Speaker 2 0:00

The Kill City podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands we're on. Here in Melbourne, that's the Wurundjeri Woi Wororong people of the Kulin Nation. We honour their deep connection to storytelling, a tradition carried across more than 2,000 generations. Pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and we extend that acknowledgement to First Nations people listening today. A book that had us both talking about fire and fear and one very compelling protagonist. We're chatting to the author of Haze, Sam Elliott. Sam, it's lovely to have you on the show.

Speaker 1:07

Hello and Leigh, thank you so much for having me. It's just absolutely wonderful. I'm so excited to talk to you both.

Speaker 1 1:12

Hi Sam, it's great to meet you. If it's all right with you, I'll give our listeners the quick version of your bio because there's a lot for us to talk about. So you're a Sydney-based crime writer and you balance your writing with your work as a content designer at the New South Wales Transport Department. Your debut novel Haze introduced us to Constable Dahlia Turner, a larger than life protagonist. And your follow-up, Deep Fake, is due out next year continuing Dahlia's story. Now before Haze was published, you'd already been writing for more than 20 years, publishing pieces and publications including The Southerly, Compulsive Reader, Film Inc., and The Big Issue. You were the interview senior editor for Swinburne University's backstory and other terrain journals. And you've hosted everything from book launches to true crime events, including A Staircase and Making a Murderer Night at the Enmore Theatre with the lawyers from the Netflix series. And of course, you're the founder and host of the Right Way Podcast, a programme that's given a real platform to both established and emerging literary voices. You've spoken with writers like Michael Bassendeen, Derville McTiernan, and Kate Mildenhall, just to name a few. We love supporting writing podcasts. We'll make sure we've popped a link to the show in our show notes so people can check it out afterwards. So I don't actually honestly know how you fit it all in. Are you a night owl? Or are you one of those terrifying people who can function on less than six hours sleep? How do you do it?

Speaker 2:38

Okay, okay. Def definitely the the sleep, the sleep thing for sure. Like sleepers, like uh so I used to work in television for a big chunk of my career, so about 10 years. So I was on the very much less glamorous side of television, I will say. So I worked in something that looked like NASA's control room, so television screens everywhere, and it was 24-7 rotational roster. So sometimes I start at 7 in the morning, sometimes 12:30 in the afternoon, 3 pm in the afternoon, sometimes midnight. And when I worked there midnight, or sometimes the 4am shift, so you just would never have anything remotely resembling your circadian rhythm. And so that just uh I was never a really good sleeper anyway, still not, even though I have a normal God's fearing, God-fearing 9 to 5 job now. Uh, so yeah, that answers that a little bit. But also, my hat always goes off to um both you having kids as well as managing to juggle both jobs as well as podcasting, which takes a lot. I know it takes a lot, obviously I've done it. So, more power to you guys. I can't believe you can do all that. I don't I don't have I don't have a child. I've got a recalcentrant cat called Chicky, but that's that's pretty much all I've got going on in terms of the having to look after like a dependent.

Speaker 2 3:49

Oh my goodness, you should never underestimate the amount of time and effort that goes into your fur baby though. Because I don't know, at least I don't know whether you know if you're more a cat person than a dog person, I understand that you probably give your cat lots of love, but potentially they won't give it back. Same with children, sometimes you don't always get the love back that you give them.

Speaker 4:07

So sometimes, like a human cat.

Speaker 2 4:09

Yeah. Oh well. Well, I'm just thinking in terms of um the stamina, which you obviously must have when you um survive on sort of less sleep, um, I think we actually need to talk about haze because I think for me it was um it just got set at such a cracking pace. I found it kind of stressful, but still a page turner. Like I tore through it, like I kind of felt like I had to buckle in, I had to keep my wits about me. I kind of felt like I occasionally lost my bearings, like through the smoke and the kind of haze and everything, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. But um, it was such a ripping read. So um really enjoyed it, but yeah, didn't need to have a sort of a cup of tea and a lie down afterwards, I think. By the time I got through it, go, what farm? And go back. But for anyone who actually hasn't picked up the book, I want to give you the quick version. So it's set in a fictional town on the New South Wales South Coast, it's right as catastrophic bushfires are ripping through the region. In the middle of all this smoke and chaos, we kind of meet Constable Dahlia Turner. Now, she's a pretty cool character, she's six foot three, she's an ex-bodybuilder, and she's carrying a pass that most people would sprint away from. Now, when her closest friends are murdered and their son is abducted, Dahlia gets dragged back into the world she escaped from, including a cult that she grew up in. Now, this is as I've said, is a really tense, vast atmospheric. And it's a tense, vast atmospheric and a real proper noir novel. And I found Dahlia to be a really compelling lead who just grabbed me from page one. So I want to know, Sam, what was the spark for this story for you? Where did Dahlia come from? And is she inspired by anyone that you know?

Speaker 5:54

Oh, there's a good question. Okay. All right, there's a lot to unpack there. All right, so first and foremost, let's let's preface this by um giving a bit of a background as to how sort of Dahlia came to be. Okay, I don't know how the writers work, everyone, like you said before we started recording, Helen. No two writers have the sort of same story, how they approach their writing. So for me, it's always starts with an image, okay. But the way in which the image kind of came about was like, let's say, it kind of came to me in a time that wasn't um the happiest or most glamorous, let's say, of my life. So what basically happened was if in that same television place I was working at, I got a job at their newly developed streaming platform yet to be released at the time. I won't name them because they got me assigned some MDA, which I don't think is very legally binding, hence me so freely sharing this, albeit not naming them. But anyway, I got pretty horrifically bullied at this job, and sort of as a way of remedying or keeping myself relatively sane during that period, I wrote a psychological thriller about that. Uh, and I thought that that was gonna be uh not only was it gonna be a cathartic sort of uh endeavour, but it was also gonna be the one that got published. That was gonna be the one that got picked up, yeah, after all this time that was gonna be my way of kind of triumphing or prevailing over this sort of unfortunate situation that I found myself in and I couldn't get out of. That didn't happen. Um, the book got rejected by I had Larry Edgent at the time, she sent it around. Got rejected by every publisher. Uh they responded uh pretty brutally, uh, which kind of just made me feel even sadder as well. So in the 20 odd years of writing, that was the closest I kind of came to giving up ever. It was like the most I'd ever not written. And I kept seeing this image during this time where I was kind of like considering giving up, and it was this young, sort of imposingly sized constable, um, female constable, heading to a through the beginnings of a hellish bushfire, sort of to go and do door knocks on properties on the outskirts of a town. So I saw this image of Dahlia in my head, clear as that. So I saw that she was physically imposing, I saw that she was, you know, larger than life is the term that's that's quite apt and gets used quite a lot. Um, and yeah, and I just that was that was an image that I thought was was powerful and confronting, and that's reignited, not to use too many fire puns, but reignited my passion for writing, because I thought that, well, you know, I'll write this because it will reignite my passion for writing, and it would just be a great way to tell myself a story that I will myself enjoy, but I don't need to worry because it's never gonna get published. It's it's it's too dark, it's too violent, it's too it's too confronting. Um, so yeah, so I just thought that I'll just write that anyway, just for for the fun of it and to enjoy writing a story again, and lo and behold, smash cut. Here we are now.

Speaker 2 8:31

Wow. Um, can I start by saying I'm so sorry to hear about that bullying experience? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, yeah. It's just horrifying. It's the worst. That's the worst. Yeah, I just just um but for you to be able to take what you have from that and where you are now is just the best testament to resilience and being able to take control of what happened. So, and oh my goodness, what an amazing place from Dahlia to spring from. Yeah, boy, if you'd had her on your side at the time, absolutely there'd be no issue whatsoever. So, um, I and I love that um idea of yeah, the having the image because as you said that I could kind of see her, yeah. I really need to know who's gonna play her when you know she made it to the big screen.

Speaker 9:19

Yeah, everyone's asked that, and um uh well it's it's it's you know Gwendolyn Christie, um Brienne of Taft from Gavin France would be really good, but yeah, um you could just Australia, I reckon. Elizabeth DeBicke, I mean she's very, very beautiful, very talented Australian actor. Um, but that would she would have to she would really have to hit the gym a lot because she has Blender Willowie figure, she's you know very beautiful. Um yeah.

Speaker 1 9:49

As we talk about though, there's a bit I'm saying sort of Kate Box as well, who you know, not unfamiliar to a lot of Australian crime adapted for the screen.

Speaker 2 9:59

So that name he's writing it down. I feel like it does, yes, yeah.

Speaker 10:10

Yes, okay 186%. No joke. I did see K-box, someone also suggested yeah as well. Excellent, excellent suggestion. Excellent.

Speaker 2 10:21

All right, well, we um we do love going down a rabbit hole, but we might we might now now we've now we've unpacked who we who we think Dahlia is going to be played by when she hits a big screen. I just want to flag, I think your characters are one of the most appealing things about what I enjoyed about the book because I think you've got a really great way of creating them that are really real in your head, but they kind of do practically leap off the page. And I actually um really enjoyed um the two warring forces in the town, and I think if we talk about Hunter Rochford, who's kind of like the local industrialist who thinks he runs the whole town, but he stacked up against Fairchild Shaw, who's like a charismatic of it, charismatic, but also quite unsettling leader of the cult that we want to unpick about the people's cleansing light, and I think their clash and how they interact, but also their impact on the whole greater story just adds so much to it. So they were both very strong personalities, and I'm curious to know how do you approach approach writing characters like that? Like, what's the first thing you lock in? Is it like what you had with Daly where you kind of had an image, or do you think about their backstory, or is it something else?

Speaker 11:35

Yeah, I think a lot of it is um, it's a really good question, Helen. I think a lot of it comes from sort of osmosis in terms of the amount of so sort of that period of the that I was mentioning with the bullying. So I was coming into the office every day, and uh I didn't my my work kind of didn't really necessitate me having to have to be present in terms of having no headphones on. So I I'd slap headphones on and I'd listen, like any normal God-fearing person, to Greg and Vanessa's cults podcast for like eight straight hours, okay. Um and of those cults, all the ones in which you know they're all fascinating, they're all fascinating in their own way. It's almost like writing, you know, like no two are the same. Um, but there isn't there isn't a lot uh that are matriarchal, yeah. So like that was something that always particularly interested in me as well, because um, I mean, that probably goes to to to speak about a much larger sort of still you know, patriarchal sort of structure that's going on with the world. But I always found that to be particularly interesting, and I think in this day and age, particularly of cults, I think that they're probably people would be more drawn to a matriarchal cult. I know I would, like, if there's a piece of paper to sign today to say let's have a matriarchal society, I'm all for it. Like, let me sign that right now because I can't go any worse than the world's going right now. Okay, but in terms of like a matriarchal cult, I think that that's something there in itself is quite interesting. And what I sort of wanted to do with that was to have the the inverse of that, albeit the the different sort of uh sex in this case a patriarchal cult. So starting from the remnants of that, so I think that Philip Shaw, Phoenix Shaw, I think he's mentioned one time is is Fairchild's father, who has passed away, and then you know Fairchild is now the leader. So there was a patriarchal misogynistic cult there, and then his daughter has come in, New World Order, much more extreme. Uh, and that sort of delves more into the what happens in the second book. But in terms of that, so that was the core of what I wanted. And I also wanted it to be both the cult as well as the Rochford's industrialist family, the dynastic family. I wanted both to be Dahlia to be heavily involved in both, so she was conflicted and torn between the two. Um, so I thought that that was good for to have grown up with Fairchild within some sort of capacity where she was seemingly sort of a sibling but not, uh, and kind of in this power and balance dynamic where she was kind of like almost like a servant to master sort of situation. So I wanted something like that. In terms of the the Rochfords as well, um, that's this all sort of just developed, like the way in which I write is kind of I don't know if I could truly recommend it because it gets the job done in terms of obviously I get to get to this point where I'm talking to Helen Leigh, like that's that's really lovely. But in terms of me writing, it's just throwing it all on a page, the kitchen sink, writing ridiculous word counts of like a couple hundred thousand words, and then from that sifting through and editing over the course of how many months and years to get it into this sort of place. Uh, so yeah, so that's how they kind of all come to be. Um, they're never fully fleshed out, they never develop when I first see them. That's something that takes a lot of time and a lot of rewrites. I mean like original versions of uh Haze, because it went through the same publishing house but two different publishers. Uh, the the first draft, the first not version that got sold, uh, there was there was a married at first sight storyline. Uh that's pretty central with with Dahlia, yeah. That's part of her backstory. And there was also a bit of a climactic showdown in uh Zoo, uh, complete with Dahlia meeting a lion that was based on Mogo Zoo. Uh so yeah, so it changes a lot to answer your question in a long and short form where the story changes a lot and the characters get developed through February Rights.

Speaker 2 15:20

I feel like there's a whole serial in there to one. There's Rue and the Lion.

Speaker 1 15:26

Well, it's funny, actually, just when we started talking, this is going off script a little bit, Helen, but I did one of the things, and I forgot to put this in the in the script, but to there's and we're always really keen to not give away any spoilers. Sure. But certainly towards the very, very end, um, in some of the um I guess some of the conversations around the character backstory that they're having in the book, there was a few things in there. I'm like, wow, there's there are some if you were looking obviously we know you've now written another book with DALI as a character, but there were just so many threads that you could pick on and just go in completely different directions, but equally intriguing storyline. So yeah, it's it's interesting that you've said that because I can see it in obviously the way you're talking about the way you go about the um about writing, so fascinating.

Speaker 16:17

Definitely. It's like um you're unrolling a bolt of fabric, so the fabric is the storyline. So it was there before the start of the fabric, you know, it just got a different part snipped off, and that was the beginning, and then when it gets snipped off, so that's the end of that story, but the fabric is still there, and there's still more of it carrying on, you know. So it's always that's how I just always feel about any story, really, particularly if it's one that's engaged with you, it's always like you still wonder about what would happen before what would happen before and what happens after.

Speaker 2 16:46

And are you Mark My Mum? Do you keep all those offcuts of fabric just in case you can pull them out later?

Speaker 16:53

I think that's a really smart way to do it. No, I don't, Helen. Like it's it's it sits around in my brain though, um, and then it kind of shows it itself out eventually, I think, into other stories.

Speaker 1 17:03

Um and fantastic names as well. And that was another thing I hadn't really done. Um really good names, like Fairchild Shaw is a great name. Things like that. Like names.

Speaker 17:18

They are yeah, I slay them. They change a lot. They change a lot from draft to draft.

Speaker 2 17:24

I wanted to pick back up on the thread where you talked about how the world um would be a better place if we had a matriarchal society, which I agree with 110%. Um, so I want to look at relationships between Dahlia and her mother, because I think that's another really interesting area that the book explores. Um, and it's quite complicated, and again, the sort of cult plays a sort of a role in all of that. But because um Ursula the mum, her experience of life in the cult and after the cult is so different from Dahlia's and much more um kind of had a much more impact in terms of how she deals with life today. I really wanted to understand um what led you to exploring that particular contrast between their lives and particularly sort of a parent and child relationship and how it sort of shaped both of how they kind of were they were motivated and sort of their behaviours in the book, if that makes sense.

Speaker 18:22

Sure, yeah, of course. Um it's weird what that we as people can go through the exact same sort of experience, albeit slight variations of it, uh, and have two completely different experiences or two completely different interpretations of what we go through and how that forevermore sort of defines our life, okay. Um, so the the circumstances of that then of course with Dahlia, so naturally she sort of represents or Forevermore blames her mother for for putting her into the cult. Um, and then because we're in Dahlia's head for the entirety of that, we can't really see exactly what Ursula is is feeling about. But I would say, given that she has serious dependency issues on alcohol marijuana, she's probably battling Lord Demons and self-doubt and blame, or endless sort of heapings of blame and self-loathing for what's what's happened there. Um, and again, kind of without spoiling too much, there's a few revelations that happen towards the the tail end of the book about that. But in terms of the dynamic of that, I I think I keep circling back to this this thing in like a lot of my novels, uh, and it's kind of this this period, and I think everyone goes through it, it's it's where there's either a demarcation or there's something that happens that makes us think that we we have we have this shocking realization that our parents aren't superheroes, and that can be whether they cry in front of us, lose their temper, something like that that foreign more sticks in our head. And I think that that's something that that happens throughout our lives. Uh, and then depending upon our relationship with our parents, we can kind of circle back and have some sort of reckoning where we are. We understand that yes, they're not a superhero, but then we understand that we humanize them from going from being this sort of supernatural superhero creature into being a parent, but we've humanise them and understand that they're flawed, they're available, like we all are, sort of thing. So that was something that I kind of wanted to circle through and explore with Dahlia and her mother. Um, and I think that that does happen. I think that Dahlia does have some clarity, particularly towards the the end of the book, about that sort of situation, and someone's kind of helped her with that uh in circumstances I probably won't delve into on the podcast, but Reese will be able to understand. Yeah, parents are messed up, parents can mess us up, but parents are probably messed up as well, and such is the nature of the human condition. Yeah, the only thing or the best thing that we can kind of hope for is to get some clarity or understanding with us and our parents, and hopefully it's not on their deathbed, like it's maybe a little bit later in life, but you know, we get to that point where we appreciate that life's tough for everyone, kind of thing. At least that's what I was hoping to circle with that, albeit within the particularly extraordinary circumstances of being in a cult and coming out of something like that.

Speaker 2 20:58

Yeah, yeah, no, I think I think you did. Yeah, I think that's a a really good point. Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:04

And and they are certainly the most intense of circumstances, um, both uh environmental and backstory as well. So um another thing I really loved about this was sort of how immersive it was. The bushfire sections, you like you can practically feel the sort of heat coming off the page. Um such a quintessentially Australian catastrophe as well. Um and you ride it with this real lived in accuracy. Now, I I I've heard you talk about the real life town that Browlett is based on, which is Browlee. Rowley. Uh and being familiar with that wonderful part of Australia, um uh for anyone wondering, it is the south coast of New South Wales. But is Browley technically part of the Sapphire Coast? I always get a bit confused where the Sapphire Coast boundary is. I actually lived in Naruma at one point in my life and um have been very familiar with cases.

Speaker 22:00

Uh I don't think it is.

Speaker 1 22:02

No, I was just going to say it was all a sapphire coast once you got past Marimula, but I'm not sure that's actually quite regardless of what it's called. Um for anybody looking for a holiday destination, it is one of the most beautiful coastlines um in Australia up there. So anyway, I'm just doing that.

Speaker 22:16

No, no, it's it's it's great, it's a beautiful part of the world. Absolutely, this is a highly recommended.

Speaker 1 22:21

Um so how did you go about researching that and though and um the way the fires make such a central part of the story? Like what how did you get right into that?

Speaker 22:31

Yeah, yeah, okay. So that was so every every novel, every project, I feel, you had like a one particular major hurdle that you have to overcome to to actually do what you consider to be the best job you possibly can. And with me it was it was depiction of fire, yeah. Because that is something that's so hard to accurately convey because it's just it's this un you know awesome, unpredictable, all-consuming force that is just you know can materialize from nowhere and then become a hundred-foot wall colossal within a second, two seconds, blink of an eye. Um, so for me, uh there was a few different things. So obviously the the a large inspiration for that was the 2019-2020 Black Summer Fires, which you know the SES um and the rural fire services of the rally great broader area cannot be overstated what they did in terms of defending homes and saving people's lives, and just how dangerous uh and lethal those sort of circumstances were and hellish. So you everyone saw the footage. If you lived in Sydney, you it was unavoidable, you could not get away from the smell of the smoke, and this is from so far away, um, sort of thing. So that's that's that's more carried down. Um, so in terms of the actual so seeing that on the television was enough to to kind of convey some of that. I also I'm not sure if you guys saw the podcast way back when there was a documentary I interviewed the filmmakers for called A Fire Apart, uh, which was about that as well. And then they went and talked to um you know various people that were involved or impacted or fought the fires. Uh so saw more of the sort of uh even more hellish material there as well. Um, there's also a book that came out as well from the salvos put it out, which was um accounts of people that were that were there, um, which was just the most harrowing read. And another one that was really, really good that wasn't related to the the brow the fires in the rally sort of area 2019-2020, but was no less inspiring was um Chloe Hooper's The Arsenist, um that was I I think it was it was I interviewed her long ago, that was even before the podcast for that, and it was just it was a slender book, it was slight, but man, it was meaty, she's such an incredible writer uh talking about that, and the way in which she conveyed fire as well was just was just just unbelievable. So there was all of that, uh, and then again, so beyond the research, it was it was it was reading and and having beta readers read and then going and redrafting many, many times to try and convey that. Um, because you could just devote pages upon pages and still not do justice to trying to convey that. Um and then and then there's the fine line of of writing authentically, you know, earnestly, and then gratuitously. So you've got to walk the tightrope of that. I don't want anyone to, I don't want to trigger anyone that's been in that sort of situation. That's not that's that's not my intention um at all. So I'm conscious of that fact that I have to write it with very carefully, uh, and I hope I have done that right through the research and through the redrafting as well.

Speaker 1 25:29

Yeah. You have and then you pair the fires with the cult storyline, which um just adds to the intensity, which you know they're both really front and center. Um and bushfires and cults, you know, they're not necessarily two things that you kind of associate together, but um, what made you bring those two together?

Speaker 25:53

Well, very Australian, number one. I mean I mean like bushfires are very very Australian, there's gonna be very Australian cult. Number two, um, I think anything, any unexplainable, awesome force that's capable of great destruction, uh, eventually if it's around for long enough, someone's probably gonna end up worshiping it. Um, take from that what you will, but I think that that's just whenever you have some, you know, force that's just unexplained, someone will eventually worship it and think that it is a divine reckoning or something like that, which which I thought was yeah, I think that you have to have something that uh, you know, people don't people aren't drawn to a cult or its Genesis stories or its teachings or anything like that because they're like this is the most unhinged content I've ever heard. I want to get on board with this because I'm just a complete unhinged person. There's always something that's that's appealing to to people, otherwise, cults will just never get off the ground as well. Um, so yeah, that's kind of the blending of the two there, Leigh. And again, that that just sort of worked out.

Speaker 1 26:56

Yeah. So when when it came to the cult itself, what kind of research fed into the way you built the characters touched by the people's cleansing light? You know, the ones you know still inside the group and the ones that managed to leave. I'm I'm just know how you shaped that psychology.

Speaker 27:10

Sure, again, um Gregory Bernesses Colts podcast listened to I was in the top 1.1% of listeners to that. It was like alarming to me when I saw my Spotify rabbit of listening to that, the amount of that. And there's also a guy, American person, he wrote he's written several times on all cults, and um um what's his name? Jeff. Um, so this guy has written Jeff Goon. Jeff Goon, G-U-I-D-M. So it's written on Waco, he's written on um, what is it, Jonestown? Uh he has written, yeah, he is, he is, he is like the go-to person for for writing Colts books like that. So I wrote read one about Jonestown. Uh, so all the psychology of that as well. This is still a work of fiction, but it's it has to be something like I find that the characters that are interesting and the most interesting aren't just aren't just mustachio twirling sort of villains that are just you know laughing as lightning crackles overhead. They have to be grounded somewhere in reality, no matter what it is, no matter how horrendous their actions are, there has to be something where you can say, Well, I don't resonate with you at all, but in your twisted world, I can understand that a little. So that was kind of something that really needs to be to be worked on a lot. Um, and I hope I've achieved that with Fairchild Shaw, and uh for the next book to come where more of that sort of what she wants with the world and what she imagines a perfect world will look like and how to fashion it like that will get kind of revealed. Spoiler it ain't good.

Speaker 2 28:51

Interesting.

Speaker 1 28:52

Absolutely. Um so with that in mind, um did your research take you anywhere really unexpected? Um what was the most surprising thing that you uncovered?

Speaker 29:08

Well, it was the it was the it was the lack of matriarchal cults, really. I mean, like that's just something like I can't I can't think of one off the real truly off the top of my head. I can't think of one.

Speaker 2 29:16

There is there's the family with all the kids. Yeah, there's a family.

Speaker 1 29:21

Okay. I was just about to say shout out to anybody from Victoria who, when they were young, drove up to a Linda on a Saturday night or a Friday night and pretended they were going to climb the fence and go in. Um shout out to my cousin Mick who lived up there, and I'm pretty sure he did get over the fence, he told me once. But um, just thinking about that and talking about cults, that is just yes, a trip down memory lanes. Yeah, there you go. Okay.

Speaker 29:47

Okay.

Speaker 2 29:47

Yet to cross the border.

Speaker 29:49

Yes, yes, yes. But um, yeah, that's there we go. I could have named about 12 cults off the top of my head right then. Couldn't think of a single matriarchal one. Um so yeah, yay, Victoria, matriarchal cults are playing.

Speaker 2 30:04

I think there was one at Toowoomba as well.

Speaker 30:07

Yeah, you're gonna tell me these are.

Speaker 2 30:09

I know. I actually I actually am so glad you included the cult element in the haze, because that's actually the hook I'm gonna get to get my husband to listen to this episode. Because he actually had a bit of a childhood obsession with cults, which is why I actually probably know more about cults than I should because of what he shared with me. But he he actually, I don't know if this was one was covered in the podcast that you listened to, but there was the Korean new religious movement, I think it was the 70s or 80s, and the people were called, they used to call them the Moonies.

Speaker 30:38

The Moonies, yeah, for sure. There's a new docker coming up about that as well.

Speaker 2 30:42

Yeah, oh my goodness, so that's that's the moons that I'm gonna listen. Yeah, really? Oh my god, okay, I'm telling him. So he's doing that. Yeah, yeah, they're still around. Great. So we might go back in time now, and we might have I think about you, Sam, as a kid. Okay. So other than Colts, which seems to be more of an obsession in later life, did you have any weird obsessions when you were little? And did they sort of transfer or have any impact on you being sort of what sort of reader and writer you were from early on?

Speaker 31:14

So, okay, so okay. Um listen, I kind of feel sorry for my parents over this one, alright? So I was I was uh I was a handful, I was a handful of a child, um, you know, far bare from the the docile sort of laid-back individual that you see before you now. So I was a pretty hyperactive kid. Uh so my parents went and got me checked out, obviously got diagnosed of ADHD, and then they had the two options there, um, which was one, give them drugs, which they said absolutely not to. Um just a disclaimer there, uh absolutely in terms of um people being the listeners being medicated, there's nothing wrong with that at all. My parents just didn't want to take that path for me. So they got me into acting and all this sort of stuff. Uh, which look, I'd like to say I thrived. I don't think I did. It was like when I they tried to get me back into playing soccer, as in football. I used to run around as figuring I was a car and beeping and doing all this sort of stuff. So, yeah, in terms of that, that probably gives you a pretty vivid depiction of what I was like as a kid. Um, I was also a kid that was huge, huge, huge into video games and huge, huge, huge into cartoons and stuff on an obsessive level, whereby my parents would be kind of like particularly, I was not of the last year, I'd probably say, where it was like turn off the television, go outside, you know, get lost until the lights, the street lights come on, kind of thing. Um, and I think that I think that as a child I was really enjoying, I was learning how to tell stories then from absorbing cartoons, absorbing all the just the absolutely amazing children's television shows that our country was lush with in the 90s and stuff like that, like ABC back in the day when they had their own studios and they're all making just the best television in Australia, children's television world over, show me something better than never was. Um, and that sort of stuff was just yeah, just I think really, really instrumental in shaping my sort of writing or later writing. Uh, in terms of my reading habits, I was really big into animorphs as well. And I also love this series. And if any listeners got kids, I would get them into it called Red Wall by Brian Jarks. Redwall, um, guys might know a writer called Robbie Arnott, one of Australia's best, in my opinion. He mentioned it at an event I went to to go and see him talk about Limber Lost, and he mentioned it as well. Loving Red Wall. Um, Red Wall, I they still hold up. I read one earlier this year. I'll reread them again. Uh, reread The Animals of Farthing Wood, all this sort of stuff. That is the best storytelling for kids. And then a little bit later than that was a series of unfortunate events, which is heavily fantastic. Um, heavily inspired by the work of my favourite cartoonist, a guy called Edward Gory as well, that sort of really sort of weird macabre gothic drawing style. So yeah, I had a I had a pretty sweet childhood, I must say. I was in the I was in that final, real good point of uh really good kids' cartoons and and television on ABC, but then the ability to go out and I lived in Dremoine, I lived down near the water. We used to have a split place called The Spot, which actually served as the inspiration for the spot or the name of it in Haze. Used to go down there, have rock fights, that was terrible, got real injured there. Uh yeah, so don't recommend that. Uh disturbing funnel webs nest, doing all this little stuff that little boys do.

Speaker 2 34:34

Yeah, put a disclaimer on for that.

Speaker 34:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good plan, good plan.

Speaker 2 34:38

Um, no, those healthy days, my god, that is the best childhood. It's awesome. I think having that perfect blend of different experiences, both yeah, sensory and in real life, but also where you can use your imagination. It's just awesome. Yeah, it's just what we really all hope our kids can still experience these days. Definitely. So when you were writing, when did you actually start writing? And then what was the earliest thing you remember writing that you were actually really proud of?

Speaker 35:05

Oh yeah, well, okay. So when I was a kid, my parents, the computer was in my parents' bedroom, big old, big old computer. I'm 38, so this is what I would have been about five or six. And it had uh it had one of an early versions of Word art with the images, and I remember going through and looking at these images and then selecting one and then writing like a little story of it. I don't know where that came from. And then when I was older, I don't know how much older I must have been, maybe for like year seven at at uh at school. I wrote a book called Eyes of the Kill Eyes of a Killer. Eyes of a Killer.

Speaker 2 35:44

So we knew where things have the clues.

Speaker 35:49

Uh that that story did not survive. That was in a draw for a while, and I think that's in a bin now. But I was yeah, looking back, I was pretty proud of that. Um, yeah, so it was always kind of meant to happen.

Speaker 2 36:01

And um, it sounds like your parents did a pretty good job with you. And um, do you think that they were cheering you on? Like, did they know that you wanted to be a writer, or is it something maybe that they kind of got used to as they saw you doing more of it as you got older?

Speaker 36:16

Or now we're getting into the big questions here. So um okay, so yeah. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. Look, listen, um uh my mum was my mum was always supportive of me and always championed me. My father was maybe more of a pragmatist, let's say, and for son, maybe focus these energies on uh other more realistic pursuits, you know, journalism, lawyer, uh that sort of thing. Uh, but that has then then he's seen some results later, and then I think he's he's pretty proud of his son. But um, yeah, yeah. I think that they always knew that there was gonna be some interesting times ahead. There was there was some there was some there was some there was some tough times. Like I said, I was a bit of a handful, and that kind of extended probably up to about five years ago, but um now it's kind of uh I like to think that we're on yeah, a good a good patch and things have been going very well.

Speaker 2 37:20

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 37:21

And I think and they were both obviously there at the launch, which was which was sold out early this year, and that was just absolutely nuts. So that was a nice moment. Yeah.

Speaker 2 37:31

That's fantastic. And I think that's what parents' jobs are sometimes. That's the question, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. They want the best. Make sure you have a roof over your head and be able to do it. For sure. I don't know. Show show their love in different ways, don't you? Yes, yeah. So outside of your family, who was the person that um the first person that kind of said actually helped you go, actually, I think I could make a go of this, I can be a writer. And you know, when did you kind of think actually this is it?

Speaker 38:00

Yeah, that's another really good question. Um to be honest, to be honest with you, Helen, I was I was alone, I was alone for a long, long time with this sort of stuff. So this was a pursuit. I it's I think that the the industry has always been a bit like not not clandestine or opaque, but kind of like some some better wording than that between the two uh of it. So and I didn't really I was just churning out novels. Like I wrote about you know 10, 11, 12 novels from the age of 18, the first being a romance novel, Mills and Boone, Intimate Internet, and then for that, you know, horror and then cry. Um, but I didn't really know how to connect with the industry or the the community. I didn't didn't try to. So what I essentially did that whole time was just kind of be by myself and send out some stuff and then have disastrous consequences. There was a book called The Sisters of Satan, uh, which got picked up, picked up, air quotes picked up uh by a uh publisher, air quotes publisher.

Speaker 2 38:59

What sort of publisher we are not a publisher at all.

Speaker 39:02

They they were publishing it, sure, but they never paid me a cent and they published it for about 10 years, and I think it sold a few hundred, a few thousand copies over that, longer than ten years. They only I only just looked them up the other day, their website, Custom Book Publications, come at me, if you don't like me mentioning it. Um yeah, Custom Book Cup Publications, they uh yeah, they published it for about it was about 2011 that they got it, and then they've only their website has only just been shut down pretty recently, so like what 15-16 years of that book with them not a cent not a cent page to yours, truly. Yeah, so I didn't uh so again, so that was kind of uh so on as the years continued, I continue to write. I was like, well, this just this just ain't working. I'm not I'm not really meeting anyone and anything like that. So what I did um I I went to to uni and I probably won't talk too much about that because I certainly didn't have a great time there. Uh I don't really think that was a good pursuit, but anyway, from that or from kind of like the the tail end of that, I again was trying to like meet people and have uh catch-ups, albeit interviews with with established people, just to really learn from them, to be honest, like just to learn. So I was doing a lot for a digital print called Compulsive Reader, uh, which is still to this day still going with the lovely Magdalena Ball, who was a New South Wales-based writer and poet. She's the loveliest, loveliest human ever. She was probably the first connection or first person to ever give me a go. And then from there, so that was the first interviews they they came about, and then yeah, and then the years kind of went past with more and more uh interviews coming along. And then uh I guess at that point, to be honest, if you like obviously I always wanted to get published, but I think I'd probably kind of gotten to that point where I'm like, well, maybe I'm not gonna be one of the um the anointed few, you know, I just keep doing it for the passion, just for the sheer love of it. Uh, and then did some did start doing podcasting as well, which I've been putting off for ages because I was like scared of it because I'm not the most technologically savvy person, and then so so that sort of started, and then just started meeting more people, and then I was starting to realize it was all gradual, yeah. It was like molasses, slow moving, and then I started realizing that I was making I was starting to go to events and people were coming to talk to me, and I was like, well, I've never really knew that started noticing that happening. Next thing you know, you've got a community. Uh, two of my dearest friends is writers Julie Key and Haley Shrivener. Uh dear friends, dear friends, incredible writers, great humans, great support network. Uh, and then from there, like it's been yeah, it's just all it all just it all just came from that, and then here we are now. It's just been a crazy, crazy ride, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 41:39

Yeah, wow. And we've actually got Haley coming on the show in the next few weeks. Um, exciting a few weeks, actually. Um can you take us from finishing the first draft of Haze to the its journey to being the book on the shelf? So the highlights of that, and you know, and and I guess for the people that don't necessarily understand how long the process actually takes.

Speaker 42:05

Yeah. Uh okay, alright. So so Haze, I'm trying to think of um specific time frames here. Okay, so Haze, uh uh I think all told Haze, so I reckon I had written the first draft, gotten into a good stage by about mid-2022. Yeah, mid-2022. Yes, yeah, mid-2022. And then it got uh literary agent and picked up by a publisher, sort of pretty not long after that. Um, so so by the tail end of 2022, so I reckon I'd spent a at least 18 months or a year on it, then, and then it got picked up by a literary agent, and then at the tail end of 2022, it got picked up by a publisher, and then the publisher uh wanted to uh like to have their input, which was invaluable. Uh, so then that kind of uh then we then we then we stretched that out. So then then we're looking at what is that, 2023. Yeah, and then and then that publisher left the publishing house and a new publisher started. Uh and then so we pushed out the that again another year. So we're kind of getting up to around the 2025 thereabouts. Yeah, and then 2026 came out. So we're probably all told about four years, I reckon four and a half years thereabouts from starting to um getting out the shelter.

Speaker 1 43:42

So inside that whole journey, which sounds like it's quite a long one. I mean, obviously the change of publisher midway through I I imagine impacted that. But inside the whole process, yeah, was there anything that really surprised you that you hadn't expected or didn't know?

Speaker 43:59

Well, the editing process is is is like is just amazing. Like it's it's just it's uh absolutely phenomenal. Um, they'll break you down to build you back up. So you'll have so so hype. So originally I had thought with the first publisher when I first sent it off that uh it's gonna be like here's me, like silly me, like naive Sam, like what did I know? Uh sent off. And I thought it was just gonna be a couple of cases, like Sam was essentially brilliant. Um we're just gonna have to move a couple of commas and maybe delete a couple of sentences and stuff, but uh, it's essentially good to go, Reef, publication. And I got that first report, and like I had been warned because obviously at that point I've had lots of um brilliant published authors very successful, and they bore me and they're like, You wait till you get that editorial report. And I'm like, I'll be fine, I'll be fine, don't worry about that. I was not fine, I was not fine. Uh I went and saw At Juliet with my mother and sister that night, and uh furiously smoking cigarettes out the front of this dark casino, I still remember it so well, and uh yeah, went in. I'm like, I don't know, no, I'm not gonna be able to do this, I'm not gonna be able to do this like real talk, and uh then it all kind of comes about, uh, and then you realize that the editing has just made it so much better than you could ever have possibly done by yourself. Uh yeah.

Speaker 1 45:10

So this is a tricky question to put a number on, but I've asked it to a couple of writers now, and I've and I'm and I'm quite fascinated by the answers. So it's tricky to put a percentage on things, but if you were gonna put a percentage on how much you think how much value you think the editing process and how much it improves a novel is, like, would you be able to put a percentage on 200% probably 200%?

Speaker 45:35

Um, yeah, and it's it'll it's it's also like I think it's probably hinging upon like like that again, this is also subjectively. I mean, in terms of that, but um, I think it also depends largely on how receptive you are to the process. Um, I think that uh like if I was a if I was a debut novelist, um never know one, such as I was and still am, I would probably say be very, very receptive to the editorial team. They really truly know what they're doing. They're not butchering your baby, they're beautifying it. So don't be difficult in that regard. Um, it's your first time for the radio. It is most definitely not, it's not their 51st time for the radio. So be really receptive. Um, yeah, it is invaluable.

Speaker 1 46:18

Well, that's the end of part one of our conversation with Sam Elliott. But be sure to join us next week for part two.