Christian White in the Spotlight - Part One

In this episode, part one of our in-depth conversation with Christian White, we explore his writing process, inspiration, and the secrets behind his bestselling novels, including The Nowhere Child and The Long Night.

Novels by Christian White

• The Nowhere Child
• The Wife and the Widow
• The Wild Place
• The Ledge
• The Long Night

Contact Christian

Other books we discussed

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Key Topics

• Christian White's writing journey and influences
• The importance of hooks and structure in storytelling
• Creating strong sense of place in novels
• Balancing horror and thriller elements
• Building suspense and misdirection in crime fiction

Booktopia Affiliate Program

The Kill City Podcast is a part of the Booktopia Affiliate Program, meaning that when you purchase a book from Booktopia using one of the above the links, we get a small commission. Or as they'd say in the crime world, a kick back! 

At the Kill City Podcast we love celebrating and promoting the work of Australian writers, publishers and bookstores, and we hope you do too.

Disclaimer

The episode transcripts are auto-generated, and while all efforts are made to ensure their accuracy, there may be some instance of incorrect spelling and/or errors in the accuracy.

www.killcitypodcast.com.au

Transcript

Helen 0:00

The Kill City podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands we're on. Here in Melbourne, that's the Wurrundjeri Woi Worong people of the Kulin Nation. We honour their deep connection to storytelling, a tradition carried across more than two thousand generations. Pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging, and we extend that acknowledgement to First Nations people listening today.

Leigh 0:50

Today we're talking to Christian White, a writer who didn't just arrive on the Australian crime fiction scene a few years ago. He detonated onto it. His debut, The Nowhere Child, was already a publishing phenomenon before it even hit the shelves, with an early draft winning the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. When it was published in 2018, it was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards, General Fiction Book of the Year, the Matt Rochelle Award for New Writer of the Year, and the Indie Book Awards debut Fiction Book of the Year. Then came The Wife and the Widow in 2020, which helped cement his reputation after winning the 2020 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction. It was also shortlisted for the Bookseller's Choice Award, the Fiction Prize at the Indy Awards, and longlisted for the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In 2021, he released Wild Place, written during the COVID pandemic, another bestseller, followed by The Legend 2024, which was named the QBD Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. And his latest thriller, The Long Night, was published in October 2025. Across all of them, Christian has had this unnerving talent for taking the everyday family secrets, small towns, the stories we tell ourselves, and twisting them just enough that you want to start questioning your own memories. Each book is sharp, clever, and addictive in its own way. Christian White, welcome to Kill City, and it is really, really good to have you here.

Christian 2:09

It is an honour to be here, and thank you for that wonderful intro. I mean, if you wanted to spend the rest of the time just listing more things you like about me, that would be fantastic.

Helen 2:18

That's pretty much our script, Christian. Just wait, there's more.

Christian 2:22

I love it. You know, it's funny because you know, when you're just starting out as a writer, you you have to fudge your bio a little bit, you know, and you and you write it yourself and you've write it in third person, it's really silly. And now, you know, listening to that back, it's um, yeah, it's good that I don't have to lie anymore. I've got I'm free.

Helen 2:39

Fantastic. And look, we were really lucky to um catch you at our local library talk a few weeks ago, and it was so nice to a meet you in person. And look, you basically took the whole room on this guided tour of your whole writing career. You did it book by book in chronological order, which is really helpful for us because we were taking notes. Plus, we got to meet your gorgeous daughter who absolutely stole the show. You just had everybody spellbound, so it was just awesome.

Christian 3:05

Well, that's very, very nice of you to say it. I I experienced those things um so differently because in in my head, I you know, as you guys probably realised, I had very little planned. Um, and I I experienced those things as in I I'll be talking and I'll think there'll be a second, there'll be a second voice saying, What are you talking about? Oh, look at there's that woman over there, she wants to look at her phone. So it's great to hear, it's great to hear from your perspective that you um that it that uh yeah, that's very good to hear.

Leigh 3:32

It was one of those events where when you looked around, people were they had that that sort of lean, that forward lean going where everybody was at the same angle and they were really sort of hanging on every word. So and that was it, it was great to be there.

Christian 3:42

You guys are so sweet, it's ridiculous. Thank you.

Helen 3:45

No, it's very good. And we were we were like groupies because we were hanging at the back and we were waiting for everyone to like get their photos with you and to get their book signed, and then we were like, Hi, we're um from the Kill City podcast. Never considered coming on, and then you went, Yes, and you should have seen us, and we were like jumping up and down with excitement.

Christian 4:03

Oh, that's so nice, of course. Well, the title, it's stuck in my head, Kill City too, by the way. It's yeah, fantastic.

Helen 4:09

Well, there's a bit of a story to that, as Leigh mentioned.

Leigh 4:12

Yeah, no, absolutely. We um we reference periodically that we are paying definite homage to the Kill City bookstore of uh Greville and Chapel Streets of the um 90s and early 2000s. So it's um uh it's a great one. I I love being able to uh use that as the as the title.

Helen 4:28

And I think um just to kick off, just basically talking about readers, because as as we mentioned, our our biggest claim to fame is that we are readers and we absolutely adore Australian crime fiction, which is why the idea for Kill City came about. But for you as an author, doing those kind of close-up and personal events where you do get to meet your readers face to face, I guess that's a little bit different from how you think about them when you're sort of um you know putting putting your words on paper. Do you um are there any particular insights or perspectives that you like about kind of having that interaction with with your readers face to face?

Christian 5:04

Yeah, I I I um I really love it, you know. I I mean it can be uh it can be socially exhausting and all of that sort of stuff, but I I really love it, and I think it's because um, you know, so I do a lot of work in film and TV as well, and and when you when you when you write a film and it gets made and you go and see it at a cinema, it's um I mean it's incredible for all of the all of the reasons as you know as as you'd expect, but it's also this opportunity to kind of experience it with the audience. You know, I remember the last film, um, you know, Apartment 7A a few years ago. I went over to the premiere and I was sitting between people who had no idea that I had anything to do with the film and I kind of was it were eavesdropping on them at the end and things like that. And it and it's this um it's in it's an incredibly I mean it's a surreal experience and it's really cool, but it's also just nice to kind of um to s to see into that world. Whereas with books you you don't you don't generally you don't get it unless you um unless I just was came over to your house and watched you read the book, which would be really weird. Actually, I I sort of have I don't I think I might have uh mentioned this at the library talk, but um every now and then you'll see your book in the wild, you know, you'll see someone reading your books in this some public place, and it's a really, really cool feeling, and and authors that are much more um uh I guess emotionally mature than me will go up and and say, hey, you're enjoying the book, and they'll get photos taken and all of that sort of stuff. Whereas I just like a total creep, I just watch them, I just watch them read it, I just hide somewhere and watch them because that's sort of the closest thing I get to seeing them um you know actually experiencing something that I put out there. So those those library events are really, really uh really important to me because you have all of these people come up and and it's uh it's weird because you think I I still think sometimes that I've won some sort of competition to pretend to sort of pretend what it's like to be a writer, you know. I get to experience that, but and uh but then you go out and you're reminded that there's actually people uh reading this stuff and they have have positive responses to it and negative responses. Uh but it's really um yeah, it's really really special. It's weird. You can't get over it, especially now that I can bring my daughter and and she can kind of um you know have a little bit of an insight into that world as well, and um and uh because I'm I my job is I'm just trying to convince her that I've got a cool job, but yeah.

Helen 7:26

Things are very, very hard to convince if you are cool. Yeah, yeah. But I think um I I think you're pretty up there, I reckon. Especially I think if her her friend's um parents know who you are, I reckon that's where you can see. That helps.

Christian 7:39

Yeah, yeah. No, I think though she'd prefer if I if I sort of um you know cleaned out a horse stable. She would think that's really cool because I get to be with horses.

Helen 7:47

So maybe you need to write a book about horses for your research. Wow. And I think um so library talks is great because you get to meet people in person, and then of course, you know, I think you actually um you uh in your author's notes, you talk about um you're very happy to get emails from your fans. So just really curious, do people write all sorts of interesting things to you? Are there any particularly bizarre or cool things that people have written to you about?

Christian 8:18

I get some bizarre. I get I get so I get a lot of emails which are um 99% of them are really lovely and fantastic and and things that stick with me and and I and I I write everyone back. It takes me it actually takes me a long time. In the beginning, I was getting these emails and I and I was I no one knew me, so when I when I first started getting them, I thought um, oh I want to ru it came five minutes ago, I want to reply. And I thought, no, you've got to play it cool, you know, just wait a day, and now I'm actually genuinely behind, which is great. And most of them are really lovely, you know. I have a lot of people tell me about um their pets and tragic stories about dead pets. I don't know why. I think because I mentioned my my pets in the author's note, um, but then I then I'll you know I'll take those pets and I will put them in the books and and all of that sort of stuff. It's a really fun relationship. I do get some bizarre ones. I get um occasionally I'll get them from people who uh you know, in my first book there's a lemon tree, and and from this email you'd think it plays this huge role in the book, and it doesn't, it's in it for one scene, and a little boy pees against it, and I got a long email about how a lemon tree couldn't grow in that particular climate. So I get so I get some of that stuff, which I can kind of relate to, I'm kind of okay with that. And then I get the occasional, occasional nasty one, and forgive me because I I told this story um at the library event, but uh you know there was I don't know, like I said, 99% are really, really nice, 1% uh they can be kind of nasty. And and often I just don't reply, but there was this one that I got. I was writing, I I my my first book had come out, the Nowhere Child had come out, and I was feeling I'd gone from feeling fantastic to feeling, oh my god, I've got to write another one, you know. And I I was I was sort of um you know just just anxious and getting in my own head about it and all of this sort of stuff. And then I got this w this email from this woman, and she took me to task with for two things. The first thing was she said I used too much swearing, which I totally I've actually come to think that she was right about. I do swear a lot. I didn't realise it until uh my my daughter died recently on Zelda, she was playing Zelda and she died. And do you can you swear on this podcast? We have to bleep it.

Helen 10:34

But she's fine.

Christian 10:35

She said she died, and the first words out of her mouth were shit fuck. So it was like the shit hyphen fuck. And then I thought, oh, okay, I do have to make some changes, you know. It's difficult to explain to a kid though, isn't it? Because they they say, Why is swearing bad? And you sort of have to say, Well, it's not, but we kind of just have to pretend it is. It's a weird, it's a weird thing. Uh anyway, so this woman took me to task about my swearing and total, you know, credit to her. But the other thing she didn't like was so in my first book, The Nowhere Child, uh, you know, it's a lot of it's set in Kentucky and it's in the 90s, it's very kind of small religious town, and there's a relationship between two men. It's a really complex complex, uh, sexual, kind of romantic relationship, and she did not like it, this woman. She was she was very religious and she really didn't like that stuff. And so I wrote back to her saying, you know, you know, really articulate email back, and I sent it off, but then I didn't feel um satisfied. I was still itchy, and then I thought, and I was writing my second book at the time, and I suddenly thought, um, oh, I have a power, I can I can create a character and name it after this woman, right? So this is what I did. So I you know, all I was I should have been thinking about my deadlines and and all of this sort of stuff, but I just started focusing on this woman for this email, and uh, and so I created this character and I named it after this woman, and I thought, um, you know, I'll just make her nasty. Make her some nasty woman, she'll be in it for a scene. And then I thought, um, no, I can do more. I can do more with this. I can make her that which she so despises, I can make her lesbian, right? So I thought, okay, I'm gonna make her lesbian. And I th the the amount of mental energy that was going into this uh character, and then I thought, again, she'll just be this nasty character. But as I started to write her on the on the page, she um it sounds pretentious, but your characters really do take on a life of their own, and suddenly I sort of fell in love with this character, and I thought she's really funny and she's good at her job, and I made her a cop, and then uh and then when the book came out, multiple people would they would come up to uh come up to me and say, Oh Barbara, I love Barbara, you should write a series about Barbara. And I said, Yeah, maybe, maybe I'll write a series about Barbara. I brought her back to the ledge, she's my first recurring character, and it and all because of um just some nasty email from some nasty woman.

Helen 12:58

Well, there you go. That's amazing. Well great power. We love that you reach you you actually reply to your emails, and if you're okay with it, we'll put your email address. I think it's Christian at Christianwhite.com. Yeah, yeah. So people can reach you. And I was just gonna do a plug for your author's notes because you know I'm sure it'll take you a lot longer to get to people's, but we do love your author's notes in the back of your books because they kind of are like those little love letters because they're I feel like you write them personally to me just to let me know how your writing brain is working while we're waiting patiently for you to do that.

Christian 13:31

I love hearing that because it they're really nice, they're really lovely to to write, actually. Yeah, so I I love I love hearing that because you sort of put this that you know, you stick them at the back of the book and you think probably no one will read it, but uh people really do, they have a really positive response to it, and um, and I think that's yeah, it's nice.

Leigh 13:48

No, absolutely. Um all right, so if we just rewind and go back to the beginning, um um tell us about Christian White as a kid. Were you a reader, we were always interested in writing? Like when did you realize that you wanted to be a writer?

Christian 14:04

I was a very, very a pretty strange child. Uh you know, I I was really, really, I really liked being by myself. I really didn't want too many friends, and I would um I remember playing, and I got teased for this. I remember playing, but I would just sort of want to stand in a corner and talk to myself because I because I was sort of telling myself these stories. I was always from a very, very young age, I was um, I was just really into stories and and books and TV and film and and I have this sort of um this sort of obsession, it's a it's a it's a special interest actually, because I I um I have uh autism and and you know autistic people have these special interests, and I think this is one of mine. I think it's it's story, but it's it's more than that. It's the structure of the story and it's how you where certain points of a story land and and how you can kind of play with that and see it and recognize it. I probably sound like a crazy person. But you know, when I when I'm whenever I'm watching a movie at home, just just based on the plot, I can pause it at the exact midpoint, and because I know exactly what's gonna happen, and you know, my wife hates it, I'm forever pausing at the midpoint, but I also know if I'm at the cinema and I need to pee, I'll usually wait for about the you know, right toward the end of act two, because that's when the sad darkest moment happens in every single movie. So I think, oh I'll miss that bit. While the characters are struggling, I'll just go on pee and come back after it. So I I really, really love, I've always been obsessed with um with structure and things like that. And I also think from a young age horror and thrillers, that sort of um I don't know, I kind of felt like I I that was sort of I don't know, I I get I it that it's instilled at me instilled in me from a very young age. One of my earliest memories is um I must have been four or five or something, and or maybe younger, three. I don't know when you have memories. But I remember being babysat by my my nan who is is passed away now, she um but she lived until a hundred years old, uh, so she had a good life. But I remember I was um being babysat by my nan. She lived in Preston, and I was in a some sort of playground bordered with boulders. So I remember really clearly these rocks, and one of the rocks, someone had tagged it with spray paint with red graffiti, and I said to my nan, um, you know, what's that? What's that what's that red stuff? And she said, She could have just told me what it was, graffiti, but instead she said, uh, oh, it's blood. And at night those rocks come alive and they eat children. They're called the blood suckers. Make sure you're in before the sun goes down. It was insane. And I um my goodness, I believe I believed this, you know, uh to the point where I remember it getting picked up later that afternoon by my parents, and my my family do this, um, I love them, but they do this very, very annoying thing where they they just take forever to say goodbye. You know, they say goodbye at the front door, and then it and then you're on the footpath, and then you're in the driveway, and you're in the car, and you think, okay, well, we're in the car, that's gotta be the end of the goodbye. But then the window rolls down, and you still anyway. This was happening, and the sun was going down, and I was thinking, guys, we've got to get out of here because the blood suckers are gonna come. So I think what that what she gave me in that moment, as well as a lot of nightmares and trauma and all of that sort of stuff, she showed me that horror and that kind of dark stuff is a as a is a a lens that you can look through at any ordinary thing, and suddenly very, very ordinary things like a like a clown or a or a pine forest or a or or a uh you know a museum at night, anything can look really it's entertaining, you know, it's really really fun all of a sudden. So I think from an early age um that was kind of in me. And then I remember I remember always writing stories when I was very young, probably um maybe eight or nine, I remember writing a story, and I had this really uh intense realization which was I could never get everything I wanted to say in a story. You know, I could never describe every single thing I see in a room, for example, and that was this huge thing for me, and then I realized, well, you don't you don't have to, you just pick what you need. And that and that was I remember having that really young, and then at around 17 I wrote a story in literature class, and my teacher read it out, and it's probably terrible now. I wish I still had it. It was about a uh a guy finds a baby on the doorstep, really, really dark. Um I can't really remember it, but it got read out and and uh anonymously, you know. My teacher didn't say who it was, but they read it out, and I remember thinking and I'd love that feeling of of of hearing my story read out, but also no one else in the class knowing that I had written it. Because in those days, you know, it was the 90s, anything, you know, I was bullied already, anything else that made you a target, forget it. But it was really nice to um this is a really nice feeling, and I thought, okay, I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna do with my life. I was about I was about 16 or 17, and I thought, um, oh great, I'll be a best-selling author. That'll be really easy. And I thought, um, but I've got to be sensible about it, you know. If I get to 25 years old, I'll you know, and I haven't become a best-selling author yet, then I'll have to do something else. Because 25 at that time seemed like an old man. You know, God, just give up. If you're 25, forget it, you know. Uh, I think because Alex Garland, uh, who who he wrote this amazing book called The Beach in the 90s, this amazing thriller. They made a movie out of it out of it that wasn't uh yeah, but the book is fantastic, and I think he was maybe 26 or 27 when he when he wrote when he had that published, so I thought I'll just beat him by a couple of years. And then I got to 25, and that you know, some bizarre thing happened, which is I I wasn't yet a best-selling author. So I adjusted it to 30 and then on and on, and I was 37 when I finally got published, and I think um, you know, I think I think two things uh sort of helped me eventually get not necessarily get published, but keep going, which was um firstly, no one in my life said, Hey, you're an idiot, you should stop this. This is crazy. To my face, anyway. When my when my when my first book came out, my brother Jamie called me and said, Um, I need to apologize to you about something. I said, What? He said, uh, the family and I have been bitching about you for years, saying, when's he gonna get a proper job? This writing thing is insane, and and you know, I you know, you proved us wrong, which was um which was great, but then the book came out and he sent me a photo, he you know that it he'd fallen asleep reading the books that was so boring, you know, so he kind of he he he comes back at me. Um but that was a huge thing, not having that kind of those negative voices. Um and the other big thing was I decided somewhere along the way I had this uh this sort of weird vision, uh not in a not in a paranormal way, but just this idea come into my head that uh I I was 93 or 94 years old and I just died, and I'd moved recently into an assisted living unit, you know, so my grandkids were cleaning out this unit and they're throwing everything out to a dumpster, and probably had the window open and the dumpster outside, they're throwing things through the window, you know. And then anyway, they they discovered this um this drawer, this little sliding door in a cupboard somewhere, and in that cupboard was a a big stack of unpublished, cobwebby, dusty manuscripts. And I thought, that's a cool thing. If I if I leave behind all these unpublished books for my grandkids to read, that's enough. What a cool thing. And I I think that helped me focus on just. Writing to write and not to try to be a writer, and I and I think that it's such a no-brainer in in in retrospect because I I I I love writing so much. I love the craft, and that when you're a writer, that's what you actually have to do. I've met people who say I'd love to be a writer, but I hate writing. Dude, that's that's the job. You know, you've got to really, you gotta, you've got to do it. Um so I think that was yeah, I've I've always loved it since I was a little kid. Um, yeah, who know God knows what your question was, but maybe maybe I answered it in that in that mess of words.

Leigh 22:34

No, absolutely. Um so inside inside that, because obviously that's quite a long period, and you'd obviously give yourself a a good bit of time. So who was the first person in there that um that really started to take your writing seriously?

Christian 22:49

Well, I didn't for a very long time I didn't tell anyone that I would that I was that I wanted that or I would do it. Um I was really uh really weirdly quite secretive about it. I I would I would r read a lot of scripts and read a lot of books and write a lot, but kind of I'd be weirdly secretive about it. And then uh certain people helped me over the years, but it wasn't until um my my now wife, Summer, she uh she was probably the first person who who kind of thought um it kind of pushed me to said, you know, you could do this, you could do this as a job, you know. And what what I I remember there's this very specific crossroad crossroads moment because we used to work um this is something I couldn't talk about at the library event because my daughter was there, but so all so this entire period when I'm trying to be a writer, I worked a million casual jobs. You know, I you know it's like a writing's like this drug habit, you've got to find money to supplement it, you know. So I was um I picked apples and and I um I worked at a bottle shop for years, I printed t-shirts, I drove a little uh this is a real job, I drove a little food cart around a golf course selling sandwiches and things like that. It's crazy. I worked for Coca-Cola for a while in the call centre where um I don't know if it's still a thing, but on the side of Coke bottles there used to be a free call number that if you wanted to yell at someone, you'd call up, and I would be that person getting yelled at. Uh, but then another job I had was I used to be a video editor for an adult film company. This is why I couldn't bring it up when my daughter was there. And anyway, uh that's where I met my wife, who was an editor as well, she'd behind the camera. And what we would do is we would um re-edit overseas titles so they would classify here. So it was the strangest job. You'd get you'd get a spreadsheet and you'd get a film, and you'd have to go and edit out these little moments. I'll speed you the graphic details. But anyway, we had this old punch-in, punch-out system. I promise you that I'm getting back to your question, I promise. We had this old punch-in-punch-out system, and it was around the time that the third Christopher Nolan Batman film came out, right? And I wanted to see the midnight show. It was playing Wednesday at midnight, and I used to really I would get anxious when I didn't see things straight away. I would get real weird about it. Anyway, I was saying, can we please see the midnight show? And some of my my then girlfriend, my now wife said, Um, you know, can't we just see it on a Thursday like normal people? I don't want to get up really early. And I sort of the way I convinced her to see the midnight show was I said, You stay in bed tomorrow, I'll get up early, and I'll punch in your card, you know. I so it'll be you know a perfect crime, right? And then anyway, we got caught and fired. We both got fired because of this thing. All my fault, all sort of Christopher Nolan's fault, really, to be honest. You know, um, I have no real regrets. But then what happened is that sort of forced us into this real crossroad moment because we sort of think, oh, well, it was this real um I don't know if you've ever been fired, but it was really just like in the movies, you have your little box of possessions and your cactus and you hard drive and you're kind of walking, walking home with these little boxes and you know humiliated, but also what are we gonna do now? And then and that's when some said, Why don't you why don't you put more energy into your writing? Why don't you go to RMIT and study screenwriting? And and that's what I did, and really that was this um you know this real crossroads moment because I I I never would have given up writing, but it that sort of forced me to think, hey, I if I'm gonna I should really try to make some money out of this, and then and then and and then I did, you know, uh from um uh I from going to RMIT uh I heard of a competition that um you know you write a pilot for a TV show, and and I won that competition, and eventually that became Clickbait, my Netflix show, and at the same time I was writing I'd never been in a room with um with any other writers before, people who wanted to be writers, and that was really inspiring as well. So suddenly I was doing all this stuff and I was showing my work to more people, and um and and that's when things started to happen. But really, I owe it, I owe it to some who thought uh, you know, hey, you can actually you don't you don't have to die and have your grandkids find your manuscript, you can actually do something with them. So that was huge, that was huge for me. She's she's very helpful. She also helps me with every single one of my ideas and twists, and uh you'll you'll know if we've been if we get a divorce, you'll know before be ahead of time because you'll see the quality of my work just drop.

Helen 27:30

Gee, so we have to make sure that never happens.

Christian 27:32

Exactly, yeah, exactly. Me too. I'll I'll be out of a job.

Leigh 27:39

So then we get to the book that changed everything for you, um, The Nowhere Child. Uh it's described as a gripping thriller about a woman in Melbourne who's told she might actually be a little girl who vanished from a small town in Kentucky almost thirty years earlier. She heads to the US to find out the truth, and what she uncovers pulls her deep into a community full of secrets, old tensions, and a past that refuses to stay buried. Um when it hit the shelves in 2018, it became one of Australia's best-selling crime fiction debuts ever. And and we talked about this in our episode on Best Australian Crime Fiction Debus, which was episode eleven uh of the Girl City Podcast. I'll link in the show notes below. Um and I've said this about the hawk at the end of chapter one, and Helen knows, as do anybody that's listened to me rabbit on about this, I'm quite obsessed with these early hooks in books. And I think the end of chapter one of The Nowhere Child is just one of the great end of first chapter hooks I've ever read. And I think of two constantly um when I think about this, and it's uh the nowhere child, and it's um I don't know whether you've whether you've ever read Blood Work by Michael Conley, which was the one that was turned into the Clinton Eastwood film. And the the heart transplant is just one of the great hooks, and they are the two that if I'm ever if I ever think about these things, these are the two books I always think about. So um wonderful, wonderful hook. So how did you come up with the premise and the idea for the Nowhere Child?

Christian 29:03

Um so I totally agree with you. A good hook is uh is is everything, and I think making it putting it as early as you possibly can, uh it does two things. It uh you know, it hooks the audience, of course, that hen, you know, hence the name, but it also sets up this um a promise. You know, I I promise you that that uh we're gonna we're gonna go somewhere with this hook and we're gonna solve this mystery. And I think putting it early, it just keeps um keeps the reader hooked. You know, so much of what I think about is uh I never want the reader to disengage in any way. So so much of uh what's going on in my head, especially in the editing process, is I'm taking stuff out, putting stuff, making it more and more economic, and bringing that hook as early as possible just so you um you have them. You have them, you know. Um it's weird, I I don't know if I have a satisfying answer as to when I came up with that that idea, but I uh or where. I mean I weirdly I remember specifically where I was. I was I was in Coburg where I was where I was living at the time, halfway across a bridge uh across um uh the Merry Creek. I know exact I I could take you there right now, I know exactly where it was, where it hit me, and actually I felt very um that that brings to me a bit of a weird um uh a bit of anxiety because I I have this sort of strange idea that had I not been walking across that bridge, would I not have got that idea? And um, you know, I I think it's Elizabeth Gilbert who talks about ideas as this almost this physical thing that I and I just get really worried. What if someone else had walked across that bridge and they would have got the idea? Really, really crazy. But anyway, I got this really clear idea, and it was um it was this this woman who's approached by this stranger, and the stranger says, you know, there's this little girl who who got kidnapped, went missing when she was a kid. I think it's you, and then you know, this girl, this woman is thinking, well, that would mean my parents aren't my parents, they're my kidnappers, and and then I thought, what a cool hook and what a good place for her. So there's so much to go, it's got a good story engine, you know. It's so there's so many places to go. When I when it came to me, when it was in my head, she was weirdly in the pasta aisle of a supermarket. I don't know why. I got rid of that for the book, but that was just really, really clear. Um, there was this yeah, woman in a pasta aisle, this guy approaches. I actually weirdly think my very first version, she was in the it was the first thing, it's probably her looking at pasta. It was so boring. Thank god I changed it. But then I thought um really, really early on, and this is how generally I always work with books, is I'll have a hook, and I knew that was a really strong hook, and then I thought, where is she gonna go? And then at the same time, I was um I can call it research now that I made it into a book, but at the same time, I just I'm a big procrastinator and I will get obsessed with topics, and I'll just learn about those topics and and you know really go down that rabbit hole. And at the time I was obsessed with Pentecostal snake handling, which were these people who um in the American South they they worship God by handling venomous snakes and scorpions, and they drink poison, it's just a real thing, it's incredible. You can look it up, it's amazing. And I thought um what I said, so what if what if you realised you were you were kidnapped? That's one thing. What if you realised you were kidnapped from a community of Pentecostal snake handlers? And I thought, okay, that and then that that was it because then I I knew, okay, I wanted um that only happens in a couple of states in the American South. I thought, okay, I'm gonna it'll it's Kentucky, and now I want this woman to travel to Kentucky into that world, and then it all just kind of everything just takes care of itself. So I think that that it's that marriage between the hook and whatever that big theme, that thematic thing is. Uh, and that and that sort of works generally with a lot of my books. Um, Wild Place it was Satanic Panic. Um, the ledge I didn't really go too much into it was this idea of um you know uh UFOs and and being interested in that sort of stuff. Actually, in the wife and the widow originally had a whole uh a whole section that was um about swinging. Because that was uh not I'm not as a participant, I'll I'll go on the record by saying I'm not as a participant, but I'm I've been so fascinated with that, with that all that I just think that's such a juicy world. Um no pun intended, I don't think that is a pun. Moving on. Uh that I that I thought I'm gonna write about that, and I actually wrote um a prologue that is this couple on their way to a swingers party, and my publisher still thinks it's the best thing I've ever written. It's and but of course I had to get rid of it because I cut all of that stuff out. Um but but yeah, usually it's just that kind of that kind of marriage of um of the hook and uh and I guess sort of the setting or that of the world, I suppose.

Leigh 33:57

Yeah, wow.

Helen 33:58

That's um that's awesome. Well, that's it for part one of our interview with the wonderful Christian White. Join us next time for part two.