KLP Chat: Jack Heath on Storytelling, Career Writing, and Craft

Published at 19, Jack Heath had an early introduction to being an author, and shares the knowledge and insights he's learned over the past twenty years.

In this episode of The KidLit Pod, host Shara Curlett delves deep with Jack Heath, an Australian author known for writing action-driven books for reluctant readers, including the Minutes of Danger series and his latest 12+ thriller, I Know What You’re Hiding, published by Scholastic Australia.

Jack describes his childhood reading (Doctor Who novelisations, Goosebumps, Animorphs) and how meeting Jackie French made becoming a writer feel possible. He shares how later career setbacks tested his commitment, including the challenges of public life and social media.

Jack also discusses his neurodiversity, and how writing helps him to communicate and process emotions. Jack and Shara explore devices and boredom as drivers of creativity, plot-first vs. character-first writing, and how deep emotion can power stronger books. Jack also reflects on AI’s impact on writing, scams targeting authors, and the need for human originality and emotional resonance.

They discuss how books build empathy by letting readers see through others’ eyes, and Jack shares how a pivotal Arts ACT grant helped him in the early days, and believes more arts funding is needed for children’s writers, to help more children become more empathetic adults.

The episode also includes a synopsis and review of I Know What You’re Hiding, and shares a bit about Jack's upcoming adult novel Choppy Water.

Jack Heath's Website: jackheathwriter.com

Jack on Instagram: @jackheathwriter

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BOOK SHOUTOUT LINK:

I Know What You're Hiding by Jack Heath - published by Scholastic Australia

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Follow The KidLit Pod  on Instagram (@thekidlitpod)

Find out more about The KidLit Pod host, Shara Curlett, here:

Shara Curlett on Instagram (@sharacurlett)

Shara Curlett Website (www.sharacurlett.com)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Shara Curlett: Welcome to The KidLit Pod, a collective industry-wide discussion of people who are creating, sharing, discussing, and celebrating books, all with the hopes of capturing children's hearts and minds. I'm Shara Curlett, your host and author of two middle grade novels: Welcome to Miracle, released in 2025, and Protector of Beyond, the first book in an upcoming fantasy series with Penguin Australia, set for release September 2026

Jack Heath writes exciting books for reluctant readers. He's a novelist from Canberra, Australia, and his work includes the Minutes of Danger series which have proven extremely popular, having lots of action-packed adventures within the one book. His latest one is 1,000 Minutes of Danger, which includes 30 deadly dangers to escape in one epic volume. Other titles include Kill Your Husbands, which is not for kids, and 40 other books which have sold half a million copies in 10 languages. 

Jack's latest book is I Know What You're Hiding, which is for ages 12 plus. He lives with his wife, five chickens, three possums, two cats, some fish, and a pair of human children.

So here we go. Our chat with Jack Heath.

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[00:01:14] Shara Curlett: Hi, Jack. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. 

[00:01:18] Jack Heath: Oh, thank you very much for having me. It's a, it's a privilege. 

[00:01:21] Shara Curlett: Well, as I've mentioned previously, The KidLit Pod has a particular focus on what we're doing as an industry to encourage children to read, as well as celebrating everything kidlit in both New Zealand and Australia.

[00:01:32] Shara Curlett: So, considering you've been in the industry for so long I'm really looking forward to chatting to you about that, and your experience, and the trends that you've seen, and the changes. So firstly, I would actually like to talk about what you were like as a kid. What stories did you like? What movies, television?

[00:01:51] Jack Heath: Uh, let me see. So I think, like I really, really liked Doctor Who as a kid. But I wasn't allowed to watch the show. It was on too late. I would only read the books, like the novelisations. And, then when I got old enough to actually watch the show and see that the special effects were so much better in my head, you know Uh, that kind of, uh, led me towards, um, towards reading rather than towards watching.

 I think actually, what I watched was pretty closely supervised by my mum and dad, whereas what I read, not so much. I felt like I had much more free rein there. So that was probably a big part of how I got hooked on reading was that it made me feel independent, and it made me feel like I, I got to make some of my own choices, and that instead of Mum and Dad telling me about what was and wasn't appropriate, I could tell them about the books I was reading and going, "And then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened," and, you know.

So, I moved on from novelisations to reading quite a lot of stuff. Well, I read a lot of Goosebumps, 'cause ... So for reference, I'm 39, so Goosebumps was massive when I was a kid. Still is. Yeah. But especially back then. I really liked the Teen Power Inc. series by Emily Rodda that was later re-released as The Raven Hill Mysteries. So that was kind of my gateway into crime fiction, 'cause they were sort of, you know, The Famous Five type stories. And I really liked Animorphs. So, again - that was massive when I was a kid.

[00:03:22] Jack Heath: So, I guess you're getting a vibe of the kind of writer that I would eventually become. There was a bit of crime, there was a bit of sci-fi, a little bit of horror, and when I was in Year Five, I went on a school excursion where I got to meet Jackie French, and she had written some of my favorite books, particularly a science fiction novel called The Metal Men, that I really liked.

And there was another book called Summerland that was sort of this psychological thriller type thing. But anyway, meeting her was- kind of the point where I realised that actually there was a human being behind those words. I knew that intellectually but it's not until you're really kind of faced with it and go like, "Wow, this is a thing that people can actually do." This is a, a potential pathway. And, after that, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I told them I wanted to be a writer. 

[00:04:13] Shara Curlett: That's incredible. So you kind of from that moment on, you knew? 

[00:04:17] Jack Heath: Yeah. I mean, there were definitely, stages where I had doubts.

[00:04:22] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:04:23] Jack Heath: So, um, in high school, I picked up the bass guitar and for a little while I thought, ah, maybe I could be a musician instead. But, I was much more well-suited to writing. And then there was a period in my 20s when, so my first book was a big success, but the second one was kind of a flop, and so was the third one and the fourth one and the fifth one. And at that point, I definitely started considering other potential careers. But, I'm really glad I made it work in the end because I can't picture myself doing anything else. 

[00:04:52] Shara Curlett: It shows a lot of resilience that you could push on and keep doing what you did. As well as I feel like there's something, like I, can't speak for everyone else, but within me, once I decided I wanted to become an author, I can't imagine doing anything else now. It's innate, right? 

[00:05:08] Jack Heath: Yeah. It's a compulsion. Like, don't tell my publisher I said this, but I would still be writing even if they weren't paying me to do it. It's something that I just have to do. And it's funny how I always feel like a bit of a fraud whenever anyone tells me that I'm, you know, resilient or persistent or anything like that. Like, writing for me, like it doesn't take dedication to do something you love doing. It takes dedication to do things you hate doing. So yeah, what looks like resilience from the outside is really just sort of fear of trying to find something else that feels meaningful.

[00:05:48] Shara Curlett: Ah, that's very interesting, and I can relate to that. Personally, I always wrote novels as a kid. My mum used to put records on and she'd play records for me, story records. And my dad, he had an amazing imagination, and he'd make up stories about space and this particular captain who would go to different planets of cheese. And it was very reminiscent of, The Faraway Tree, but if you imagine it was like a spaceship going to planets instead of up a tree to a different world.

[00:06:20] Jack Heath: That's so strange. My dad used to make up sort of outer space stories for me as well.

[00:06:24] Shara Curlett: Oh, really?

[00:06:25] Jack Heath: Like, so sometimes my parents would, you know, they'd tell me about Star Wars like it was a bedtime story. Like, I'd never seen Star Wars, but they'd be like, "And then Han Solo was frozen in carbonite. Okay, well, good night." But, I do remember sitting on the couch in our little house in Melbourne, and Dad just making up some story about, astronauts who got ... So they landed on a planet and it was sticky, and the planet turned out to be made of spider webs or something. Or that there was like a giant butterfly. I don't know. Imaginative parents lead to imaginative kids. I guess that's not much of a surprise. 

[00:07:01] Shara Curlett: Sharing a love of story and imagination from such a young age. Funny you say that about Star Wars because, there was a period of time when my son, he's five now, but I was sick, and then my daughter was sick, and we were we isolated ourselves for a week from my husband and my son. And so my son was getting to sleep with my husband, which it was not the typical kind of way we do things usually. And he had no trouble falling asleep. Like with me, sometimes he just wriggles and jiggles and he wants to talk. And with my husband, he was falling asleep in 30 minutes. I was like, "How do you do it?" And he said, "I, I just tell him the plot of Star Wars." And that's pretty much it. Just like, 

[00:07:39] Jack Heath: That's great. It, it's interesting how ... 'Cause I mean, you don't want the story to be too exciting- . ... 'cause that, like, keep- keeps the kid awake. But I also think, there's something to be said for a story that feels like it's halfway between. A story that feels dreamlike already. Like, sometimes that can help you get to sleep, if it's a story that operates kind of on the dream logic. It's like a gateway into the other world. 

[00:08:04] Shara Curlett: Yeah. Mm. I can definitely see that.

That connection that you made, when you met Jackie French, that obviously put it in your mind that, oh, these are real people who write stories, whereas in my mind I don't think I'd ever made that connection. Like, maybe I could become an author.

[00:08:18] Jack Heath: I think I'm incredibly lucky, in a lot of ways, but one in particular was that a lot of the debut authors that I meet, it didn't occur to them that they could write a book until they were 30 or 40 or 50 or something. And there are definitely, I mean, their debut novels tend to be way better than mine was, because they've got, like, a lot of extra life experience, they have a better understanding of how the world works, they've read a lot more books themselves. And there's definitely disadvantages to kind of being thrust out into the limelight when you're not quite fully baked yet, like as a 19-year-old. And as a late-blooming 19-year-old as, as well. Like- I was a 19-year-old with the emotional intelligence of a 12-year-old probably. But I do think that now I'm at a huge advantage because I'm 39 and I have 20 years' industry experience, whereas most other writers my age, they're still kind of learning the ropes.

So, I'm enormously glad that my primary school teacher librarian, Miss Peach, sent me on that school excursion. 'Cause it wasn't like the whole school got to go. She just picked a special couple of kids. And because it was... this is the '90s, so we weren't sent on the excursion in a bus. We were in the back of my mum's car. Like, my mum drove me and three other students to, uh, to this, this excursion where we got to meet Jackie French. It was amazing. God knows where I'd be now if I hadn't had that experience. I'd be writing my debut probably. 

[00:09:50] Shara Curlett: So it's something that you've been with your whole life. How do you think it's shaped you as a person, being an author and going through the moments that you had with your first publisher and then kind of moving into where you are now? 

[00:10:05] Jack Heath: Yeah. it's, I remember, um, I don't know if this is an Ann Patchett quote or someone else, but it, it's something about when, asking a writer where they got their idea is like asking how they caught a cold. Like, it's, really hard to identify. And I think how it's shaped me as a person is going to be really difficult to unpick because there's no control group version of me. Who never became a writer. But I do know that, um So I'm autistic and I have ADHD. I was only diagnosed, relatively recently. So that meant that when I was growing up as a kid, as a teenager and a young adult, like writing was...

So obviously neurodiversity is diversity, so there's a huge range of experiences, and I can't claim to speak for everyone. But I know that myself and a lot of my autistic friends, struggle to express ourselves verbally, especially in emotional or high-stakes situations. Like- I'm okay in a softball interview like this, but you know, in sort of a situation where emotions are running high, I sometimes go completely non-verbal. But one thing that I and some other autistic people in my family find that helps is writing. Like, I go non-verbal, but I never go non-literal. I can always write down my feelings. So I guess one of the ways that being a writer has shaped me is just meaning that instead of bottling it all up and becoming this sort of tangled ball of toxic masculinity. As I think happens to a lot of other men of my generation, um, I always had an outlet for it. And I was able to kind of flush it all out of my system. So there's that. But there's also, So writing is an extremely private thing, you know, and then being published is an extremely public thing. 

[00:12:01] Shara Curlett: Mm. 

[00:12:02] Jack Heath: So, it's like you have to sort of turn yourself inside out and let everyone see your insides. And having that experience when I was so young, I think meant that I grew up maybe a little more self-consciously than some of my peers. I think for most of my, 20s, I was going through a stage of, like, everything I did, Ac- actually, probably most young people these days have the experience now because of social media, right?

Like, everyone is a public figure to one degree or another. But I was growing up in a situation where, you know, I had a public profile, but I also had a personal life, and that was, very difficult to navigate. And it means that as the adult that it has shaped me into- I'm very careful, I guess. I'm pretty withdrawn. Like, you can see me right now in my quiet little office where I spend most of my time. So I'm kind of a hermit. I'm even a bit paranoid. Like, when I was young, I used to put a lot of my personal information on the internet because I'm like, "Well, I'm a public figure. People have a right to know about me." And you can't really undo that. You can't put, put all that back in the bag. So instead, what I do is I spread harmless misinformation about myself. Like, I, I tell people or e- every now and again on a website, you know, I'll say, "Jack Heath was born in Melbourne."

[00:13:30] Jack Heath: I wasn't, I was born in Sydney. But, and I live in Canberra, but that's, like, a little harmless lie that means that if someone wanted to sort of steal my identity or something, they would struggle to do it. Sometimes I tell people Jack Heath is my pen name. It is, but it's also my real name. But I figure if they wanna do some identity theft, their first step will be to try to figure out what my real name is, and it'll take them a while to work out what I've done. This probably sounds like the ravings of a paranoid lunatic, but, I guess it's only because I grew up that way, in that environment. So growing up as a shy, Oh, I only really became shy once I realised how off-putting I was to other people. Again, this is something that, you know, my autistic friends share, is that as primary school students, we were loud and gregarious and friendly and open about everything.

And then you get to become a teenager, and you realise that, oh, actually everyone else is, uh, I'm making other people uncomfortable, and I don't know how to not do that, so I'll just shut down. I'll just go quiet. So I did that, and then became a celebrity, and then became a has-been. And so I guess I'm saying now I'm a little bit paranoid, I'm a little bit crazy, I'm a little bit quiet, I'm a little bit shy, but I love my job, and I've managed to, find, you know, a very small group of friends and my wife and my kids that I can be myself around, and that's enough.

[00:15:03] Shara Curlett: Yeah. I love that. And like, can describe ourselves as all these things, but we're just us. Like, you're just you, I'm just me, and people either accept that or they don't. And I kind of, I like the idea of, surrounding yourself in a place with people- that you're happy to be with 

[00:15:22] Jack Heath: Yeah. I think it's probably easier for me than it might be for a lot of young people these days.  In part because, there were the 2020 lockdowns and everything like that, so that was like being thrust 20-30 years forward into the future where everything is done online and, um- some kids and some adults, I think they didn't cope with that necessarily ... all, all that well. But I do think that, the fact that I had the opportunity to grow up surrounded by people who I knew in person, IRL, and only in person, IRL, and then, not get that feeling that, oh, a bunch of other stuff is happening elsewhere that I'm not involved in but that I can spy on through my phone screen. Yeah, I think it's easier to find your tribe, if you are forced to be in a small room with some people in person and you don't have that kind of escape of the screen. Oh, man ... I sound so old saying this.

[00:16:33] Shara Curlett: Oh, not at all.

[00:16:33] Jack Heath: There's good things about technology too. I guess I'm just, I'm worried about my own kids. They both love reading, so I'm happy about that. I'm not convinced it's because of anything I did. They had good teachers, and maybe it's just the way that they're wired or- or the environment that they're growing up in or something like that. But, I am worried that they'll never find the sort of close lifelong friendships that I managed to find because I wouldn't have if they hadn't been forced upon me, 'cause I wasn't, you know, an extrovert. 

[00:17:02] Shara Curlett: Yeah. How old are your kids, by the way? 

[00:17:04] Jack Heath: Uh, they are 7 and almost 12. 

[00:17:07] Shara Curlett: Mine are 8 and 5, so kind of like- similar

[00:17:10] Jack Heath: yeah, yeah ... Do they read your books? 

[00:17:12] Shara Curlett: I read my first book to my daughter. My son is surprisingly- we'll be watching a movie, which I think will be totally fine, and then he'll kind of start getting closer and closer to me, and he's just like, 'Can I go in somewhere else and do something else?' Um, so I think, I think it'll be a while before he can listen to or read one of mine. But my daughter is, she just loves story. She's the kid who when she was two, I was heavily pregnant with my son, and she loved picture books and I loved reading to her. But we got to the point where she'd bring a stack of picture books to the couch, and I'd sit there.

I would read to her for, like, an hour, two hours sometimes. And then it got to the point where I was just like, okay, I- I'd like to find some kind of fiction novel that I can read to her where I'm not, like, getting up and down or going through a pile of books, as much as I loved reading picture books.

[00:18:05] Jack Heath: Yeah. 

[00:18:05] Shara Curlett: And I ended up reading, the full, Andy Griffiths Tree House- ... Series to her. It was-

[00:18:11] Jack Heath: Yeah, good choice ...

[00:18:12] Shara Curlett: Yeah, it was a winner. She loved it. She loved the pictures. We went through all of the novels. And I still say how he saved my pregnancy, because I could just sit with her for a little while, and then we'd go do something together, and then I'd come back and read another bit to her. And sometimes she'd sit through a whole book in one sitting. So yeah, my daughter's always loved story.

[00:18:31] Jack Heath: Can I just tell you that during one of the COVID lockdowns, I remember, you know how you're, you're looking for ways to fill the days and keep the kids amused? So we bought one of those Treehouse books, we bought it from our local bookshop, like, over the phone. They delivered it because they were amazing, and we did what we called book cinema, where we, like, made little movie tickets that said, like, The Treehouse Series- Oh ... and then made some microwave popcorn, and then we just sat on the couch and read a whole Treehouse book in a sitting and it 

[00:19:06] Shara Curlett: just- Oh, that's so cool. 

[00:19:07] Jack Heath: It was great. It turned, you know, what could've been... I mean, they say, you know, read to your kids for 10 minutes a day, but we were reading, like, two hours a day, and making it into an event, just consumed a bit more time, but also made us feel less, um, less trapped. 

[00:19:22] Shara Curlett: I love that. I think just anything outside the box that plays into kids' imaginations is just, it's so cool. Like, you could sit down and read your kid a book or you could make it like a movie screening. That's amazing. I love that. 

[00:19:36] Jack Heath: Well, at the time we didn't have a TV. So the temptation to turn it on wasn't there. 

[00:19:43] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:19:44] Jack Heath: And I get that. Like, the easiest way to keep not only a kid but also an adult amused is to just turn on the TV. That, that's ... and some days you've just got no energy left, and I, I don't even really like TV shows, and I nevertheless, collapse onto the couch at the end of the day with my wife and watch something on TV just because it is the least mental effort you can possibly exert. 

[00:20:09] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:20:09] Jack Heath: But, some days I have a bit more energy than that, so I like to use it on something a bit creative even if that's just, you know, hand-drawing movie tickets for a- Yeah ... book cinema. 

[00:20:19] Shara Curlett: Oh, i'm actually gonna use that one day. That's such a good idea. So with devices, I've always been hyper-aware that once I allow my daughter to use a device, you get less and less kind of, control over the situation. So It's a really tricky thing because with kids, you just wanna preserve it for as long as you can, right? Preserve that just boredom really. Being bored is good. It's where brilliance comes from.

[00:20:46] Jack Heath: Yeah, you're so right. Years ago, I bought an iPod. I don't know if people even still know what iPods are. But, you know, back in the day I, I bought an iPod, And I realised that I had way fewer ideas for-- Like, I started to get more of what you might call writer's block. I was finding it harder to put the words on a page. And I eventually realised it was because before I bought the iPod I would go jogging. And while I was jogging I was, like mulling over plot problems in my head. But as soon as I bought the iPod I was just listening to the Scissor Sisters while I was jogging.

So I was fitter because I was jogging more because I enjoyed it more because it wasn't as boring. But then the writing was harder because boredom is where creativity comes from. It's like, Do you know do you know about Hawking radiation? Oh, if any of your listeners know anything about physics, they'll be like screaming and going ... 'cause I know I'm gonna butcher this concept. But the idea basically is that in space or everywhere in the universe, like even when there's a complete vacuum, particles just wink into existence. But because there's a positive one and a negative one, they then collide and vanish again. And so it's like matter and anti-matter just appears and then disappears.

[00:22:06] Jack Heath: And Hawking radiation is the idea that around a black hole, particles, the positive and negative particles, when they appear one of them will get sucked into the black hole but one of them will be just beyond the edge. So the idea was that black holes will very slowly radiate particles because the anti-matter or the opposite ones aren't, are getting sucked in. And that's what slowly makes a black hole shrink, because it's losing energy from this process. Anyway, I think of boredom as being like the vacuum- And ideas as being those little particles that just kind of wink into existence in your head and then vanish again most of the time. But every now and again when there's some kind of massive disturbance, like a black hole or whatever, the ideas sort of radiate.

But anyway, you can only see those ideas if there's nothing there. Like if there's, if your head is completely empty, then you can see the particles just winking into existence. Whereas if your head is full of other stuff, then it's, it's impossible to perceive. A much more accessible metaphor, by the way- that I like is, is, uh, the dog park. You know how if you take your dog... I don't have a dog anymore sadly, but when I did I would take him to the dog park and he would just run off and then come back with like five friends, 'cause dogs are amazing at making friends. Um, much, much better than humans.

[00:23:36] Jack Heath: So I figure my brain is like my dog. It can go away and come back with other things, but only if I let it off the leash. Um, the, the dog can't really make friends on the leash. They can like sniff other things, but if you keep them tethered then ultimately at the end of the walk you've only got one dog. Whereas if you take it off, off the leash, then suddenly you've got five dogs that you don't know what to do with. I think that's the other thing that boredom does. Boredom just kind of gets your brain off the collar. 

[00:24:03] Shara Curlett: Yeah. We need to create more opportunities for boredom for kids, because we're just plugging the gaps with things, right?

[00:24:11] Jack Heath: Yeah. Oh, me too. I don't wanna sound all high and mighty and pretend that I'm- good at this. Every spare second- I pick up my phone and open the... uninstalled Instagram, I uninstalled Facebook. It didn't help. Now I just open The Guardian app. And then go like, "Oh, well the world's ending. Sure glad I know that." Why did I ruin this moment of boredom by discovering yet another terrible thing happening in the United States? 

[00:24:39] Shara Curlett: I think, coming back to what you were saying with your two wonderful analogies by the way, about that little idea that comes and goes. I've always thought of it as, like I envision it as like a spark. So, the year that I wrote two novels, it was a year of like immense kind of grief, and so I took to writing to process it. And- I'd never finished a novel before because I'd never gone into writing to actually complete a novel for the purpose of getting it published. Like, I'd always just kind of written and I thought, "Oh, maybe one day I'll do something," but it never really locked into my head that I could be an author because, you know- =you have to get a job that pays money and a career, and I was, a very, like, practically-minded I need to have a good career or just some kind of way to earn money. 'Cause, I think I'd heard from a lot of people, uh, you can't be a creative because there's no money in it, and that kind of programming from a young age, I then thought, "Okay, well, I need to kind of be in business or in a job where you can actually kind of have a career and survive," and um, that kind of thing.

[00:25:44] Shara Curlett: But this time when I finished those two novels, I don't know. It was ... like, People talk about light bulb moments, but it really was one of those light bulb moments where it just came into my head. And I feel like what happened was like it sparked something inside of me, and then the word spark has just stuck with me ever since then, so much so that it's a key kind of factor of my new novel, but the word spark for me, like the ideas spark and it is like you've got a lighter that doesn't have quite enough lighter fluid in it and it's just- Yeah ... it's sparking. But you've got to try and actually get it to ignite.

And I feel like those moments of being quiet are, are how you ignite it. Because the ideas can pop into your head, but it's not until you mull them over and think about them. Did you ever, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night with either you've had a dream or you just wake up with a sudden thought in your your head about what you can write?

[00:26:39] Jack Heath: Yeah. I used to keep a notebook by my bed, but the following morning, the notes were- ... never ... Like, you wake up thinking, "Oh, this is going to be the most amazing book. I have to write this down or I'll forget it." And then you look at your notes the next morning and, what you thought was an entire plot is just three words. And the three words are, "Everything is bugs." And you're like, "You know what? Did I wake up with an idea or did I wake up with the emotion evoked by having an idea, but it's actually fake?" Like the artificial sweetener version of an idea. The decaf coffee version of an idea. You know? Yeah. But yeah, I get it. And one of the things that troubles me a bit these days is that I look back at ... So I've published 49 books now. 

[00:27:29] Shara Curlett: Wow. 

[00:27:29] Jack Heath: And The ones that I look back at and go, "These are really good," like these are my best work, there's only sort of three or four of them. But they always- They are ones that came from some kind of really deep, often negative emotion. Like, I wrote this because I was grieving or I wrote this because I was angry. And what follows then is that all the books that I write just because I'm happy sitting here diligently at my desk enjoying being a writer, those books will be kind of ephemeral and will be forgotten, and that if I want to write, like, really good stuff, I need to experience more suffering. I hate that idea. I don't wanna be miserable to produce works of genius. I want to be able to do it just because I want to do it. But at least that's one more thing that we've got over the AIs, right? The AI can't feel passionate about anything.

[00:28:32] Jack Heath: It only does what it's told. So I guess the books that I only write because I was told to write them are the ones that feel a little bit thin in retrospect. Like, some of them sold really well. But still looking at them... Like, so 300 Minutes of Danger might be a good example of this. So I wrote that book because a publisher told me to. They said, "We've got an idea for a book. It's called 30 Minutes of Danger." That was the original title. We just want it to be 10 stories about 10 kids in 10 dangerous situations." And I was like, "Great. No worries." And I sat down and I bashed it out, and I had a lot of fun writing that. And the book absolutely, positively changed my life 'cause it sold so many copies in so many different languages I got to quit my day job.

[00:29:17] Shara Curlett: Wow. 

[00:29:17] Jack Heath: But if you ask me to go back and think about... Like, I don't remember any of the characters in that book. I remember some of their names, I remember some of what they did, but none of them feel like people. Whereas, a book like Kill Your Husbands, which is probably my most well-known book for adults, that was a book where, I was only able to write it because I had ...So the basic plot of that book is that three couples go away on holiday together, and they've been friends for a long time, and one night they get drunk and try a partner swap, but then when the lights come back on, one of the men is dead, and no one can agree who he was with. That's basically  the elevator pitch for the book. But- 

[00:30:01] Shara Curlett: That's a great elevator pitch. 

[00:30:02] Jack Heath: Thank you. Yeah. The books that sell well, by the way, tend not to be necessarily my best ones. They tend to be the ones that are easiest to summarise. Because no one buys a book if you can't give them the value proposition of what it is and what it's about. So my most recent book, I think, depending on if you count the republish of some other things, is I Know What You're Hiding. I think it's maybe my best book. And that's a book I really struggle to explain to people. People go, "Well, what's it about?"

And I go, "Well, it's complicated." But anyway, so coming back to Kill Your Husbands, though, I had experienced sort of some deep postnatal depression, shortly before the writing of that book, and I'd had these sort of high school friends who I'd lost touch with, and I'd had, like, rocky parts of my marriage as well. And it was the kind of book that I could only sit down and write, because- So these three different couples were experiencing these three different, relationship crises, that I had just barely managed to navigate my way through, with myself intact, my marriage intact, my children intact. And then I sat down to write a sequel called Kill Your Boss, and I couldn't do it. I was like, I have no strong feelings about workplaces. You know? I, I haven't suffered deeply enough to write this book. So yeah.

[00:31:33] Shara Curlett: I think in regards to, yeah, what you write, it's important to write what you want to write first and foremost, I think. Like, I do agree That we need to write what kids want to read to an extent, and maybe that's the way that we write it. But I think the content has to come from somewhere inside of us. Do your characters come first or the setting, or what comes first for you?

[00:31:56] Jack Heath: No, always the plot pretty much. Plots, 

[00:31:57] Shara Curlett: yeah. 

[00:31:58] Jack Heath: I was on a panel once with, I think it was Simone How, I hope, who's a wonderful writer of young adult fiction, where I was trying to explain in response to a question to the audience about how, you know, I start with the plot, I map it all out, and then I work out what kind of person would do all these things. It's really like interviewing candidates for a job. You go like, "Okay, here's, here's the role that you will have to fulfill," and then you pick the candidate who is most likely to do those things. And then Simone, who is much not only wiser but also quick-witted than me- when the question was turned to her, she said, "Yes, but you hire the worst candidate."

[00:32:42] Shara Curlett: Ah. 

[00:32:43] Jack Heath: So ... And I'm like, oh, that's so clever. That's so true. 'Cause you don't want the character who can do all those things. You want the character who is going to struggle to do all those things, and that's where your story comes from. 

[00:32:56] Shara Curlett: Oh my gosh.

[00:32:57] Jack Heath: So, yeah ... 

[00:32:58] Shara Curlett: That's got me, like, whirling back to all of my characters. I'd written quite a number of manuscripts. I started seriously back in 2016. And then I worked through manuscript after manuscript, and it wasn't until Welcome to Miracle, my first one published, that I, I felt this, this is different. In part it was, because of ... You know, in the On Writing book by Stephen King, Yeah ... and others, others had said it before him, like the first million words are practice, right? But for me personally, I'd written well over a million words, but that was when I truly discovered voice. Like, I don't think I understood voice before that, and I wasn't very good at submitting, but I was very good at writing, so if I had like a rejection, just one rejection, I'd then be like, "Okay, I'm gonna go write something else then." And so I have like if we're talking about drawers of manuscripts, mine is probably very, very big.

[00:33:50] Shara Curlett: But then I started Welcome to Miracle and it just came from somewhere else entirely. Like, the character came first for me. But because I'm a pantser,  obviously the structure wasn't quite up to par. And then actually it wasn't until I'd written myself into her character that I realised her flaws and I realised, who she needed to be for the story to be what it needed to be. So I mean, I come at it from a very backwards approach. That sounds like a very straightforward, smart approach to just start with that.

[00:34:19] Jack Heath: No, I think, the way you do it sounds perfect, frankly. Because no matter which way you do it, you're gonna end up going down a lot of blind alleys, right? So the trick is- So I've found that the only characters that I have written who feel like real people, and I'm not delusional, I do need to specify that. Like, I m- I know that it's all in my head, right? And I'm not hearing voices and anything like that. But there are some characters where you don't need to decide what they should do in the situation, because you just know what they would do.

So, that's what I mean by the characters who feel real. Bill Watterson, the author of, Calvin and Hobbes, I think said his characters write their own material. Oh. And I think that's probably kinda what he meant. Like, he wasn't delusional either, but just you know what Calvin would say in this situation. You know what Hobbes would say in this situation. So, you can kind of ... It, it feels like the creative part of your brain is switched off, because you're just kind of writing down what you know would happen. But really the creative bit has just moved to the back of your brain, like it's the subconscious ticking it over.

[00:35:35] Jack Heath: But so the only characters that I've written who I get that feeling from tend to be the ones who have a lot of deleted scenes. So, it's like I know a lot more about the character than the reader does, because I know what they would do in such and such a situation, because they did do that but I have to cut the scene. So, like you just said, the first million words are practice. But I also feel like maybe the first few thousand words of any manuscript are practice, as well. Like, if you sit down and write a manuscript and it's perfect the first time, that's never happened. But I mean, if it did, it would be kind of a soulless book. I feel like it's all those, it's all those unnecessary diversions and blind alleys that were then later splained that make it feel real and like a story worth telling, you know?

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[00:36:29] Shara Curlett: I'm just jumping in to share a little bit about Jack's new book, I Know What You're Hiding. A deadly blaze, a desperate girl, three days to crack the case. Everyone knows the story. Jamie George was the golden child. Her sister, Morgan, was nothing but trouble. When their house mysteriously burned down, Jamie barely survived. Morgan wasn't so lucky.

Three years later, teen podcaster Zoe Gale receives an urgent message. Jamie needs help. She's received a threat written in blood and a demand for cash. Instead of paying up, Jamie wants Zoe to unmask the blackmailer. Zoe's tangled with dangerous people before, and there's something about Jamie she just doesn't trust. But soon she's digging up secrets someone would kill to keep buried. The fire was years ago. The secret is still burning. 

Now, I think Helen Farch's review from FHC Library was totally on point She said, "I loved this new book from Jack Heath and devoured it in one day. Full of danger, plot twists, interesting characters, and non-stop action. This is a book that will appeal to reluctant readers and reading enthusiasts alike. Zoe and her best friend are a dynamic duo when it comes to solving mysteries, and I can't wait to read more of their adventures in the future. Hint, hint. Another page-turner of a young adult thriller from a true master of the genre."

I Know What You're Hiding is published by Scholastic Australia, and is available now from your favorite bookstore.

Now, back to our chat with Jack Heath.

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[00:38:00] Jack Heath: Dervla McTiernan. I just finished reading a Dervla McTiernan book. It was amazing. It was fantastic. And every moment of it felt, I had those chills of, oh, this feels like a real person. This is such a recognisable situation, but I've never seen anyone else capture it, and the feeling of intent behind it. The way that you can tell that the writer is constantly thinking about what the reader will be thinking. That's another thing that an AI can't do either because it's just kind of spitting out the statistically probable next word.

It has no concept of your expectations and stuff like that. Maybe there will be some other kinds of writing that will disappear because of AI. My job as I see it is just to try to make sure that I'm not writing the kind of thing that a machine can do. Because if a machine can do it, then I can't be bothered.

[00:38:56] Jack Heath: It's funny how when you bring up AI, it has a way of kind of consuming the discussion because it is really interesting. Like, it's an interesting thing to talk and think about. And I don't want to be anti-AI because so many of the technologies that I use in everyday life would've been controversial when they first came about, right? Like, if I had to hand write my manuscripts they wouldn't be nearly so good. But there were definitely people who protested against the invention of the word processor. Who thought that was not a good idea. So, I don't want to be one of those people who like rejects the future and says it's not good enough and stuff.

But I also think though that there's a big difference. Firstly, so photography changed painting, right? Prior to photography, paintings were realistic because it took a lot of skill to do a realistic painting, and then suddenly photography came along and so if you wanted a realistic picture of something you'd just take a photo. So instead, the paintings became impressionists, and we got the cubists, and we got all this stuff because the human artists gravitated towards what the machines couldn't do. So, I'm interested in human writers gravitating towards what only they can do and moving away from what AI can do.

Because if a machine can do it then it's not interesting enough for us to be worth doing, or it's not valuable for us to spend our time doing that. And of course, photography is an artistic discipline. So, I'm interested and wondering what the photography equivalent of AI is. Like, what- 

[00:40:42] Shara Curlett: Yeah

[00:40:42] Jack Heath: -what people could do with AI that they couldn't do with regular writing that is then artistically interesting. And meanwhile, human writers can do the things that the machines can't do. I don't think there's a problem with any of that. The problem that we have at the moment is that right now we've got people taking a photo and then saying, "I painted this."

[00:41:02] Shara Curlett: Mm. 

[00:41:03] Jack Heath: That's not really art. And then of course there's the whole like, the environmental consequences of it. Like all the- the water and power chewed up by the data centres. And then there's the proliferation of fake news. Every writer I know is currently getting bombarded with emails written by AI that's like AI-written fan mail you should warn your listeners about this. So, there has always been a scam for a long time where someone would send an email to an author, to say, "Hey, I love your book. I have this massive platform or this massive book club or something. Uh, if you pay me $1,000, I will promote your book to my book club." But those scams presumably, I don't think a lot of authors used to fall for those scams. I mean, it's hard, because It's so hard to write a manuscript, and then you do, and then no one cares.

[00:41:59] Jack Heath: So when you get an email from someone who does care, you're like, "Oh, thank goodness. Yes, I will pay any money to not feel like I've just wasted my time." But because not many people fell for those scams, you'd have to email a lot of people to get someone on the hook, which meant the emails all felt very generic. Now, thanks to AI, the email seems very personal. Like, it talks about your book and your characters and the particular bits that they liked and their favorite scenes, and it goes on and on and on and on. And then, several emails later they ask for $1,000 to go to their book club. Because the scammer, they don't have to type all these emails anymore.

They don't even have to send them probably. There's probably an AI app that- ... means you're just kind of setting up a chain. So, that means that every author I know is getting bombarded by the same scam. All these different email addresses with all these people talking about, "I love your book. It has such quiet intensity." And that ...  I don't know. So that, can we at least agree that that's not art? 

[00:43:05] Shara Curlett: Yeah. Right? It is no art. Even ... And it's just l- like, I, I don't know what's worse than scammers, but lazy scammers is even worse. 

[00:43:15] Jack Heath: Yeah. I know. But I do think if we are looking for what only humans can do, by looking at what the machines can do, so there's a bunch of things that AI writing software isn't good at. But if you look at what it is good at, it's good at writing quickly. So human writers, I think, need to slow down. I think, um, So for the last few years of my career, I've been writing three or four books a year for the last, I don't know, 10 years.

I'm thinking I need to slow down because I can't have speed as my competitive advantage anymore. AI does that better. So I need to focus on the things that I can do better, which are, for example, we were talking about that sort of deep well of human suffering before. You know how when you read a book and, uh, there's a scene in it where you're like, "Oh my God, I didn't realise anyone else had ever had that thought or anyone else had ever... like, I've experienced this myself- but I had no idea that anyone else had. I feel seen. I feel a little less alone in the world." That's something that, and I hate to make predictions because people who make predictions are invariably proven wrong. But I think not only is that something AI can't do, I think it's something it will never be able to do, or at least a sort of large language model style LLM.

Because- you get that feeling because you've never seen it written down before. That's- where it comes from. And the more times someone has written something down or the more other writers who have captured it, the more likely an LLM is to regurgitate it. 

[00:44:54] Shara Curlett: Mm. 

[00:44:55] Jack Heath: So, it's the same as, cliches in writing. Like, all writing contains cliches to one degree or another. But AI is just full of them, and the reason is because- The more people use something, the more the AI sees it, the more it recognises the pattern, the more it regurgitates it. So AI doesn't know what's good or bad. And I'm... Sorry, I shouldn't even be calling it AI, 'cause it's not artificial and it's not intelligence.

Right. Like, I, it, that's really just sort of marketing. But, it doesn't know what's good or bad, it only knows what's common or uncommon in the data set. So, the data set that it was trained on, which includes 39 of my novels, by the way - it makes me so angry. 

[00:45:36] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:45:37] Jack Heath: I'm just waiting for someone to say, you know, "Do you use AI? You sound like ChatGPT." And I'll be like, "ChatGPT sounds like me." "It was me first." Anyway, the point is, the rarer something is, the more worthwhile it is capturing it for a human writer, I think. Because, if I wanted to court controversy I could say there are certain kinds of books that, or certain kinds of writers we don't need anymore. The kinds who can just endlessly churn out words, like their skill is typing really fast and making sentences that sound like they make sense but, you know, the story isn't really worth telling. We no longer need that kind of writer because a robot can do that. Churn out words, you know? 

[00:46:21] Shara Curlett: And there's something... I mean, I personally write because I find it enjoyable and I find it fun, and I can't... I just can't comprehend why you'd want to because, like, the whole enjoyable part of it is the writing. 

[00:46:36] Jack Heath: Right. It's like I've invented a robot that can eat ice cream for you. At long last you will no longer have to suffer through eating ice cream. 

[00:46:48] Shara Curlett: I know, right. And also, like, like the ability to throw little Easter eggs into your novel that potentially no one ever gets, but you know they're there and you smile about it. Like with my first novel, I grew up loving Labyrinth and The Neverending Story and- there's one nod to The Labyrinth in my first book, which I'm not sure anyone would ever pick up on, but I know it's there. And it's just those little things that you can add in that bring you joy, and then if someone one day asks you about it, you'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, that is it." Like, you, you got it, and you're like the only one in the world. 

[00:47:20] Jack Heath: I had one of those messages recently. There was in my book, Kill Your Brother, there was a painting that turns up at the beginning and there was like the tiniest, tiniest clue. It was just something that I put in because it felt right with the characters. But it was just that the painting was the same color as the eyes of this other character and that therefore off-camera, this isn't in the book, but it meant that the patron of the artist had asked the artist to use that colour because it reminded him of the eyes of this other character. And so  that, that was not anywhere in the book. It was just in my head. But, someone sent me an email to say, "Hey, I just noticed this thing. Is this character that twisted that he requested that painting because of it?" And I'm like, "Yes. He is exactly that twisted." And you know that it's good because this reader was half convinced that it was a coincidence. They were like, "Is that just a coincidence?" I'm like, "No, nothing is coincidence. I slave over these things. I spent, you know, hours on a single sentence. Nothing is there by accident. 

[00:48:32] Shara Curlett: Yeah.

[00:48:34] Jack Heath: that is so- And it's so gratifying when someone sees that. 

[00:48:36] Shara Curlett: And that's, that's just nothing AI can replace. Also, like I love how verse novels are having their moment as well because I suspect- Mm ... AI, if you try to get AI to write a verse novel it would just, be full of similes and cliches and-

[00:48:50] Jack Heath: But it can rhyme. It's pretty good at rhyming, right? 

[00:48:53] Shara Curlett: Oh, yeah. 

[00:48:53] Jack Heath: Yeah. So that would be an example of, a children's book author who was good at rhyming but had no other skills.

[00:49:01] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:49:02] Jack Heath: If I was them I'd be a bit worried. 

[00:49:04] Shara Curlett: Yeah.

[00:49:05] Jack Heath: And verse novels, am I right now ... It's actually been quite a while since I've read a verse novel, but I ... Am I right in that most of them don't rhyme these days? 

[00:49:14] Shara Curlett: Yeah.

[00:49:14] Jack Heath: 'Cause you don't need to, right? If it's something that the robot can do, then the human does something else. They do something more interesting, more creative- something more meaningful to them. 

[00:49:24] Shara Curlett: Yeah. I love challenges and I love being told, you can't do something 'cause I like to figure out how you can do it. Uh, and I think, it's a great perspective. Rather than complaining, it's what you can control, right? You can control how you react to things. And so looking at things like, okay, you have your moment of doom, and then you quickly switch off and switch back to, okay, what, what can I do to deal with this? And that is, as you said, write something that they can't do. Write something that's better, uh, different. It's like an opportunity to see what comes out of this, creatively. 

[00:49:54] Jack Heath: Yeah. It's been really interesting rereading the Harry Potter novels with my son who's nearly 12. And he's really, really, really super into it. I read the first one when I was about his age. So it's been interesting kind of looking back at what made them such good children's novels. Like, you can't get away from Harry Potter. It's everywhere, right? But because it's so omnipresent, I think it's easy to kind of miss what what made it really appeal to the audience back then and what still makes it appeal to the audience now, which is - So, when you're a kid, everything feels so unfair.

[00:50:35] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:50:35] Jack Heath: And all the, all the situations Harry Potter is placed in, it's all just so unfair, you know? Um, like, "He didn't say those things to Rita Skeeter, she made it up. It's so unfair." And, you know, "Malfoy's mean for no reason," and stuff. Whereas because they are such cultural icons, like all these characters, you can just say Dumbledore and people know immediately who you mean.

It's been really interesting just watching my son experience it for the first time, and looking back and going like, "Ah, there's all these things," like how Harry kind of, it's his first day of high school. He's nervous, it's all so confusing. Like, anything seems possible. Like The Hunger Games, it's true of this as well.

[00:51:18] Jack Heath: There was a writer in The New Yorker writing about The Hunger Games and saying how, the system that the Capitol has put together, of getting these downtrodden people and then forcing them to fight to the death for entertainment, but also, like, elevating them you know, putting them in fancy dresses and stuff. This writer in The New Yorker, and I forget who it was, I'm sorry, but she was saying that, as a system of oppression it doesn't really make any sense. But as a metaphor for the experience of adolescence, like it really does. Like getting kind of thrown into the Hunger Dome of high school, where like,  everyone's out to get you, everyone's lying, but at the same time there's all these adults telling you what a special time this is.

[00:52:06] Jack Heath: And you know, and building you up and talking about what an honor and stuff. And it's funny how sometimes the plot obscures the appeal. I don't know what JK Rowling or Suzanne Collins or anyone else was trying to say with these novels, and I think it doesn't even necessarily matter. But if you look at why they connect with the kids, it's often because they have taken like a real emotional experience that is relatable to them, but put it in an utterly escapist context. 

[00:52:40] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:52:40] Jack Heath: And this can be like good, good or bad. I don't, and, and I know JK Rowling is a controversial figure now, which I am fascinated with by the way.

I don't want to minimise the harm that she's done. She's said some terrible things and People are rightly upset and feel betrayed .

It was just really interesting to me, in one of the books Ron is given some dress robes with, like, frilly lace and stuff, and he's incredibly embarrassed. He really doesn't wanna wear it. His mother is making him. And sometimes when you look at someone's life and the environment that they grew up in, and then you kind of look at the work and you realize that maybe they were trying to express something that they didn't even realize they were trying to express.

[00:53:27] Jack Heath: Like, J.K. Rowling is someone who goes by Jo and always writes from a male perspective, and always ... Like, it's incredible the amount of time the Harry Potter novels spend on sport. She strikes me as someone who was extremely masculine and was told she couldn't be. Throughout her life because of where and when she grew up. And so this scene with Ron being asked to wear, like, a frilly dress and being sort of terrified, I don't know how much of this is me projecting, but I'm like ... Sometimes, I'm never sure what to do about a living legend, you know?

Like, if an author of a classic novel is dead, you can kind of look at every moment of their lives and every bit of their work and kind of put it all together and, But when someone is still alive and still is able to claim that they meant this or they meant that or they, I don't know. I don't even know what I'm saying. I, I guess just that sometimes looking at a book through the lens of the person the author has become, I'm not necessarily a big fan of separating the artist from the art. Yeah. But I think just because the artist has been radicalized , that doesn't ruin the art.

[00:54:47] Jack Heath: That almost enhances it. It becomes like a, a riddle. You get all these kind of clues to solve and again, maybe I'm imagining it. There's a lot of stuff with Moaning Myrtle and how she says over and over and over again, "Boys aren't allowed in the girls' bathroom." Like, that's sort of this really repetitive thing in the novels. You know, is that her subconscious? Is that her conscious? Is that my subconscious? Is it my conscious? the subject of this podcast is, like, getting kids reading and stuff, right? And I don't think we necessarily do that by pretending that authors are perfect. And I don't think we necessarily do that by giving kids books directly about situations that they themselves have experienced.

I think emotional resonance is more important than the actual everyday life type stuff, I guess. Mm. Hence the, the success of Harry Potter, the success of The Hunger Games, and stuff like that. And I do think that when an author becomes problematic, I mean, I'm a vegetarian, so I'm like ahead of the curve in that way. I think the idea of robot rights is kind of stupid. Maybe in like 30, 40 years I'll be canceled for that. That's ... You, you never know what'll happen. But I don't think you need to pretend that the author was perfect in order to get something out of the book.

[00:56:07] Jack Heath: I think you can look at a book written by an imperfect person and kind of study it on a richer, deeper level than you were able to before. And sometimes even readers pick out things in my work where they go, "Were you trying to do this?" And I go, "Not on purpose." "But yeah, that fits. I had no idea what I was trying to express here." Especially since, books for children, you know, they're sometimes a bit didactic. Like, so there's often a moral lesson, and I'm not opposed to that necessarily. I'm conscious of the fact that the books that I read shaped my worldview. So when I'm writing for kids, I, try not to be a bad influence.

Whereas when I'm writing for adults, I deliberately shake the moral foundations. I go like, "Ah, but what if this?" You know, 'cause I'm, less worried about ruining someone's life. 

[00:57:00] Shara Curlett: They're pretty established by then. They'll be fine. 

[00:57:03] Jack Heath: Yeah. They've made their choices. And I can just tell them a fun story and stuff. But because writing for us is like an obsession and a compulsion and stuff, that compulsion is very rarely because we have a message we want to send. It's because there is something we can't stop thinking about. And writing is thinking. Like, writing is how we process it.

So, then we hand that over to the readers, and they go, "What's the message?" And we go, "Well- There wasn't a message. I'm still not sure I've solved the problem that I was trying to solve. The, the writing was just the thinking through of that problem. And then the reader goes, "Well, can I interpret it this way?" And we go, "Sure." That's, that's the gig, right? Like, I wrote the book, you paid money for it, it's yours now. It belongs to you. You get to do whatever you like with it. 

[00:57:56] Shara Curlett: And also everyone, like, you could write one thing with a conscious thought, and someone reads that with their own conscious or unconscious thought, and they interpret something entirely differently, but they love it for that. Or they- it makes, it makes them think. the importance of reading for me is- Particularly in today's society where children are not being as exposed to more and more people and more diverse people I think books give them that diverse understanding of, of a wide variety of people because there are so many different types of pe- people, and that's what makes up a society, right? All these different types of people. If we're all the same, how boring would that be? 

[00:58:38] Jack Heath: Yeah. One of the things I love about, uh, reading novels as opposed to watching movies is that when you're, um, watching a movie or a TV show, you're seeing these characters from the outside. Whereas when you're reading a novel, you're inside them looking out and looking out at the way they see the world. And that means, like, both mediums have their strengths. Some of my favourite TV shows are the ones where it's just a really interesting looking character, and you're never quite sure what they're thinking. 

[00:59:06] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[00:59:06] Jack Heath: But most of my favorite novels have been the ones where the main character has, like, just a really interesting point of view. Like, Liar by Justine Larbalestier is one of my favorite novels where the main character, she's a compulsive liar, and she admits that on the first page. She says, "Look, yes, I lie to everyone. It's an issue. But I'll never lie to you, reader. I'll give it to you straight." And then two chapters later she says, "Okay, there was a little fib in chapter one. And what it was." And it, it's the kind of story that I just cannot imagine it working on a screen. Every person I meet since then, like if I hear about someone being a compulsive liar now, like if prior to reading that novel, I would have heard compulsive lie- well, someone said compulsive liar and I would have heard psychopath, right? Whereas now I hear it and I go, "Oh, troubled individual" 

[01:00:04] Shara Curlett: Hmm. Yeah ... 

[01:00:05] Jack Heath: You know, like that's a serious problem and they can do real harm, but that doesn't mean they're not human and that I might have things in common with them too. Uh, Also they might be a werewolf, spoiler warning. Maybe. Or they're lying about it, that kind of thing. So yeah, I think seeing the world through other people's eyes is such a valuable thing. And I'm struggling to think of a medium that does it better than, than books. And it's so important for kids to get that too, I think. Because it's important for adults too. I don't want to pretend again that I'm all high-minded and accommodating of all the people I meet. It's very easy in theory to be sort of forgiving and love thy neighbour. And then like someone cuts the chain and steals your kid's bike. And again, another one thing that's good with, and so not just books in general, but fiction in particular, is no one has a stake in the game. Like, there's no bias and again, just to come back to J.K. Rowling, if I said, like, "I forgive her for her transphobic statements," then that might encourage her to make more of them. Whereas a fictional character, if you forgive them, that doesn't do anyone any harm. Yeah. You know? though, right? Like- 

[01:01:12] Shara Curlett: Yeah ... 

[01:01:13] Jack Heath: I wrote a series about a guy who was a cannibal, and people hate how much they love him. They tell me that. And it's like, well, in what other medium could you like get other than sort of fiction, and specifically fiction from the perspective of an unusual character, could you get someone to forgive someone like that? If you met him in real life, absolutely not. 

[01:01:34] Shara Curlett: Did you ever watch Dexter? 

[01:01:36] Jack Heath: Yes. Oh Yeah, yeah, yeah. haven't seen all of it. I read the first, uh, the first couple of books. I especially liked the second one, it's one of those series where the first novel and the first season of the show kind of match up, and then they diverge- 

[01:01:49] Shara Curlett: Oh, okay. 

[01:01:50] Jack Heath: Very, very wildly. I actually have a signed copy of a Dexter book somewhere. The author wrote in it for me. I mean, he's Jeff Lindsay, so I was very keen to get some advice from him. And his advice, which he wrote from the book, was, "Behave."

[01:02:08] Shara Curlett: Oh, I love that.

[01:02:09] Jack Heath: I haven't always followed that advice. But I try. 

[01:02:11] Shara Curlett: But that, again, that's that fun, right? Like, it's just fun to write stuff and see how far you can push it. Obviously we could keep talking forever, but, can I just ask, how would you like to see children's literature in Australia celebrated in the future? 

[01:02:27] Jack Heath: Oh, man. It's a tricky question 'cause I only have kind of my own experience to go by. 

[01:02:33] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[01:02:34] Jack Heath: And I'm aware that there are recent public examples of children's writers saying things which can be taken out of context, and then missing opportunities for more support. So, I know that children's books aren't taken as seriously as books for adults. And just quietly, I kinda like that because when ... I don't want people watching over my shoulder. I don't want them policing what I can write. I want to be able to write the most exciting stories I can. You know how at literary festivals literary authors have to come up, and they're invariably authors of literary fiction for adults. And they have to spend all their time just talking about the social issues that their book touches on. I don't wanna do that. I just wanna tell an exciting story. Kids don't wanna hear about it either. They just wanna read an exciting story. So when you ask how would I want to see it celebrated, I would like to see more arts funding.

[01:03:35] Shara Curlett: Yes. 

[01:03:35] Jack Heath: But devoted to it in particular. Like, a few years ago, Arts ACT, the funding body where I live, so they gave me a bit over $9,000. So it wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough for me to ... So basically I had written this book. I didn't have a publisher for it yet. I wanted to edit the book, and I wanted to take some time off from my day job. And so that was my pitch to the funding body. 

[01:04:05] Shara Curlett: Mm. 

[01:04:05] Jack Heath: I was like, "Look, I've got this book. It's set in Canberra. I really wanna make it good enough to get published. I don't have time. I'm working full time. I'd like to take some time off from my job, but I still wanna be able to make rent." And they gave me $9,000. Which was enough. And here's the thing. The book was published. It was called Replica. It was not a hit. I think it's now out of print. But getting that money and getting that time off to refine my craft meant that years later ... So it was only after publishing that book, and still sometimes I get an email about it, by the way. So there were readers out there who treasure that book. Not many of them, but enough of them that I'm glad that I wrote it. 

[01:04:47] Shara Curlett: Yeah. 

[01:04:47] Jack Heath: But it encouraged me to kind of treat writing as a job, rather than a hobby for almost the first time in my career. And now I like to think that I've paid that nine grand back in terms of what I have tried to give to the local literary community, right?

So I think arts funding is something where, presumably the money gets given to the arts organisation, and then they have to tell someone else how they spent it. And then they have to quantify the results. I guess what I'm saying is that funding writers who write for children, and I don't need that kind of arts funding now, but there will be some other young up-and-coming writer who has a story that they want to tell, and they can't afford to tell it.

[01:05:32] Jack Heath: And by the way, there are plenty of books written by rich people, 'cause rich people can afford to take time- ... to write books. But people who are, you know, struggling artists, to use the term, the money gives them the time, and the effort isn't usually a problem because we're compelled to do this. So the money just buys them the time to do it well, and when they do it well, there can be enormous dividends that are impossible to quantify down the track.. But they might be things like kids who grow up to be very literate and kids who grow up to... Well, kids who enjoy reading, that's its own reward. We don't need to treat childhood as a defect that needs to be corrected and pretend that the only point of childhood is making a good adult. That's maybe a separate discussion. But we were just talking about the empathy that comes from having read fiction. So, imagine the government giving money to an arts body that gives money to struggling writers who write books for children who grow up to be empathetic adults. There's no way to measure that, but it would be wonderful if, if it happened.

[01:06:39] Shara Curlett: Yeah.

[01:06:40] Jack Heath: So that's, that's how I'd like to see children's literature celebrated. Just giving them more money to do their job well, so as kids can enjoy their books and become better people. 

[01:06:51] Shara Curlett: Oh, I love that, and what a wonderful way to finish. Thank you so much, Jack.

[01:06:56] Jack Heath: Thank you again for having me, for inviting me on. This has been a treat. 

[01:06:59] Shara Curlett: Oh, thank you so much for joining me. And people can find you via your website? 

[01:07:05] Jack Heath: Uh, yep, jackheathwriter.com. @Jackheathwriter on all social media. If you see me there, please cyberbully me because I am trying to stay off it because I'm on a deadline. So, next time you see me post anything on @jackheathwriter on social media, please just leave a comment that says, "You should be writing." And I'll go away posthaste.

And so my new book is called I Know What You're Hiding. It's age 12 plus. It's a murder mystery. And I have a book for adults coming out at the end of the year called Choppy Water. It's a crime thriller set on a cruise ship. 

[01:07:36] Shara Curlett: Oh, that sounds amazing. I'm looking forward to reading both of those. Thank you so much, Jack. 

[01:07:41] Jack Heath: No worries. Thank you, Shara. Bye. 

[01:07:43] Shara Curlett: Bye. 

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[01:07:44] Shara Curlett: Now, you can see why that chat went a bit longer. Jack Heath is so wonderful to talk to. He thinks so deeply about things, and he shared how important books are for building empathy in children, how they can see lots of diverse kids in lots of diverse situations, and that helps to bring an understanding of lots of different types of people.

He also shared about arts funding and how much it impacted him when he was in his early days of writing, and how important they are for writers who are trying to build a career. So, I could go on and on about this episode, and I hope to have Jack on again sometime in the future, because there is a lot more that we could have talked about.

If you'd like to learn more about Jack, you can go to jackheathwriter.com or @jackheathwriter on socials. And if you'd like to learn more about me, you can go to sharacurlett.com or @sharacurlett on Instagram. 

Thanks again for listening, and I'll be joining you again on Friday where we'll be releasing another Kidlit Hang, but this time with the wonderful, Tina Strachan.