Delving into the ‘other Aotearoa’
Inside the Black Horse is a fastpaced, violent and visceral novel set against the gang culture of Rotorua. As Kingi Morgan, leader of the notorious gang The Assassins, puts it: ‘This, folks, is the other Aotearoa. The one they don’t put in the travel brochures.’ This book is brutal and shocking, with strong authentic characters.
Author Ray Berard grew up on a farm in rural Canada. After immigrating to New Zealand in 1994 Berard recognised certain similarities between his own early life and some of the issues affecting New Zealand’s poorer communities. Says Ray: Where I grew up, there were two ways to make big money: farming pigs for the corporate machine or running drugs over the border for the gangs. I lost friends to those gangs.’
We asked Ray some questions:
What inspired you to write this book? I have always loved writing. In the years leading up to my novel I had built up a daily habit of putting pen to paper. It started with letters to friends and family overseas, then my diary. I had the idea of using excerpts from my diary to write a novel based on my years in the TAB; the consequence of a desperate act of a young man with no options left and how that criminal act would affect a bunch of strangers caught up in the consequences. When I left the TAB it was the first time in my life that I had time to dedicate myself to writing my novel. I guessed it would take a year and a half. It took double that.
Why was your book dedicated to Maxine? Maxine managed a bar in Rotorua and we became close friends over my five years there. After I left and when I was writing the book she was a great source of information about the local iwi, and her knowledge of Ma¯ori tradition proved invaluable. I also used a fictional account of her backstory as the basis of the female lead in the book. Maxine moved to Perth in 2012, and when the book came out she called me and said, ‘If you make me look bad I’ll kill you.’ When she read the book she was actually rapt with it.
You grew up on a farm in Canada, do you feel there are any similarities with New Zealand and if so what are they? New Zealand and Canada are very similar in a lot of ways. Both are Commonwealth countries and where I grew up was a lot like rural New Zealand. Some of the social issues are the same.
When I was a kid, things were dire where I lived. Farming was hard work and a good way to go broke. A lot of my friends were drawn to crime because of the allure of the gangs and the chance to make big money smuggling drugs over the border. For most of them it resulted in prison or the cemetery. Almost immediately after arriving in New Zealand I saw the same cycle in South Auckland. Young kids with little opportunity making their own opportunity. The law was an inconvenience and prison was seen as a cost of doing business. When I was a kid cocaine and heroin were the drugs. In South Auckland it was meth, except meth drove some of the users mad.
How did it feel when you found out your book was going to be made into a TV series? It is something so removed from the rest of my life that it has taken a bit of time to sink in.
I’m proud and humbled that my story would have such an impact, not only on those like myself, who just want to read a good book, but how it inspired such a diverse group of powerful people in the entertainment industry to put the kind of effort and investment into adapting it. For any writer it is a life achievement, one I doubt I could ever replicate . . . although I intend to try.
Is there one character in the book you have an affinity with and if so who and why? All of the characters are a part of me, even the dog. He’s like my dog on the farm when I was kid. My dog was big, smart, and very nasty to strangers. I think my favourite character is Henry, the old gang member who senses his time is running out. A few of my childhood friends who chose that life did not age well, and one of the few who survived said, ‘Crime has a lousy retirement plan.’