FIONA MCINTOSH
The author’s crime thriller out this month follows last year’s historical fiction
You’ve had The Orphans and Dead Tide out within four months of each other – is it difficult to write in two different genres?
I don’t find it difficult and that might be because I can let go of my characters and my stories easily. I don’t feel so attached to them ever that I can’t leave them behind. I’m disciplined with my writing so I can compartmentalise my day and not feel obliged to keep writing a chapter because I am on a roll. I just stop – mid-sentence sometimes. With that ability to compartmentalise, I can leave one genre and flip to another without characters or stories bleeding into each other. The change is often refreshing because contemporary crime and historical adventures couldn’t be more different in story, setting or style of writing.
Is there a book that made you love writing?
No single book but once I began to read in the genre of spec fiction I felt sure I could write fantasy books.
What’s the best book you’ve read?
I couldn’t possibly choose one. Jane Eyre possibly because Jane is strong like all my heroines and Mr Rochester is distant … how I like my male leads.
A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?
The Power of One assured me I could achieve anything I set my mind to. It also made me want to meet its writer, which I did two decades later and Bryce Courtenay convinced me to write novels.
The book you couldn’t finish? I’ve never not finished one of my own manuscripts. I couldn’t finish We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves – it was profoundly upsetting once I discovered the secret.
A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to? War and Peace.
The book you are most proud to have written? The Pearl Thief. It’s got everything that I want from historical fiction; full of emotion, adventure, pain, outrage, courage and empathy.
My father worked in Africa and Mum would homeschool my brother on the veranda of our bungalow. I was little but remember reading stories to a pet parrot, lizards and the odd scorpion on that veranda.
Your earliest reading memory?
Your favourite place to read? On a long haul flight …. for hours.
What book do you re-read? Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay.
What are you writing now?
I’m writing The Sugar Palace, the new historical novel set in Sydney.