Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: I'm Joanne Morrell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for Authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author Podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free Author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.www.hybridauthor.com.
let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Hello authors.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in. Today's interview is with Dimitri Kami on writing Gothic fiction for modern readers and we chat the allure and exploration of the Gothic novel genre atmosphere in Gothic Fiction How Dimitri use setting, mood and sensory detail to create the haunting, immersive world of the woman in the well, the publishing industry today and Dimitri's time working as a senior editor for traditional publishing house Penguin Books. Dimitri's overall advice for authors looking to write Gothic fiction and have a career as an Author in Publishing 101 Horror Movies and much more.
So in my author adventure this week I am back to feeling a bit all over the place with projects, writing projects. If you've been listening to the podcast the last couple of weeks, made a start on a document that I call Tell yourself the story, show it to others and it was a couple page document. It's just sort of like telling yourself what you think the story of your novel is about, which can be difficult because of what your process is. I found it quite good. It's really sort of just deep diving into characters and not backstory and stuff. It's all just kind of rehashing things. But I'm I'm was hoping to do that in the hope that plot holes would fill in and that sort of stuff, but it's going to take a little bit more than that. I was reflecting back many years ago from when I was writing the children's fiction and I was also doing the non fiction books and I used to jump between the two a lot and it really didn't feel productive but it felt like what I had to be doing at the time and it was just a way of things and I it's just made me wonder whether, you know, should I be hybrid in my writing approach. I know some people tackle their writing by working on more than one project at a time and there's nothing Wrong with that. You could just be doing bits of one thing and then jump to the other. Sometimes that can proceed with the creativity rather than, you know, some people stall in writing because they get stuck on something. If they then move on to something else, then maybe that will unblock the other thing for a while if you're not thinking about it and vice versa. Or some people find it a procrastination and think it doesn't actually advance a project moving forward. But as we said, there's not one way of really someone's author adventure is different from another person's and you have to find your way. But from a hybrid sense, you know, small steps achieve big results. That is true. And yeah, last week it felt a little. It felt good to at least be doing a little bit of each project. So what I was actually doing was I would work a little bit on the TV script adaptation of my women's fiction and then I did a little bit of the young adult couple pages of telling myself the story, then obviously going back to show it to others by fleshing it out and writing it as a full length novel or as another draft. It felt productive, it felt good. And I just don't think there's any right or wrong way to do something as long as it's sort of moving forward and you are doing something about it. I guess it's back to that age old thing. I mean, the women's fiction project, the women's fiction book I've got, I did that as a project that was focused on that. And so it's funny, I'm probably hybrid in my processes because I don't just do one thing. I started out as someone who just wrote from my imagination and what was happening and where it took me. That was kind of difficult because it, A, it takes longer because you don't know what's happening. B, I always had too little. I had to go back and flesh things out and I just felt that was quite a hard way to work. And then as I stepped into more adult fiction writing, I started to plot more because telling stories from different character points, things like that, that is actually for me a faster way to work and probably better because I've got a guide of what I know is supposed to happen and then it keeps me on point. And so that's a good way to work. And maybe different genres, maybe there's different ways of working for different genres. Maybe you as a wr.
As a hybrid author also write in cross genre and there's not one way of doing it. In terms of maybe for, you know, like I said, even with my publishing adventures, nonfiction I've been putting out myself children's fiction, looking for traditional deals. Maybe you're a plotter for one and you're a pantser for another. Maybe it's like that, you know, mixing and matching.
Not one way of doing things. So as much as it feels chaotic and doesn't make sense, it also makes perfect sense that there is just not one way. And we just embrace it and go with it. As long as we're loving what we're doing, having fun and achieving what we want out of it. Whether that's financial or just discipline or just to give life to our stories. Hybrid is the way. It's all good here. I was at a fundraiser over the weekend. It was for one of my nephews football teams, raising money for them to go to Melbourne next month which was. It was a really good night. It was a retro bringle musical night. And had this pink wig on and got to. It was just like bingo. So they read out the musician's name and then they played the songs and just everyone got into it. They sold out. They also sell out of alcohol as well. So they made a fortune. It was like 400 people, it was massive sing song and it was all the golden oldies. But it was also some of the, you know, I think it was like from the 60s, 70s and then they had the 80s and 90s, which is my era. So there was some tunes that you heard that I hadn't heard for ages and it was just awesome. I'd actually donated because my sister's on the committee, donated one of my books. All the book bundles I was doing last year with the glasses and the knives, the cheese boards, all that sort of stuff. So the book bundles come with the book and the glass and the cheese knife. And so I gave that up as a prize and I didn't actually get to see who had chosen it because it had to be selected. It wasn't part of the silent auction. So yeah, I hope someone got it and they enjoy reading it and it was a nice prize for them. I ended up winning a retro hat and I won. Well, you could choose whatever you wanted. And I, I think I. I didn't choose badly, but I chose like this voucher. It was like. I thought it would be like a beautician thing. It was $25 voucher, but then that's $25 off one of their. I mean it's all local businesses as well, but $25 off their other treatments and I think it was skin tightening, whatever the hell that is. And you know, I've just turned 40 so am I at the skin tightening stage? I don't know when that happens. Am I past it?
[00:06:59] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: No, I don't think so. But yeah, I wish I'd got the cupcakes now. There was some really nice cupcakes.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: I wish I've got that. Anywho, I think, you know, it's another.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Good way to support local by contributing to these events and stuff. So yeah, it was a good, good night all around. How hybrid are you? Well, it's really just pondering on what I just talked about before about different writing structures and processes. Doesn't mean we have to stick with one way of doing a process for a book. Because I can imagine things like crime and suspense and if you've got a story that's got multiple storylines happening in it and you have keep a track of that, maybe, yeah, maybe you're just making it up as you go along. Throws you way off track and takes you down places that procrastination or just dead ends. Who knows, maybe there is. There's just not one way of doing it. There is people, thriller authors that do just write and see where it takes them and maybe they go back and then sort of look at with their editing skills like their plots and stuff. Whether they hit the right structures or not.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Who knows.
[00:08:08] Speaker C: So I ask you to think about the way that you tackle writing a novel and the genres you write in. Do you write the same way across genres? Do you write as you go or do you plot?
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[00:09:41] Speaker A: Dimitri Kakmi was born to Greek parents in Turkey. He is the author of the Dictionary of a Gadfly under the pseudonym of the Sozzled Scribbler, the Door, and other uncanny tales. Motherland and When We Were Young as editor, Motherland was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's liter rewards in 2008 and is published in England and Turkey. His short story the Boy by the Gate was first published in England in the New Gothic and reprinted in Australia in the year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2013. Haunting Matilda was published in the horror anthology Cthulhu Deep down under and shortlisted for Best Fantasy Novella in the Aurelius Awards 2015. His essays and short stories appear in various Australian and overseas anthologies. Dimitri has more than 30 years experience in various aspects of publishing, including editing, lecturing, teaching and mentoring. For 15 years he worked as a senior editor at Penguin Books. As well, he was secretary and fiction nonfiction co editor of the online literary journal. He was secretary and fiction nonfiction co editor of the online literary journal Calliopex. Dmitri's monthly column 101 Horror Movie Nights, appears in the US based Drunken Odyssey literary website. Dimitri Kakmi is a highly respected writer in the literary and speculative fiction fields. His forthcoming Gothic novel, the Woman in the well, has been described by one editor as an astonishing mix of literary horror and folklore. Dmitri is currently working on the psychological crime novel the Perfect Room and he lives in Melbourne. Welcome to the Hybrid Author Podcast, Dimitri.
[00:11:26] Speaker D: Thank you very much Joanne. Nice to meet you.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: We're so, so honored to have you join us today. Thank you so much. Your accolades are absolutely astonishing. But you know, can you tell us from the beginning what led you to a path of writing and publishing?
[00:11:41] Speaker D: Well, I think I thought about this when you asked me initially and I thought, really? I think I would have to go back to when I was 19 years old when I first read Virginia Woolf's to the Lighthouse, and that is a seminal influence for me reading it When I was in my late teens, I think I just fell in love with the musicality of her language. It wasn't like reading prose or anything like that. It was more like reading poetry. And I thought, God, I'd love to be able to do that. When I write, I guess I use her as a touchstone because I want to give readers that kind of pleasure in the written word.
And that I guess set me on the path. And when I began writing in earnest, whether it's Fiction or nonfiction. The aim is always to write beautifully and to use the English language in its full capabilities and to communicate that to the reader.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Amazing. And to do that, well, you know, you've got to study your craft quite a long time, haven't you, really, and be immersed in it.
[00:12:46] Speaker D: I guess that's why I became an editor as well. I worked as an editor for something like 25 years. And that always gives you a good grounding because you're. Not only are you honing your skills as an editor with grammar and language and sentence structure, but you're also learning from the authors that you're editing. I think I was very fortunate in sort of the grounding that I had as a writer.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: An editor's role is super important. Almost as important, I think, as the writer's role in making the works. For sure, anything I've given to an editor, they seem to have made it a million times better, especially the spelling.
[00:13:21] Speaker D: I cannot argue against that. So I've heard and agree.
I was recently edited for the Woman in the World for another manuscript that I'm working on. And my first thought was, yeah, you know, I'm an editor, but you cannot edit yourself. You need a completely objective point of view to bear on your work. Editors are indispensable.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. For sure.
Well, we are here today to talk about the Woman in the well, which has been described as a Gothic novel.
[00:13:51] Speaker C: With echoes of the past.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Can you tell our listeners, for those who don't know, a bit about what Gothic fiction is and what draws you to this genre and what you feel perhaps allows you to explore more than what other genres might.
[00:14:06] Speaker D: Well, I'll start by just saying that this novel was really influenced by two books, the Arabian Nights and also Ovid's Metamorphosis, which is a retelling of Greek mythology. So is Western mythology and Middle Eastern folklore come to bear. And I bring that to bear on the Australian landscape and indigenous creation stories.
I guess, given the circumstances under which I grew up in Turkey, I don't think I had much of a choice which genre I was drawn to. I don't really think you choose to write in horror or the supernatural. I think the genre chooses you. So just to explain what I mean by that, I grew up in a small Turkish village in the northern Aegean Sea on an island, and the population was half Greek, half Turkish.
So I was Greek Orthodox Christian growing up in a predominantly Muslim country.
And the influence of Islam and Christianity was strong on us.
But the influence of Western and Eastern pagan mythology was even Stronger.
So it was not unusual for villagers to communicate with ghosts, with genies, with nymphs, dryads, satyrs, ifrits, so on. And they would talk openly about all of this, and no one ever thought they were crazy or making up stories. So for me, what you call the supernatural or horror is inseparable from real life for me. And when I speak to Australian indigenous people, they say exactly the same thing. Interestingly enough, I just came back from a few days in Kakadu where I met a lot of Aboriginal people, and we were talking about this, and I was surprised to hear them say exactly the same thing. They said, it's not supernatural, it's real. And I thought, oh, that's the case with us. So when I started to write, I think it was just natural for me to incorporate the eerie, the uncanny as a means of exploring extreme states of being.
And I think that, to go back to your question, I think that's precisely what horror or the supernatural allows a writer to do. You're able to push the envelope about as far as it can go in terms of exploring extreme states of being and use that as a metaphor. So I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that because one writes in. In the genre, that one must believe in ghosts and spirits or whatever. I'm a very, very cynical person, despite what I just said before. And. But for me, it's very metaphoric and symbolic. Having said all that, I actually don't think of the Woman in the well as a horror novel.
For me, it's more of a psychological drama in which the character uses symbolic archetypes to explore her own, let's say, troubled psyche and repressed memories to move beyond a particular trauma that she has.
And I think I use terror and the numinous in the book as a means of exploring the beauty that can exist in the unknown. And that's precisely, I think, what some of my favorite genre writers do, like Lovecraft, who we mentioned before, Poe, and people like Robert Aikman, Algernon Blackwood. These are Old English writers. They use the terror to explore the beauty and the numinous in what is unknown and beyond knowing. And I touch on elements of all of that in the Woman in the World.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Yeah, it's lovely said. Like, I've never heard the unknown being described as beauty. It's usually for everybody that is the scary element, isn't it? The unknown for a lot of people is this part.
[00:18:13] Speaker D: It can be crippling. I mean, on an everyday level as well. You know, if we're asked to do something that is unknown or new to us, we almost crippled with fear. Don't you find that when you go, oh, well, I'm just gonna have to do it anyway, do it. You go, there's a wonderful release. You go, oh, I can actually do it. I can do this thing that scared me so much 20 minutes ago. And I think that's what. When one incorporates terror in fiction, I think it opens up a kind of channel or sensorium in the mind, at least in the best writing, as far as I'm concerned. You know, people like Shirley Jackson in the Haunting of Hill House.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that.
[00:18:52] Speaker D: I think. Yeah, precisely. You know, scary as it is and alarming as it is, there's an element of beauty in the writing that is. I mean, that first page is. God, if I could write one page as beautiful as that, I die a happy man.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: No, that's well said. And, you know, when you're talking about the unknown, it just means, to me, I suppose, a lot of people listening who are, you know, aspiring writers and authors and things like that. Even a writing career, a publishing career, there's a lot of unknowns in that, going after it, whether the work, how the work's going to be perceived when you put it out there, if it's going to make it, if you're. You feel like you're wasting your time. It's. There's so much unknown in writing and especially, even. Even public speaking. For me, I always was terrified of that. But then I think, like you said, you've got to have these experiences to put yourself on the other side. And then the brain. Oh, you know, you've done this. And then it's got that memory of going forward. So that's great.
[00:19:46] Speaker D: When the Woman in the World came out on the 15th of April, we had a big book launch here in Melbourne. And for the next week, I was sick in bed, I couldn't speak. And I realized the stress and the anxiety of having a new book out and not knowing how it was going to be received actually had crippled me and shut me down for a whole week.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:20:07] Speaker D: Thankfully, readers have been emailing going, oh, we love it. And they say, oh, I made myself sick. I'll be close.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. It's. Well, like you said, the genre chooses you. I also feel that this profession chooses you, because who would choose it otherwise?
[00:20:20] Speaker D: Exactly. It's nerve ranking, dealing with publishers and.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, tell us about.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: The women in the.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Well, tell us the story. And you've obviously Touched on it a little bit.
[00:20:28] Speaker D: But look, I don't want to say too much about the story because a lot of it relies on not knowing what's coming next. But. But in general terms, it's about two women who are employed to take seven boys from Alice Springs to a small town on the South Australian border called Maree. And what they think is a run of the mill job, in fact, turns out to be far more than that as they very quickly realize that something is following the back and picking off the boys one by one. And Magnolia, my main character, who's Afghan Aboriginal woman, initially thinks that, you know, she. She's caught up in something that she doesn't know. But slowly, slowly, she realizes that in fact, this is all tied in with her own family history and her own past with her own parents. Other than that, all I'd like to say about this story is, as I say, very heavily influenced by the Arabian Nights. So there are stories within stories. So you have Magnolia's story, but then in the middle of that you have different characters, stories which are told in. I don't know if you've ever read the Arabian Nights, Please do.
Burton edition. Especially beautiful. So the story is actually told in that mode. So there are different styles of writing in the book as well as a kind of genre mashup, which is good for your hybrid.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: Very hybrid, yeah. I love it.
[00:22:04] Speaker D: You know, I think I'm mashing the crime genre with the supernatural genre and bringing mythology and folklore into that as well, and psychology as well. So the mashup of different elements. Yeah, that's really all I'd like to say about it. But one of the most satisfying things has been that when people have read it, they say it's a real page turner.
You get to the end of a chapter, you just need to turn and just read what's happening next. And it was all very deliberate.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Gives me chills in our audience, I'm sure. And there's a little bit of Almost Picnic Hanging. Is it Picnic at Hanging Rock kind of mystery feel about it, you know.
[00:22:45] Speaker D: I love Picnic Hanging Rock.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: You too?
[00:22:47] Speaker D: Yeah, it's one of my favorite films and books as well.
[00:22:50] Speaker A: No, it's fantastic. It's great, actually.
[00:22:52] Speaker D: You know, when I first started in publishing at Longland Cheshire, we published the final unpublished chapter of Picking a Hanging Rock. Picked on that manuscript.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: How special. That's great.
[00:23:06] Speaker D: I have a connection to it. Yeah. Oh.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Oh, how amazing. Well, those books, and obviously your book as well, have probably got in common. Is, you know, atmosphere Atmosphere in Gothic fiction. And can you tell us a bit about how you've kind of used atmosphere to set mood and sensory details and things to create haunting, immersive world in the Women in the.
[00:23:29] Speaker D: Well, I think the best way I could sort of answer that is to say that, for me, character and story emerge from landscape. One feeds the other, and they're sort of inextricable from each other. This sort of totally linked.
That's why I go to great lengths in this particular book, but also, when I think about it in other fiction that I've written, to create an immersive experience for the reader. So the landscape and the atmosphere it exudes is a secondary character. It's not just the humans, but there's a landscape you'll notice with the Woman in the World. The characters often speak about the landscape in which they're in, which in this case is the central Australian desert as a living sort of character that they're surrounded by. That's very important for me as a writerly device to surround and overwhelm the reader with minute detail of the landscape. And that, of course, you know, creates mood and texture to the writing.
But as I suggested earlier, too, I think language plays a big part in that for me. I always say that, you know, I like to use language to seduce a reader, to draw them into my world and trap them in there. The motion of the story.
Yeah. I just want to say this is what goes on in my head all the time. Now you can live it.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: I'm not letting you out.
[00:25:00] Speaker D: So that creates its own kind of atmosphere. When you read the book, you'll see that there's a lot of elemental stuff aside from the landscape and the color and the light I describe the texture of heat and sand. All of that adds a story, particularly when you're writing the Gothic.
Yeah. As you say, the atmosphere has to permeate every aspect of your page. The way a writer uses words has a lot to do with that. This is where Virginia Woolf comes in. It's in the way you place two words next to each other to create a certain kind of music and rhythm and pace that guides the story and hopefully the reader along into the story. The reader doesn't necessarily have to be aware of that when they're reading it, but it's then nonetheless. And it plays a big part in how the story unfolds, but also how they respond to it and how it resonates in the mind when they finish and set the book aside. Yeah.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: So incredible. Do you follow a structure or anything.
[00:26:06] Speaker D: Like that, very roughly. So before I begin writing anything, I have to know the beginning. I have to have a middle. I need to know where the middle point is.
And I always have to know precisely how it finishes right down to the last sentence. Otherwise I won't begin.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:27] Speaker D: You know, I have no idea how I'm going to get beginning, the middle and middle to end. That just sort of unfolds in an organic way. But I do need to know beginning, middle, end, otherwise I'm crippled. I can't move forward. If you don't really know where you're going, you may well reach page 50 and go, I have no idea where. Take the story. Now you're stuck, and you have to go back to a certain point and see where you've gone astray.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: I started out writing not knowing, and I would always not have enough. I would have to end up going back and fleshing it out. And I always get stuck in very rarely knowing the end or anything like that. My process now is much different, but then I'm writing in a different genre, that I plot everything out first if it changes as a goal. But there is a bit more of.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: A structure before I start writing to keep track.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, pretty much just. Just roughly like a sentence.
Each type of thing of this is this, this and this, and then go from there. But that's certainly not how I started out. In the beginning, it was just. Just random ideas. And mainly I get title ideas that. That come to me first, start with a title or sometimes a sentence, but rarely I have the ending. You've got a rough idea of what you know. Yes, it's going to be. It's a happy one or it's a sad one, but you don't actually know. So. All right, Never know.
[00:27:47] Speaker D: You see, I work from the premise that you can't tell a story, that Dimitri can't tell a story unless you know how it ends because you're working to that end. Yeah, I can't begin like the crime novel that you mentioned that I'm writing at the moment. I know the final scene and I know exactly what the line is that finishes it up. Otherwise I can't even begin.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: Do you think that's because it's crime?
[00:28:13] Speaker D: Well, it happened with this book as well.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:16] Speaker D: I knew. Knew that it was going to finish in exactly the way that it does. Wow. So, no, I think for me it's a definite. When I first started, I think I was a bit like you at the start as well. I would potter along and hope for the best. Because inevitably hit a wall and go.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: You can spend a waste. It's not wasted time, but it's very time consuming, isn't it?
[00:28:37] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: I used to go as well. Which I found was a procrastination and maybe a bit of a perfectionism is, you know, you would write some and then go back and read over it and then write a little bit more. Go back and read over it. Oh, it's a tedious process. Was for vaccinations.
[00:28:51] Speaker D: I do that. All that in second, third, fourth, fifth draft. Like the one in the. Well had nine drafts.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah.
[00:28:58] Speaker D: Or I showed it to a publisher. So all that data, the addition of stuff happens in successive drafts.
When an editor sees it, they point out things. You go, oh, yeah. I mean, you go in and you know, drop it in.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Well, tell us about the publishing journey for the women in the. Well, how long did the whole work take you to write and how long it came to publishing the fruition.
[00:29:20] Speaker D: So I've been writing this damn book for five years.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:29:25] Speaker D: And initially what happened was Magnolia, the main character, came to me one night and just started talking and tell. And just saying, tell my story. Really.
It sounds weird and esoteric, but it really was like. And she just kept asking me to tell her story and I just kept telling her to go away and leave me alone. The more persistent she became and the more I listened, I thought it's like a really interesting story. Even though I was very reluctant to take it on board. And the reason for the reluctance was, as I say, she's an African Aboriginal woman. We're not allowed or we're not supposed to do things like these. So I just kept telling her to go away and find an Aboriginal woman to write her story. But finally I just thought, actually, this story has resonances for me, you know, as. As a Turk who grew up in an Islamic country. But also I've lived in Australia 50 years.
And when I first came to Australia in the 1970s, I really found it very difficult to fit in into the culture here. There was, you know, we're just not welcome, basically.
But the people who did well from us Breaks Italian with the Aboriginal people that lived in the suburb where I lived, they had no problem with us at all. So I've always had a stronger connection to indigenous people and cultures.
And it's only been in the last decade or so that I've started to connect with my Anglo Saxon influences.
So I started to write the story. And I have to say, even though I said it Took me five years. The reason it took five years because I was working as a freelance editor at the time as well now full time, and I was only writing the novel on weekends. So it just kept going on. And then I quit freelancing and I finished a draft within six months and then just worked and worked and worked and refined and so on and so forth.
And when I finished it, I thought, you know, I think it needs work, you know, always needs work. But. But I've done as much as I possibly can do here, and I think an editor needs to see this now. And so I sent it out to five publishers and they were mainstream Australian publishers, you know, the big, big sort of names. And not surprisingly, I didn't hear a word back from any of.
And I've since discovered, because I know people in publishing and I know these publishers and editors, they said, you are writing an indigenous lesbian. You're neither one of those things. What were you think it was political, it was ideological. They said, the story's bloody great, we love it.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:09] Speaker D: We're just too scared to go near it.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:12] Speaker D: You've done this thing that you're not supposed to do.
So. And in the end I sent it to ifwg, who's a small genre publisher in Queensland, and he snapped it up immediately. Just went, I love this. Just give me an afterword explaining why you, a white man writing an indigenous character and will publish.
Right. With a card tongue.
[00:32:35] Speaker A: But did you, I mean, did you consult with, like you said, indigenous, even women, while you were writing it? Or did you, you know, through research and things like that, did you.
[00:32:44] Speaker D: I'll deal with the women element first. If apparently I'm told that I write female characters very well in Motherland in its.
My part in My Mother's Story the Door and Other Uncanny Tales, which is a collection of short stories. I think there's about half the stories in there are. Have female protagonists. Apparently I do that quite well and I know a lot of women.
So there was no research there. And, you know, my attitude, rightly or wrongly, with, in relation to all of that is, you know, yes, you're writing, I'm a man writing about a woman. What special research do you do? I don't do any special research.
I think you just need to go, well, it's another human being. Don't treat them like, you know, it's an alien creature that's come to land on the page. It's another human being. Yes, there are certain considerations, of course, but basically you're writing another human being. And that's also how I treat the indigenous element as well. Magnolia. Yes, she's Afghan Aboriginal woman. The Afghan element comes from mine.
You know, I've got Ottoman. The Ottomans controlled Afghanistan at one point.
In terms of the research, I didn't actually do any research for the indigenous stories that are. I think there's two or three indigenous stories in my book. These are just stories that I've known throughout my reading career and also editing and I've worked in the past with a couple of indigenous authors as well.
So they're just stories that I guess I just imbibed and made part of the story. You know, the interesting thing, Joanne, was when I was writing this, I actually realized that there are enormous similarities between Greek mythology, Islamic folklore and indigenous creation stories.
Magpie, for instance. And its significance is similar in all three cultures, Right?
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:45] Speaker D: And that Magpie plays a huge part in my story.
So I guess I sort of saw this as an opportunity to, rather than create divisions, I thought, you know, we have more in common than we think we do. And I just want to bring all that together and create a unified narrative, if that makes any sense.
[00:35:04] Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely does. Can you tell us about your time working as a senior editor for traditional publishing house Penguin Books? That is fantastic job, I think. Sounds. Was it.
[00:35:14] Speaker D: It was a dream job. You know, I think aside from working for four years as an usher in a cinema, I know that my 15 years as a senior editor at Penguin was really the best job I've ever had.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: How did you get started?
[00:35:29] Speaker D: Quite by accident, would you believe?
[00:35:31] Speaker A: A lot of people say that I.
[00:35:33] Speaker D: Had no intention of ever becoming. Becoming an editor.
So in the mid-90s, I was unemployed and a friend said, well, you know, the publisher at Oxford University Press needs an assistant. Why don't you apply? And miraculously, she gave me the job. I was just an assistant, you know, I was not an editor or anything. And I remember sitting there, you know, doing my shit kicker jobs that she was giving me and just watching all these editors with. Back in those days, there were print manuscripts in know, I was like, what are they doing in there? You know. So I started to question and ask questions and just observe. And I would take manuscripts home with me in the evening to study what the editor was doing. And I thought, oh God, I'd love to do this. This is great.
And then I was retrans from Oxford University Press and I went to Longman, Cheshire. And that's when I started as an editor. I was editing educational tech. I lasted six months and Thankfully, I was headhunted by Penguin and stayed there for 15 joyous years. And you know, it was such a privilege to work with a handful of authors over a period of 15 years and to just nurture them and help shape their work and their career. Demanding and exhausting, but one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. I mean, I think of it now, I've been gone from Penguin now a decade and it's still makes me smile when I think about it.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: That's fantastic. How do you feel the publishing landscape's changed since you were in it to now with, you know, AI and all sorts of different things? You know, when you were talking before about you're a human telling, you know, a human story, and I was just thinking, yes, you're not, you're not an artificial intelligence telling a human story. That's probably today's dilemma, isn't it? Coming forward.
[00:37:24] Speaker D: Well, I have a very dear friend who is possibly one of this country's better editors. And she told me recently that in the last two years she's had about half a dozen manuscripts that were written not by an author, a human being, that is, but by AI And I said, how do you know?
And she said, well, I've worked with these people in the past two or three manuscripts, so you get to know stylistic idiosyncrasies, tone, et cetera, et cetera. And she said these manuscripts were word perfect down to the full stop. The, you know, the semicolon that this author didn't know how to use previously was in the correct place. But she said the thing that was missing was the author's unique voice and sensibility in. Yeah, she said. And that's how I knew they were sending me AI driven manuscripts.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Speaker D: And she just told them to, to leave her alone. She wouldn't work on them, she wouldn't edit them. In answer to your question, in terms of how publishing has changed and I don't want to be beaching about the industry, which that I love, but the thing that I, I did notice is when I first started working at Penguin Books, it was a rabbit warren of a place full of paper and manuscripts and books and book covers everywhere and editors and publishers would be standing in doorways talking manuscripts and ideas.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Sounds like heaven.
[00:38:59] Speaker D: Exactly. I just loved it so much. I thought, my God, I've actually found my niche, you know, this is terrific.
And within a decade, perhaps what happened was it was became corporatized.
We could no longer do the things that we used to be able to do. The idiosyncratic manuscript that we knew wouldn't sell too many copies, but we knew it would add to the cultural landscape in one way or another. We couldn't do those things anymore.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:28] Speaker D: So it became very corporatized and it, for me, just died. It died very quickly and significantly, the thing that concerned me most and one of the things that I noticed a few years before I left publishing was we were being told that we didn't really have the time or the money to edit the way we used to edit. You could take up to a year to edit a book with an author to shape a manuscript. We were told we didn't have the time to do that anymore. And that to me is death to a manuscript. It's unfair to the poem, to the reader, and it's unfair to the author. And I thought, I don't think I want to work in this anymore. Having said all that, with small publishing houses, interestingly enough, you get that attention. That's why I think from here on, I'll give my next manuscript to the same publisher.
It was fantastic.
[00:40:22] Speaker A: That's great. That's amazing. It's nice to hear from, like, an insider's perspective. And now I can understand the pacing in publishing seem to have speeded it up, but. Oh, it doesn't feel that way. Yeah, well, you have shared so much already, Dimitri, but do you have any overall advice for authors wanting to publish or write in Gothic fiction or just have a career as an author or in publishing? I don't say don't do it.
[00:40:50] Speaker D: Don't do it. No.
Oh, God. Just from my own personal experience, I find that discipline, hard work and perseverance are the three key things for me. If you really want to do it, you will, despite the hard knocks. And there will be very many hard knocks. But as you said before, writing chooses you. You don't choose it. So if you really, really want to do it, he's going to continue doing it, I think. Discipline and perseverance.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's really well said and I can connect with that, that I've written a fair few manuscripts that I've never sort of seen the light of day. And I was looking back the other day and I just feel, you know, that first manuscript for me, which I will not share with anyone, although I did try and get it published in the beginning, that to me, proved that I could sit down and have the discipline to finish a work for someone who is very undisciplined. So, yeah, it's.
[00:41:47] Speaker D: Oh, really? Yeah.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: No, yeah. As I was as a younger person. Yeah. No discipline.
[00:41:52] Speaker D: So thank you.
Well, it sounds like you've done really well. I mean, you know, publishing children's books, a young adult, women's. Did you say women's fiction?
[00:42:01] Speaker A: I've jumped ship to women's fiction. Yeah. Yeah. So. And I thought. I feel. So I started out in the children's side and it was young adult, but then kind of slowly went down into middle grade and junior fiction and picture books. I think because of the age of my children, who are now, you know, 14 and 11 at the end of the year, you know, you're continuing continuously reading these books to your children, and you get ideas and things like that. But my voice is older, definitely young adult and adult, which I've only just discovered in the last year or two after writing for about seven years. So it's taken a while to find where I'm supposed to be, but I definitely feel like I've found it for sure. But the women's fiction's so freeing. I get to say anything I want. Well, not anything, but you can speak the language you want to speak. You can say. Whereas children's is. It's quite limiting, obviously.
[00:42:50] Speaker D: My partner is Lee Hobbs, the country's most famous children's book writer.
And so he writes children's books. And here I am writing horror stories about people getting dismembered and.
Exactly. But we never ever show each other our work. Because sensibility is so completely different, you know, to actually show each other. Maze was just go. I have no idea what I'm even looking at here.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: They haven't brought him over to the dark side.
[00:43:16] Speaker D: Totally. No. He can't even stand, you know, watching horror movies. I live on a diet of horror movies. I have to see at least three. Three a week. He can't sit there watching any of that stuff.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:43:28] Speaker D: And I doubt very much he'd even read the Woman in the World because it stress him out, too.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: There's definitely something about it. Even now, you know, in my older age, I watch something a bit creepy. I have to put the light on.
[00:43:39] Speaker D: So you're not a genre reader? Well, not writer. Sorry, you don't watch horror movies or read.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: I do. Yeah. Especially when we were younger. Grew up on the old Friday the 13th, you know, camp Crystal Lake and Kevin Bacon. Goodness me. Like, I saw him in. What was he. He's in something that's on Netflix at the moment. And I was just shocked to see him. Cause he's been out of the Cinema View for so long. But he was so young in that horror movie. And we watched it when I was about 12 years old and I think we were home alone. My parents had gone out for dinner and me and my best mate were watching it. And at the end, I don't know if you've ever seen it. The Camp Crystal Lake one, the Last Survivor. Spoiler alert to any who hasn't seen it. You know, she thinks she's home free when she's in the little boat on the lake and the police are coming. And then, you know, Jason is it. Jumps out and pulls her in and we actually literally screamed and my cat went running across the room. We'd screamed that much. We were so scared. You know, we got brought up on Scream and we used to. I used to live in a double story house in Scotland and to the point where it would be daytime and I would run up the stairs because I would feel that he was chasing me, you know.
Quite a bit of an imagination. And of course the original Stephen King's it and we've watched a fair few. But I do love the TV series that they bring out. The Haunting Hill one.
[00:44:58] Speaker D: And they're very good. I think it was British, if I remember correctly. Penny Dreadful.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: I don't know if I've seen a couple of episodes of that, but very clever.
[00:45:07] Speaker D: The first three seasons actually were a bit horror series I think I've seen in a very long time.
[00:45:13] Speaker A: And that Black. Is it Black Mirror, the ones. It's different. Is it?
[00:45:16] Speaker D: You know, I've never actually seen Black Mirror.
[00:45:18] Speaker A: I think it's that one. What I like about it is how each episode is just a completely different story from the last. There's no sort of connection or anything. They're all wildly out there, just really. And they've got famous actors in them as well.
[00:45:31] Speaker D: Right. Well, it's streaming on Netflix at the moment and it cropped up on my feed and I thought maybe it's about time I watched at least a couple of.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: I think you like her. Yeah, yeah, no, that's fantastic. I'll definitely check out your 101 horror movies thing. It's of big interest to me for sure.
[00:45:45] Speaker D: So that column is. I write about my favorite horror movies. I started at the beginning of the 20th century with silent horror movies. And at the moment I'm up to 1961.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:45:58] Speaker D: The current column, I think, is about a beautiful English horror movie made in 1961 called the Innocent, which is a retelling of Henry James's the Turn of the Screw.
[00:46:11] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, great.
[00:46:12] Speaker D: Story. Yeah. So I'm slowly working my way to contemporary times.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Yeah. What are some of your favorites?
[00:46:19] Speaker D: Oh, my God.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: Hard question.
[00:46:24] Speaker D: I would have to say off the top of my head. Brian De Palma's Carrie. David King, I think Carrie was seminal for me. And I love the Exorcist.
[00:46:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:35] Speaker D: And the Haunting, which was made in 1965, which is the haunting of Hill House.
That's a pretty wonderful. And the innocence is pretty fantastic. It's a very understated, lyrical and beautiful to look at by. Highly unnerving piece of filmmaking. But there's so many and they change depending on my mood.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: Have you watched the American Horror Story?
[00:47:00] Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
[00:47:00] Speaker A: I love that because to me it was so.
It sort of brought the storytelling aspect to it. I just loved that. I absolutely loved that as well. And it kind of got a bit. I don't know what the word is at the end.
[00:47:11] Speaker D: It falls apart slowly in the middle of all that. Some of the seasons are actually really, really good. They're completely forgettable.
[00:47:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:20] Speaker D: My favorite one. I don't know about you, but one of my favorites was 1984, which was a send up of 1980s slasher movies. Movies, Friday the 13th.
And it sent them up beautifully. But it was its own piece of work as well with the American Horror Story mythos.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:47:41] Speaker D: I loved that. And Cult was very good as well.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm not big on like the. The guts and the gore side of it, but I do like the sort of frightening more things.
[00:47:50] Speaker D: But in that case you would have liked the first two, possibly. We were really.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:55] Speaker D: The unnerving and bizarre.
Which is music to my ear, actually. You know, a friend last night just knocked on the door and she gave me something and she said, I'm halfway through your book and it's giving me sleepless nights. And I thought music to my ears.
Do you know, I've never been to perhaps.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Oh, you'll have to get over here. It's a little bit sleepy. But we've got. It's like a. It's like a cinema. It's called. It's very small. It's called the Backlot Theater or whatnot. And. And it's got a massive mural of Heath Ledger as the Joker in it. And they have an event that they have each month and it's a book to film adaptation. They show the film and you're supposed to read the book before you come. Then they have a discussion after it. Oh, gosh, Michael o' Rourke, I think his name is, who runs it. And lots of different things. We went to a session and it was the Children of the Damned and it was like the John. Was it John Wyndham book.
[00:48:48] Speaker D: They had the midweeds. Cuckoos.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Yes, that's it. They had a good session on that, which was really, really interesting.
[00:48:53] Speaker D: What a great idea.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: It's great.
[00:48:56] Speaker D: Have the backlot cinema here.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:59] Speaker D: Well, in South Melbourne. But I don't know if they actually do this sort of thing.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: It's really interesting. Yeah, they do. I think different people come along and do different things. They did Roald Dale's the Witches, which drew a big crowd and I loved it. I love that as well.
[00:49:15] Speaker D: Great film, isn't it?
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:16] Speaker D: Angelica Houston is fun.
[00:49:19] Speaker A: Well, they froze it and. And when she's. You know, it's the meeting of the witches and they were going around because some of the witches in there, they're actually men dressed up. And I think Michael Palin is one.
No, so that was. That was a little touch.
[00:49:35] Speaker D: You know, that's funny you say that, because we're getting way off topic now.
It's your fault. I was recently watching a recent horror movie called the Nun. Nun?
[00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:48] Speaker D: I'm convinced the Nun is a guy in a nun's habit.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: It probably is a man.
[00:49:53] Speaker D: I don't think that there's a woman in there. I think it's a man dressed up rag.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: No, I do like those ones, the conjuring and all those sorts.
[00:50:00] Speaker D: Yeah, the conjuring is great. And insidious.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, they're not bad.
[00:50:04] Speaker D: And. Well, comes out of one of them. Doesn't.
[00:50:06] Speaker A: What's that? Sorry.
[00:50:07] Speaker D: Though the Nun.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:08] Speaker D: You know, from one of those worlds.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think it's based off.
They were meant to. The two characters, the main characters being. I don't know if they were real life or they were saying they sort of were in real life, that they went to solve problems.
[00:50:23] Speaker D: Oh, yes. Yeah.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: The crimes and things like that. And I love the actress that is part of that.
[00:50:28] Speaker D: She's great. Isn't Sweden?
[00:50:29] Speaker A: She is good. I don't know if you ever watched that Bates Motel. It was like Norman Bates Story. Yeah, quite like that. Because I loved cycling.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's good. Well, honestly, Dimitri, I could talk to you all day. But thank you so much for all you've shared and wonderful information and everyone dying to know, you know, where can they pick up the women in the well and everything else you do, you know, on and offline.
[00:50:51] Speaker D: Well, it's. As far as I'm aware, the woman in the well isn't just about every books and more what's it called bricks and mortar bookshop and it's selling online as well you know in all the usual suspects are selling it so but I'm old fashioned. I don't have a website. I don't have a online presence at all so people can't ask me except here, you know I'm not on social media, you know.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Yeah but I like that that's again it's more part of your unknown personal.
[00:51:19] Speaker D: The mysterious domain queen.
[00:51:20] Speaker A: No, that's great.
[00:51:21] Speaker D: Thank you very much for having me, Joanne. Lovely to meet.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: So there you have it folks. The truly exceptional Dimitri Kami. Next time on the Hybrid Author podcast. It's a loner sword from me and I'm chatting about hybrid writing craft blending genres, forms and creative opportunities. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it for me. Bye for now.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: That's the end for now.
[00:51:47] Speaker A: Authors.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening and I.
[00:51:52] Speaker C: Hope you'll listen next time.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: Remember to head on over to the Hybrid Author website website at www.hybridauthor.com to get your free offer pass.
[00:52:01] Speaker C: It's bye for.
