The Nile's Deep Dive Author Interview: Mark Smith

Let’s start at the beginning with a little bit about you, Mark. Where did you grow up? What were some of your favourite books as a child and teen? How would you describe yourself as a young person?

I grew up in a family of ten kids on what was then the outer fringe of Melbourne - lots of open country, bushland and market gardens. As a young person I was a complete non reader because I was a total outdoors boy: horse riding, skating, surfing and playing football were my passions. When I did start reading, while recuperating from a serious horse-riding accident at fifteen, I launched straight into Tolkien, Steinbeck, Hemingway et al.

As a young person I was way too eager to please and I lacked social confidence. I only felt truly myself when I was out adventuring on my own in the outdoors. Fortunately, I was gifted a childhood with freedom to roam and explore - literally being told "get out of the house. I don't want to see you until dinner time." That suited me just fine!

When did the writer in you make themselves known? Was there any inciting incident? A book or a film that excited the desire to be a writer? Or was it some impactful experience, like being dropped on your head, that sent you running to the page?

I arrived at writing late - I was in my fifties before I had anything published (lots of short stories, then a novel.) I came from an English teaching background and I combined my love of words with working in the outdoors as Head of a residential campus to create stories that were embedded in the landscape of the west coast of Victoria. Somewhere in all my novels you will find the coast, the bush and the myriad ways humans have found to try to shape and exploit them. At the core of each story will be an ordinary character who finds themselves in an extraordinary situation.

I am asking you these questions because you have a new book, Where Truth Ends. What’s it all about? Can you give me your best elevator pitch (don’t worry, it’s not a very fast elevator)?

In Where Truth Ends, Meg Maher, a millennial frustrated at the lack of action on climate, joins a highly secretive direct-action group called No Planet B. When their first protest - blocking a major Melbourne intersection with a truck at peak hour - turns unexpectedly violent, Meg finds herself on the run, hunted as a terrorist. She seeks refuge with the only people she can trust - her parents - while she tries desperately to uncover the truth about what happened at the protest. When her fellow protesters start disappearing one by one, she belatedly realises it's not only the authorities who are hunting her.

Where did this book come from? I mean, your mind, obviously, but can you give me some idea of the genesis of the work? Did anything external trigger your imagination, for example? 

I've been a social and environmental activist for over forty years and I've always been aware of how vulnerable protest groups are to infiltration, and how the best intentions can sometimes have life-changing consequences. I've been arrested, had to deal with intrusive surveillance, even had someone try to kill me by running my car of the road, so I know the lengths defenders of the status quo will go to stand in the way of change. Where Truth Ends was a way of bringing my own experiences to the page by wrapping them in a page-turning thriller.

Describe an average day when you’re in the middle of writing a book? Where do you write? What do you write with? Do you need silence, or do you like to have heavy metal music playing, like Stephen King? Do you ever get out of your pyjamas?

My writing schedule is pretty strict: up at 6.30 and straight down to the desk, write for three hours without a break (which usually yields 1000-1500 words), then the rest of the day is my own. I surf, ride, walk the dog, swim, read - all the time working through where I will take the story when I go back to the desk the next morning. (I call it writing away from the desk).

I realised something about this process while writing Where Truth Ends: sometimes you go down to the desk and the words just seem to flow, while other times it's like pulling teeth.But when you go back over the manuscript to start the editing process, you can't tell the difference between the days you thought were good writing days and the ones where you struggled. That tells me that the writing is actually pretty consistent one day to the next - it's just the way you THINK about it on any particular day that changes.

At this stage of a new book’s life - it’s published, or about to be - the author (you) are already out and about promoting it - filling out annoying questionnaires like this one - but what you really want to be doing is getting back to writing your next book, or at least planning it, or thinking about it, so my question is, why? What is wrong with you? Is writing a compulsion? Discuss.

I actually love it when all the work is done and the book is about to come out. I can't wait to share it with readers, attend festivals, do the events, blow my trumpet! But, I also know that at about this time my publisher will start asking the dreaded question: what's next? So I get the wheels in motion early, beginning a new project in the golden couple of months immediately before the current book is released. I try to get at least 20,000 words down so that I have something substantial to come back to after six to eight weeks on the publicity trail. It takes the pressure off!

I love learning what writers have been reading. What’s the best contemporary book you’ve read lately? Name three books you always recommend. And do you read books as part of your research? Did any stand out or surprise you? And lastly, books on writing, writers, the writing life - do you have a go to? 

Best contemporary read: Crux by Gabriel Tallent, author of My Absolute Darling. Two teens - one a gifted student, the other a mouthy delinquent - growing up on the edge of the Mojave desert, share a deep connection through rock climbing. Some of the very best nature and adventure writing, with exquisitely detailed climbing sequences.

Three books I always recommend: Tall Man by Chloe Hooper, North Woods by Daniel Mason & Limberlost by Robbie Arnott.

I'm not a big researcher. I do, however, read avariciously (almost exclusively fiction). I am always looking for new and different ways of telling a story.

I have never read a book on writing. I know I should, but I haven't!

I once asked Peter Carey for writing advice and he said, ‘Don’t take advice from anyone.’ Ignoring this advice I ask you, is there something you’ve learned about the writing life that would benefit someone just starting out? What is it?

I was a student of Toni Jordan's before I was published and she said something that has always stuck with me: "be that writer publishers are asking themselves why they're not publishing you." That means building a catalogue of work, creating networks and never submitting unless the work is the very best you can produce.

Imagine you’re a bookseller and you’re hand-selling your new book to a customer. What three books would you compare it to to make that sale?

Clade by James Bradley, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, Wimmera by Mark Brandi

Thank you so much for answering our questions, Mark.