In hindsight, it probably would’ve been better to stop and not even think about it for six months,” says Danielle, who has since, thankfully, been given the all-clear from doctors.
Nevertheless, her latest book – tentatively titled When It All Went to Custard – is due out soon and life has returned to normal for the mother-of-two, who works part-time as a largeanimal vet when not writing.
“Things are much easier and more pleasant now,” Danielle admits. “I didn’t realise just how stressed we actually were, despite thinking we were coping really well throughout the treatment.
“Doctors had told me the cancer was an ‘aggressivespread-to-lymph-nodes nasty type’ and life as we knew it stopped. So it’s awesome to be well again – I’m very lucky.”
Danielle first took up writing as a hobby while on maternity leave 11 years ago, and drawing on country life for her novels wasn’t something she initially set out to do.
At first, it was all just for fun. But considering how much time was spent bent over the laptop, she found herself wondering whether she had any real writing talent. So with trepidation, her “elaborate apocalyptic-
themed” story was sent off to an Australian publisher and, before she knew it, Danielle was opening the most encouraging rejection letter one could hope for.
“It said, ‘We think you write really nicely, but it’s just not a good plot. Rural romance is hot right now, though – why don’t you try that?’” she recalls.
“I thought, ‘Well, that’s actually heaps easier because it’s writing about people like me!’
“I’m always interested in how characters relate to each other, that’s the stuff I enjoy focusing on. And, obviously, a love story fits nicely into that.”
However, Danielle’s not sure how she feels about being dubbed King Country’s romance queen.
“The whole imposed genre thing is quite artificial and I was taken aback to be labelled a romance writer because that wasn’t what I thought I was doing,” she explains.
In her first book, Dinner at Rose’s, the main character,
Jo, escapes the city and a demoralising break-up to start a new life in rural Waimanu.
The snappy dialogue is dotted with Kiwi references, something that wasn’t met with enthusiasm from the publisher’s sales team across the ditch.
“Oh, it’s much cooler if chick-lit is based in New York or Dublin,” she says drily.
“It was suggested the book should be set somewhere international, which I thought was really dumb – it would have been so obvious I knew nothing about the setting I was trying to describe. I was very grateful when the publisher backed me and let it through with its Kiwi colloquialisms intact.”
As far as debut books go, by a New Zealand author, it sold more than 12,000 copies, which Danielle describes as being respectable but “not enough to incite international bidding wars.”
When she was growing up, the self-confessed bookworm only ever wanted to be a vet and found herself influenced by James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.
After graduating in veterinary science, her first job was up north in Mangawhai, where she met her husband Jarrod, who was managing a dairy farm.
Unlike the clichéd love-at-firstsight stories, often lauded in romance fiction, theirs was more of a slow burn.
“In those days he had long, curly red hair and was always seen in a Metallica T-shirt. It was such a pleasant surprise when he cut his hair,” she laughs.
“A few years later we thought we’d go share-milking and work up to farm ownership. Then my parents asked if we wanted to lease their sheep and beef farm.
“We had never really considered such a thing, so we went to talk to the bank manager, who said,
’Yeah, that’ll work’. So we did it.”
Danielle’s grandfather, conservationist Arthur
Cowan, had purchased the farm after returning from World War II where he served time as a POW.
“It’s always been my favourite place and now means a lot to have my children Katherine (11) and Blair (8) growing up on it as the fourth generation.”