Speaker 3 0:00

This is part two of our conversation with Troy Hunter.

Speaker 0:02

The Kill City podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands we're on. Here in Melbourne, that's the urundjeri Woi Worong 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.

Speaker 3 0:50

Are there hurdles? Well they haven't, so okay.

Speaker 1 0:56

Yeah, so they're they're obviously, you know, um Amazon exists, etc. etc. But yeah, they're they're only published in Australia. So we are sort of trying to um interest the Americans. Um but yeah, so not yet. And I I think part of that is it feels like the YA market in America is very, very much around YA fantasy, and increasingly, although you don't really want to write to trends, but increasingly YA horror. So horror's been having a moment for the last couple of years and seems to be continuing. So um, and I don't think there is a lot of YA crime, but you've got people like Holly Jackson, Good G Good Girl's Guide to Murder, and Karen McManus, you know, one of us did something. And so if it comes to um, yeah, so um there's a few, but um there hasn't been I the the feedback I kind of get is that they're a bit too Australian to translate, which I think is not translate, sorry, but resonate perhaps. Which I think's really dumb. I feel like we all we all love reading about um other places other than where we're from. So maybe that's some kind of lazy way of saying we just it just didn't work for us. I don't know.

Speaker 3 2:28

But yeah, so yeah, it's it's funny. I remember reading, and I forget who the author is, but the book is called The Hate You Give. It's a young adult novel, and it shows the sort of difference in um uh in environment. It's essentially about a teenager that gets shot by police, and I'm like there is a level of YA, and then there is a level of YA, and it was a think they actually made a film out of it, which I think. They have it's a huge bestseller, yeah. Yeah, it was really popular. Yeah, I just I mean it's just one of those things, it's such a foreign concept, I think, for an Australian for for Australians, um, for the most part.

Speaker 1 3:09

So yeah, I think with YA too, like you know, we have YA, and sometimes we sort of talk about um, you know, you can be sort of upper YA, but there is a different category in America called new adult. And so that's I guess that is that sort of level where you know there are I don't know, I mean there's there's murders, but it's it's just a bit more brutal, sometimes more sexual, more kind of psychological. And I would definitely sort of pitch my books as much more kind of, yeah, Australian teen Agatha Christie sort of thing. Because I I um I don't know, I going back to that very first book, I loved the puzzle element, and so I'm more interested in having um interesting characters um and you know a fun puzzle to solve, but I don't want it to be really violent or really brutal. I want it to be enjoyable, hopefully. So I guess that slides it into cozy crime territory, which is a funny phrase, but it's certainly taken off.

Speaker 4:26

So yeah, it has. But I think um, I think as a reader, um, if you pick up a book like that, you know what you're gonna get. So and I think the key is the puzzle, because that's what you're in it for. That's what and you're right, the characters what take you along the journey, but you want to solve the puzzle or work out, oh wow, that was cool. So to your third book, you've given us a couple of clues, and we have mentioned climate change already. So Gus and the Climate Killer, is there anything else you can tease us with? Because we've got a bit to wait. I think we mentioned March next year. I don't know if that's I think we read that somewhere, so I don't know how accurate that is because I know things like publishing books take time, but what what can you tease us with a little bit?

Speaker 1 5:09

Yeah, so Gus and the Climate Killer. Um, Gus and Shell visit this um climate change startup, so they've come up with this new sort of technology that can help decarbonize the environment. And so you know um Gus and Shell go there. Um, they think they may have found Gus's birth father. So they they go to this place, they meet him, and then as they walk away, there's this, you know, there's this kind of explosion, there's this gas, um, this gas escapes from these pods that are the technology that they're using to decarbonize the atmosphere. And so they um and someone dies, and so it looks like if you know, maybe this, if this is Gus's father, he's just been carted off by the police for murder, or as the main suspect of a murder. And so Gus wants to solve the crime so he can clear his father's name, but you know, all sorts of shenanigans in shoes. So yeah. Um I I think it'll be a lot of fun, and hopefully, getting back to the research side of things, one of the so I've been working at the University of Melbourne for 10 years, and I worked with a group called the Melbourne Climate Futures for um maybe a couple of years, and so I did sort of end up working adjacent, well, working with climate change researchers and looking at what a climate change world would look like and look at some of the sort of technologies involved. So it's not I'm not going heavy-handed on this, but I'm sort of hoping that it's I think it will be authentic enough that anyone that knows a bit will go, yeah, that makes sense. But it's not at the cost of the story. I just wanted it to be kind of about something, not just oh, you know, there's a dead body. So um so I'm hoping this book will be um a lot of fun with a little bit of slight painless education as well.

Speaker 7:14

It's the best way to do it. No, you've got me hooked, I'm excited. I'll be I'll be keeping an eye out for it. And um, and I think I read somewhere that you are working on an adult novel as well. Is that right? So I'm really interested to know um how do you do that shift between writing YA and adult? So do you think the way you structure, or is it how you think what your audience is going to be into? I don't know what what makes it so different.

Speaker 1 7:44

Oh look, I've had this sort of running debate in my head about is writing for teenagers and writing for adults different? And I'm not sure that it is. I think the difference is more about emphasis. So, um, you know, you might in YA you might have a dead body. Well, Gus and the Burning Stones, you know, they find a dead body. But I don't spend three pages describing the blood and gutsanooes and all of that sort of stuff. You don't see a murder, the murder takes place off page, off the page. You you don't see the darkest things, you people have reactions to them, you don't avoid necessarily talking about them, but you just don't dwell on all of that sort of stuff. But I also think one difference, I suppose, is writing this adult crime book is that it will be longer. So YA tends to be sort of between 60 and maybe up to 80,000 words, and um deliberately with YA, I have really short chapters. I try to end each chapter with a question of some description that kind of hopefully entices you to keep turning the page, etc. etc. But um with this adult novel, I'll probably still do that to a degree, but it's going to be it's going to be longer and uh it will be deeper. And also, I think the other difference for me, which I am enjoying, I must admit, is not having a first-person narrative, so I can be in a lot of people's heads. Whereas I really felt it with this last book, it's sort of like why is how could Gus hear this conversation? I have to come up with reasons, like there's one bit where he has to hear a really important sort of corporate conversation, and I have to come up with a reason why he's hiding under the boardroom table. So I think it's things like that. You have to come up with technology or reasons to hear information. You can't just have someone else tell him or someone else experience it. So I'm enjoying that aspect of it as well. So it's not first person, it will dig more into the past of each character's, and it is more complex, so hopefully I can pull it off. But the the crime, the rationale behind it, the number of suspects, everything's sort of a bit bigger and deeper.

Speaker 10:14

Oh, okay. Well, sounds um enticing. I'm guessing we probably have to wait a bit longer for that. So yes, I keep an eye, keep an eye on the case. I've only written half the graph.

Speaker 3 10:27

Um now I'm keen to talk about your support crew and how you sort of build those relationships with your you know, your agent, your editor, your publisher. We've talked about that a little bit. Um, what does that look like day to day, and who gives you the um the tough notes and who gives you the practical advice, and who's the one most likely to drag you to the pub for a cheeky beer?

Speaker 1 10:50

Well, yeah. Um, my agent doesn't um necessarily give detailed editorial advice, but I understand that some do. So most of the detailed changes are coming from um Wakefield Press, so from my editor. Um, but my agent's in Sydney and my editors in South Australia, so no one's taking me for a beer. That's really disappointing. Yeah, I'm did to look into that better. So, but yeah, so really a lot of my day to day is um is oh yeah, is with with um Maddie at Wakefield Press. And so that's where the story really gets shaped. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 11:35

Um and your readers, what's the reaction been? I know plenty of adults read um young adult, but have you noticed differences in how teens respond um compared with adults? And um I'm particularly interested in what younger readers have told you after finishing the books.

Speaker 1 11:52

Like this response to both books has been I mean, it's been very positive. I'm just trying to think of what's a good example. I know that some of the younger readers I think respond more perhaps to the friendships, whereas I think the older readers respond more to the puzzle. And it it it is interesting how I mean this is the Agatha Christie influence. I realise that in kind of in both books that most of you know the only young characters are really the sort of three heroes, and everyone else is by and large an adult. And I I mean some of them are older teens, but um, yeah, so younger readers, the things that they say is yeah, they I think they they like the characters, they like the diversity and the friendships, they like the really short chapters, um, and they like the sort of hooky nature of going from one chapter to the other. And I think um older readers, like I said, they sort of I think they respond more to the puzzle, but I think one of the core reasons that a lot of adults read YA is because of of what I was sort of talking about before, that they're they can be a bit sort of gentler than adult fiction. Like adult crime fiction can be pretty brutal sometimes, like really, really gory depending on who you're reading. And I think that um yeah, I think that a lot of adults enjoy YA because it's about the story and the characters and not trying to shock or you know, gore you out or or anything like that. So they they get the fun of crime and the satisfaction of hopefully a good resolution, yeah, without like you know, a house littered with bodies, dead bodies everywhere. So I think that the other thing, oh sorry. No, I was just going to say I was invited by um a teacher to a regional school, and she'd bought copies of Gus and the Missing Boy for her class, who they were year nine, and they had a they had a bit of a literacy problem, and so the one of the kind of most rewarding sort of experiences I had really was um going up there and talking to them and some of those kids, it was like the first book they'd ever read from beginning to end, and um they had done like assignments on it, and it was up on the wall, which was very humbling and slightly overwhelming, and but like moving and and it yeah, it was it was such an honour, and like these kids were telling me all the stuff that they liked, but they were also telling me what you could put in the sequel, and they were coming up with reasons and rationales for certain behaviour, and I'd they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking of that, like you know, not at all. So they'd really gone deep into it, and so I think having that experience um made me sort of realize that yeah, there was value in in writing in writing more of these, and yeah, so that's what started me sort of talking to other people about obviously it's become a even in the you know the last couple of years, a really big discussion about getting you know reading rates up, and particularly with boys, but that's what sort of got me interested in that and looking at you know what can we sort of do to improve that sort of reluctant reader literacy. So not that I've got any solutions, unfortunately.

Speaker 15:36

Just keep writing great books. That's part of the solution, and going to talk to kids at schools and where yeah, libraries and yeah, I think that's part of it. It's the exposure, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 15:49

Yeah, look, I I think it is, and I think my books offer you can have all of the sort of fun of murder without like I said, without the gore and the safety of just you just put the book down, even you know, with you know, with a TV show you might sort of as we've sort of been talking about, you know, there's some pretty gory stuff you could probably you could probably watch and it might haunt you, but a book you can just put down. So there I think there's a safety in I think there's a safety in reading that perhaps even TV and movies doesn't give you. And I think that um if you feel safe that you're more you're more inclined to just keep pushing through a book and hopefully um yeah solve the crime.

Speaker 3 16:33

So you become a regular voice on the Queer Rights Sessions podcast, um, the words and nerds spin-off um Rob McDonald started, um where the two of you interview LGBTQIA plus writers. Um, what do you enjoy about podcasting compared to writing?

Speaker 1 16:50

Um despite me banging on, I don't really like talking about myself that much, but I'm very interested in hearing about other people. So um there were there was that. I think you know, Rob's got two teenage girls and books to write and things like that, so he asked me to sort of come along so I could do some episodes and um, you know, sort of take the the weight off him a little bit. He was also doing his masters, you know. Clearly he was, you know, trying to fill in that sort of midnight to 3 a.m. slot that was just sitting there not being used. But um, so that that's how I got involved with it, and that was, you know, sort of very sweet and sort of generous of him. But it does mean that I've um yeah, so I've kind of fallen into podcasting. As I was saying to you before, I've loathed my voice, so um, it's not something I ever really considered. But anyway, um, yeah, I I I think the two things are just one thing is so we don't charge at all, um, unlike some podcasts do. And so I and we also sort of try to um try to interview debuts or sort of newer writers, because I think when you're in the early stages of your career, you are just sort of like seeking content and um you know you looking at at ways to get your book out there if you're not sort of that established, and so um, yeah, so there's that, and just trying to sort of amplify the voices that maybe you don't always hear. So yeah, it's it's it's a a real pleasure. I'm really bad at editing, and so there'd be more episodes coming out, but I'm kind of getting to about one a month. But I've interviewed some um um yeah, interviewed some amazing, amazing people with in incredible stories and incredible talent. So it's quite it's quite humbling talking to um yeah, some people.

Speaker 3 18:56

And what do you think strong queer storytelling gives young readers?

Speaker 1 19:02

I think that we all want to see ourselves on the page somewhere, and I think particularly um, particularly these days, like there's so many sort of different stories out there, but um there's also you know, there's a lot of hate and anger and um all sorts of um you know the nastier parts of the world are very visible and you know younger people have got access to the internet now, so you know I I don't know, I I just think it's really tough, and I think people do want to, particularly younger readers, but I think people do want to see themselves on the page, they want to understand that they're not alone, they want to see either historical context or they want to see how other people have overcome um, you know, some of the prejudices or barriers that they've experienced. But there's that. Um, but I think we've also sort of moved away from things like coming out stories, and so it it's much more about also trying to normalize all of that diversity in in books and just showing everyone. Well, certainly what I suppose I try to do is just show everyone kind of gets on and no one really cares about that stuff. So um, yeah, and I think that the response of the podcast is always because there's a variety of writers, um, different genders, different um stages of their career, and different ages as well. So the response has always been really positive because there's it's it's great to see all of this different sort of representation um across, like I said, across demographics, across um, you know, a spectrum of sexuality and also the spectrum of experience.

Speaker 3 20:56

Something else I know you care about, which is helping um reluctant readers, especially boys, find their way into books. Um, I've got twin eight-year-old boys myself, so it's something that I'm really invested in too. Um, there's a lot of talk about how sort of gendered expectations shape kids' reading habits. Um obviously, for example, boys often start out loving stories and they get boxed in about boxed into the ideas about what they're meant to read. Um from what you've seen in workshops and and obviously spending time in schools as well, what actually is gets in the way of or gets in the way for reluctant readers and how much of it do you think comes down to gender? Um, and what do you think sort of parents and teachers and the rest of us can do to sort of um help kids build a reading life that feels like theirs?

Speaker 1 21:49

Yeah, look, it's a big question, and there's you know, people far smarter than me puzzling over this one, but I suppose the few things that I've observed is it feels like boys and girls um read at the sort of same pace and then we sort of hit puberty and it just feels like suddenly I think it's I think there's almost like this sort of archetype of cool nerdy girl who likes books and I I think that's kind of fine. I don't think that seems to work for boys. I feel like more peer pressure comes in. There's more about boy should be more sporty. Unfortunately now that we live in an era of the manosphere boy should also be fitter and so you've got a a whole there seems to be a sort of different emphasis there. The things that I suppose I think that um the things that I've sort of seeing in schools is I think boys like my books or like um other people's books that are that they're sort of fast paced and you know they're page turners and they're sort of a bit exciting. It it feels a really broad thing to say but it feels like boys are a little bit more interested in the action in books and girls more interested in the relationship. So that's a very that feels like a very gendered thing to say but it does seem to play out in the classrooms that um that I've been in. The only things I would never I would never give anyone advice about anything but the things that I do sort of hear consistently is that from a parent's point of view the things that can really contribute to kids becoming good readers is, you know, always having books in the house but particularly with boys seeing their father read and reading having their father read to them or reading a book together. That seems to be the one thing that some of the research that I've seen seems to um sort of keep going back to the fact that past a certain age it tends to be the mum who's the reader not the father and so again you end up in these stereotypes but broadly that seems to be what the research is saying. And so one way to kind of counter it with boys seems to be this sense of making sure that dads are seen reading and so that it's seen as a masculine thing to do. I guess so there you go. I'm pleased to see lots of books behind you there Leigh.

Speaker 3 24:29

Yeah this is just um yeah no I've I'm sure it's the tip of the ice the rest of us yes my pile of Sui reds is getting very out of control that's interesting yeah there's a few music coffee table things up there yeah but um so did you how old are your boys? Uh twins eight and I've got a and I've got a 13 year old girl that's a sort of voracious reader as well so okay then so that'll be interesting to see if they take the same path anymore. Yeah well there are books um there are just books everywhere and I can't throw books out so there are books everywhere my wife's a huge reader but reads Kindle um so she doesn't keep accumulating stuff in her house whereas I just I'm just I've always been I've always loved having books around so um my appetite to have them um I need to work quite hard to sort of keep up with the reading part of it. But um no I do I do love having them around. So yeah the boys they certainly and they've got a rather large bookshelf in their room as well so you said twins are they identical twins?

Speaker 1 25:34

No no no they're not so they're um they're either way it'll be interesting to see if their reading habits stay sim well I'm not even sure they are similar now but you know I mean how much they diverge as the years go on.

Speaker 3 25:46

Yeah and I'm an only child so I'm fascinated by the relationship with siblings sort of period. So yeah I'm I'm fascinated for all the things um but that one will be an interesting watch as well so and on the the flip side of that is interesting around which one of their their interest in sports which I already I can see are quite different. So um yeah I'm I'm I'm intrigued by it I will say so are you a sporty dad? Uh yes I'm I'd like to think I'm both the sporty and the creative side so they with a bit of luck hopefully they get a good balance and there's always music playing in the house I was going to say looking at all the gear behind you. Yeah it makes it look it makes it look like I'm a good guitar well it doesn't actually make it look like I'm a good guitarist but I can spoil alert tell you that I absolutely am not um plot twist yeah um but yeah that I'm I'm keen to try and give them the balance of everything and um and then in my spare time I'm also a really shit woodworker too. Oh fantastic have you got your own shed I do I can almost squeeze into it still but um it's not very conducive full of books.

Speaker 1 26:59

No it's just it's just full of crap it's not necessarily conducive to doing good work so um yeah my growing up my grandfather had a big old shed that he built and I got quite good at all of that sort of stuff at one stage but it hasn't stuck I must admit I find every now and then something will happen and I'll just automatically know how to fix it and I do have a lot of tools but yeah um it's it didn't stick in the way that he probably would have liked but it is interesting there's like a muscle memory it's like I know how to fix things.

Speaker 3 27:30

Well I'm the opposite my dad was um could do all the things and I just could not at all and when we're talking about that that HT Kingswood uh that cost 300 bucks in 1991 that he had to he had to basically fix and my contribution to helping get that car back on the road was he would lock me in the boot with a torch and then he would spray the back of the car with a hose and my job was to see if any leaks came in through the broken seals. And occasionally he'd make me do like crappy sandpapering work but then I was really poor at that so he he took that job off me but then but then many many years later he he passed a few years ago and somewhere around the time I got quite interested in sort of building things which is weird because I was coming from a very low base. But I have quite enjoyed it. So it's funny how these things all kind of I don't know they're locked in a booth though there's a piece of book in that lucky lucky those HD Kingswood books they were big you could you could child protection service party in a Kingswood booth. Oh they were huge like you could yeah you'd put your legs out stretch your legs out and yeah there's no no danger there but um I had bad things too with my my Saturday afternoons that's for sure.

Speaker 1 28:44

Yeah no I love the Kingswood I had it was just I had my first car was a Corolla and I had it for ages and then it got stolen and so I needed a car and a mate was um selling his for and so yeah it was 1970 three on the tree bench seat and I think um I think I paid like five hundred bucks for it but it was in really good Nick like his dad had um this guy he was the younger brother of one of my best friends and the dad had been servicing this car the whole time so I honestly it looked like apart from a bit of fading the the the sheer you know the colour of the duco you know it was in it looked like it had just sort of stepped out of a 70s movie so they ran forever and the only reason mine's mine kept going and then one day I pulled into the driveway and I didn't even hear it and dad didn't hear it my mum said there's something wrong with your car and we were like what are you talking about mum and we went out there she said oh no I heard something when you came up the driveway and we went out and had a look and essentially the floor had rusted through the bottom and the um the chassis and the floor basically we're oh god we're we're parting and that was that I never drove the poor old Smurf again so I stepped up to a 1980 brown VB Commodore so oh wow there you go all right shall we shall we wrap up the car part of the podcast die of old days we've we've had a lovely chat we do have a couple of little questions at the end if you've got a little bit of time because we just finish off on a couple of lighter questions if that's okay but unless you want to keep talking I can't compete on the car thing my first car was a Ford laser so I've got nowhere to go with these cool car discussions.

Speaker 30:33

So I'm gonna pivot and um I think we've grilled you on lots of serious topics for long enough um so can we help you wind down with a couple of lighter questions?

Speaker 1 30:44

Sure.

Speaker 30:46

So the first one is if you could borrow any writer's brain for a day just to see how it works whose would you pick and why?

Speaker 1 30:57

I mean the easy answer would be Agatha Christie given everything we've talked about and given the nature of what I write but um I think I don't know there's some so many amazing writers out there but I've sort of been thinking about this a bit one of the things I loved growing up was Doctor Who and there was a writer called Terrence Dix who wrote all of the adaptations and he was a bit Agatha Christie in the sense that he was able to take really complex things and make them really easy to read and so um that sort of that kind of ability that um deceptively simple ability to translate the complex into the simple which you know if we've all worked in comms we know that that's kind of half our bread and butter. So yeah I've been thinking about there's a biography of his about his work and his influence on you know a couple of generations of readers particularly in the UK so he's been on my mind at the moment so I would love to sort of sit in Terrence Dix's head for for a day and sort of see how he could do that how he was so good at narrowing zeroing into the the heart of a story to the heart of a character um and being able to build whole worlds with three sentences so I love that answer.

Speaker 32:20

I never would have predicted that one it's awesome. All right so this one I know I should have said something posh like absolutely not you say whatever you want this this one this one um sometimes stumps people as well so here we go. So this time you're stranded on a desert island and you can only take one Australian crime fiction novel with you.

Speaker 1 32:41

So what's the book that you'd want for company I did know you'd ask this I um the I thought about this kind of long and hard and there's so many brilliant brilliant um Australian crime writers and crime books but the one I sort of kept coming back to was Wimmerer by Mark Brandy because when I read it it had a real visceral impact on me in a way that honestly it's been a long time since OneBooks kind of slapped me in the the face like that. Even um even like a month ago I read Josh Primary's um The Gambler which is I thought is incredible and I just inhaled it. But so I nearly went there but I keep thinking about Wimmer and I just it was such an understated there's an understated way that he writes coming from journalism perhaps but um not perhaps but presumably but yeah there there's something about it and just that I don't know because you've you know young vulnerable boys all all all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 33:53

So yeah Wimmera by Mark Brandy yeah we um great choice we we actually have Mark coming on the show next month and um oh really we we do and we've talked about um we've talked about how economical he is with words and his style and yeah Wimmerow was I mean all his books have been incredible but I Wimmer being the first one of his that I read um was yeah it it it really had an impact on me and like his writing style is um yeah is is fantastic so great choice I would also smuggle like a a YA book oh okay which one yeah I'd say probably Eleanor Jones is not drowning so by Amy doak so I've read that recently that's absolutely wonderful it's probably in my opinion maybe the best of the four Eleanor Jones books so that's her latest so yeah but Amy's a mate so I would say that. Well she I think we're I'm I'm not having got our calendar in front of me but we're I think I we're interviewing Amy the week after we interview Mark so she's coming on the show as well so we are we are wrapped as we say periodically we've just been so um so chuffed with how generous all of um the Australian crime rides that we're spoken to yourself included uh have been with their time and their enthusiasm to come on the show so we're um we are absolutely looking forward to having both of them on the show. Fantastic uh all right so before we let you escape we've got one last thing and it's purely for fun it's the rapid fire the quick and the curious um oh okay where I'll throw you a bunch of either or choices and you just go with whatever pops into your head first. Okay now Helen I suspect has got a little excited after reading your book so you might notice a bit of a young adult flavor sneaking into some of these questions. So Troy are you ready? Yes all right skateboard or BMX? BMX uh dip your toe in first or dive straight in uh dip your toe it's not the cool answer um Marty McFly or Ferris Bueller uh Ferris Bueller great question Helen great question uh paperback or graphic novel um paperback uh camp crush or camp nemesis I reckon nemesis vampires or zombies um zombies one episode at a time or binge the whole season the whole season no question cappuccino or bubble tea cappuccino and I'm gonna I'm not even sure what I what bubble tea is I just know it's a thing my I've got a 13 year old um Zoe who if we go anywhere near anyone that sells bubble tea it's like can you get me a bubble tea? Can you get me and I just don't get it at all. I'm just they just look what's it taste like it's revolting yeah it's I won't ever be able to tell you because I won't I won't touch one um anything that actually ends in tea I'm not likely to have either but anyway it's not about me right now um accidental hero or undercover villain accidental hero uh beach shack or mountain cabin beach shack uh Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys I'm gonna actually say Nancy Drew uh Maccas or KFC Maccas because I used to work there uh road trip or staycation road trip uh dungeons or dragons dungeons uh save the world or save your friends save your friends uh now normally Helen includes what I call her Bogan question which is actually Ford versus Holt Holden which um you know obviously we've talked about already Kane driving his ship round into it um so obviously I I think I know the answer to that one um but thank you very much that was always fun I really really enjoy listening to the answers that we get um uh in that it's I I look forward to that part of the the interview thank you for being such a good sport thank you for being a good sport especially because I think this was my first time doing a special young adult edition so we might we might try out these questions again for Amy Joke if she's listening because it's a the flavour we were going for yeah yeah you see Amy's from Benigo as well so I wonder if she'll have the same answers.

Speaker 38:35

I wonder all right I'm gonna do exactly the same yeah we still didn't get your answer though Ford or Holden oh always Holden always yeah so I didn't I didn't even need to ask I think as soon as as soon as Kane was gifted uh ship brown Kingswood to drive like it was it was foregone conclusion yeah well Troy thank you so very much for joining us this has been such a great chat and we've just loved hearing absolutely you've everything you shared with us and um we're really excited to keep tabs on your next books and where you're going next.

Speaker 1 39:13

Absolutely thank you so much for having me. We've been here for hours it's been it's been wonderful it doesn't seem like hours but then you look at the clock and it's like okay it started yesterday.

Speaker 3 39:25

And we also we were chatting before I even hit record for a while as well so no it has um it has been fantastic having you on um and for everyone listening we've put um we'll put links to Troy's books um in the show notes and uh links to your podcast as well Troy um so you'll be able to find all of those there and don't forget you can follow us on Instagram and the Facebook as the boomers say um or Facebook um so thank you very much thank you all righty that's us for now for this episode of Kill City we're putting the bookmark back in the book till next time so try not to start any trouble while we're gone