Why Home Truths was important to write

Reader’s Question

I had a reader ask me what I love about my book, Home Truths. That caught me a little 'on the hop' because I think answers to that question normally come from readers. Every reader gets something different from a book, so their answers are always fascinating and frequently a delight. And, of course, what readers get is more important than the enjoyment I get because, as I've said before, there would be no authors without readers.

But I'll have a stab at answering - first about what I didn't like. And that's the process I created for myself and then endured. While I don't mind hard work, and this work would've easily exceeded twenty thousand hours, it was a slog. Being an editor as well as a writer slowed me down and I failed utterly at taking off my editor hat and putting on my writing hat.

I'm not talking about polishing work before it was finished, although I wasted a lot of time doing that too. For the first time in the five full-length novels I've written, I paid a lot of attention to the structure and pace of a book, while I was writing it.

Not wearing the correct ‘hat’ at the time was punishing. I think it was six years before I finished a draft that I was happy with. And even then, I credit my editor, Rachelle Ramirez, for suggesting I move two scenes that were once around the middle of the story and bring them forward into the first part of the story. That made for a better setup.

The cover shows an ouroboros: an ancient symbol of a snake eating its own tail, variously signifying infinity and the cycle of birth and death. It’s a great symbol for this story. Out of chaos emerges order and out of tyranny, justice is achieved.

Conflict between characters

Okay - enough stalling. I loved writing a new main character, Jonah Solomon, and his closest associates Blain and Coman. These guys made for great conflict and humour. Yet Solly is quite unlike me. A gay, part Māori man, is so different to the Pakeha (NZ European) that I am. I had to invest a lot of thinking and research time and empathizing with what it must be like to hide one's sexuality, particularly in a tough, macho police force. I won’t have got it perfect because it’s not my lived experience, but I enjoyed the creative challenge involved.

My hope for future literary characters like Jonah Solomon, is that talented NZ gay writers will venture more into writing crime stories involving gay characters and that they will have a wide audience within the genre.  

Worldview

But perhaps more important than the individual characteristics Jonah showed, was the struggle he had with his worldview, not all of which was down to being a gay Māori. Solly clearly starts out with a black and white view of the world and, if you've read the story, you'll know he gets called out on that - more than once! But, true to life, when humans are exposed to threats or embarrassment, they become defensive in protecting their quirky ways. And why wouldn't we when those ways seem to serve us so well? Until they don’t!

I loved putting Solly in trouble, watching him cling to viewpoints that weren’t working for him while battling to solve a horrific murder. When our (subconscious) outlook on life is based on the views of others we love and respect, we have a somewhat naive approach to life and sometimes mask it as ‘worldliness’. And when Solly gets hit by an emotional sledgehammer at the midpoint of the book, he discovers he can't sustain his view of the world any longer. So that was enjoyable and, in a way, without being too preachy, (I hope) by telling a story within a story. I don't think I'd done that in my previous novels and I enjoyed taking that risk.

Corporate trauma

One other thing I loved about telling this story was sharing with the world, the New Zealand experience of dealing with insurance companies. This a an actual and devastating natural disaster with no suggestion of fault on anyone's part. Yet, for many people, their insurance experience was truly horrific and it's no exaggeration to say those people suffered a secondary trauma in trying to get justice. That was the reason I dedicated the story to those past and present in their fight.

My wife and I were some of the lucky ones, despite the refusal of insurance assessors to acknowledge damage to our house came within our policy coverage. Why did we feel lucky? Because it was only sticking doors and leaking hot water cylinders - minor stuff. And we were lucky we knew no one who was killed or injured. My brother knew someone killed in the now infamous CTV building, a place I frequently visited for work years before the disaster. All that is to say, I felt compelled to write a story about the social injustice perpetrated on a community that was already hurting.

In a way, it was cathartic for me to reflect others' real experiences. I’m not saying that no one got insurance justice, because plenty of people did, and reasonably quickly. But one company in particular could not be proud of its performance and I’m happy to report, judgements of the courts back me up in that view. But should we ever have to pursue the big corporates in court to get what we deserve? That’s a power imbalance that’s very difficult to fix and I loved having an antagonist in Home Truths share their motivation behind the fraud within. (Even if it wasn’t quite the full story!)

My fantasy

Which leads to my fantasy about this story. That is, that someday, Home Truths might induce a change in the thinking by the powerful. That they will stop looking for legal escape routes in arcane contracts and do what’s fair – take payments for peace of mind and when the time comes, deliver on promises to put it right Yes, I know! I did say it was my fantasy.

When I finished writing, I celebrated by opening a lovely red (Penfolds Bin 389) which I did again when Story Grid Publishing agreed to publish Home Truths. So, there you have it. I hope you’ll love the story too. And if you do, please review it, and tell others. ‘Word of mouth’ is the most helpful thing readers can do to help authors.