Author Q&A: Featuring Theakston's Crime New Blood author Jane Harper author of The Dry

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Jane Harper author of The dry to The Crime Warp.  She is another one of Val McDermid's New Blood panelists and she's here to answer loads of questions!

Liz: Tell us a bit about your current book release

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Jane: The Dry is an atmospheric thriller set in a drought-stricken farming community in rural Australia. The brutal deaths of a local family send shockwaves through the struggling town, where the locals know what it is to face difficult choices daily.

When Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk returns for the funeral of his childhood friend Luke, he is loath to confront the community that rejected him twenty years earlier. But when as probes deeper into the deaths, old wounds start bleeding into fresh ones. For Falk and his friend Luke shared a secret, one which now threatens to resurface. 

Liz: Where did the inspiration for The Dry come from

Jane: My main aim while writing The Dry was to write the kind of book I like to read.

I love novels with a mystery element and a few twists and turns along the way, and that's what I hoped to deliver with this book.

The Dry is a mystery at its heart but also explores community pressures, loyalty and friendship, and

the difficulty of shedding the past.

The fictional drought-stricken town of Kiewarra features heavily in the novel, and is an amalgamation of many rural communities I visited while working as a journalist in Australia and the UK. 

Liz: How long did The Dry take to write

Jane: I started work on The Dry in October 2014. In May 2015 it won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript and went to publishing auction in Australia in August that year. It was published in Australia in June 2016 and in the UK and US in January 2017.

Liz: Where is your favourite place to write and why?

Jane: I worked as a print journalist for 13 years and one of the most useful things I learned was the ability to write anywhere. I don't need anywhere special to work, it doesn't need to have a good view or a great desk and it doesn't even need to be particularly quiet. I do prefer to be left alone though so I have space to think, and I find it most convenient now to write either at home or in the local library.

Liz: Do you ever suffer from writer’s block and if so how do you overcome it?

Jane: I do get stuck on scenes occasionally, and the reason always seems to be because there is a fault in the plot around that particular point. If it feels like I am really having to push the characters and the action uphill, it can help to take a step back and really consider why it so hard. Often I find it is because I am trying to make my characters behave in a way that is inconsistent or unbelievable, or I am trying to force a plot point that could be better done another way.

Liz: If you weren’t a writer what would you like to do?

Jane: If I weren't writing novels, I would probably still be writing articles as a print journalist. I worked in print professionally since leaving university and really enjoyed it. Every day brought something new and I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of interesting people.

Liz: Who are your writing heroes and why?

Jane: I think they would have to be authors from my childhood as they were the ones who inspired a lifelong love of reading. I used to love Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl, and there is a fantastic Australian children's author called Paul Jennings whose wacky stories opened the eyes of a generation of young readers.

Liz: Which author are you cosying up with tonight?

Jane: I am currently re-reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret

Atwood. I read it years ago, but wanted to revisit it before watching the new television series.

Liz: Could you describe the book you are working on at the moment using only 5 words?

Jane: My next book is called Force of Nature and I would describe it in five words as: Five enter bushland, four return.

Liz: Do you have competing ideas for future projects and have you ever worked on more than one at the same time?

Jane: I am always on the lookout for ideas for future books, so any competing ideas get tucked away for later use! I haven't had to write

two novels simultaneously, thank goodness, but I have worked on the edits for one book at the same time as writing early drafts of the next book.