Taranaki author keeps her fans in suspense
Supernatural suspense and horror mix well with life as a homeschooling mother of three as far as one Taranaki writer is concerned.
Cassie Hart, who is Ngāi Tahu, has just received her fourth national Julius Vogel Award, this time for her first traditionally published book, which was released last year.
Butcherbird is a supernatural suspense novel set on a farm under Taranaki Maunga, and is all about family secrets and grief.
The Sir Julius Vogel awards are fan-voted for various endeavours in the science fiction, fantasy or horror fields.
Hart, who lives in New Plymouth, has self-published over ten novels, short books and anthologies.
She homeschools her three children, Allie, 17, Lauren, 14, and Natalie, 12, and has been writing seriously since Allie was born, in 2006.
She writes in the early mornings for an hour or so, before her family wakes up.
‘‘Then I think about it all day. I’m a ‘pantser’ not a planner – I have a rough outline, and I go by the seat of my pants.’’
She finds story ideas everywhere.
A loose thread on the back of someone’s T-shirt once inspired a story, and a comment about a dead end street another.
‘‘I was driving with my eldest daughter, and she asked me ‘what is down the dead way?’ Four years later, I wrote a book about it.’’
It’s a horror story, her other literary love, she said.
‘‘My dad read Dead Way all the way through. He said ‘this is awful, but I couldn’t stop reading it’ and I was like, ‘thanks Dad’.
‘‘My mother never understood how I could read horror stories by the pool in summer, but I’ve always liked that feeling you get, being creeped out, the ‘what ifs’. It’s not gore, more the psychological stuff for me, I like to screw with people’s heads.’’
She is currently working on a sequel to Butcherbird and, next month, a horror anthology titled Death in the Mouth, that she has collaborated on with a Hawaiian writer, will be released.
‘‘It’s an anthology that only people of colour worked on, it was illustrated by people of colour, it’s amazing, and I’m excited about it coming out.’’