Each month we celebrate an Australian debut release of fiction or non-fiction in the Kill Your Darlings Debut Spotlight feature. For February that debut is Crows Nest by Nikki Mottram (UQP)—a dark and gripping crime novel about a child protection worker who has left the big city for a small town in Queensland. We spoke to Nikki about her publishing journey and what inspired the book.
Stay tuned later this month for a review of the book from Debut Spotlight critic Simon McDonald, and a video reading from the author on our Instagram.
Can you give a brief summary of your book for those who haven’t read it?
My book is about a child protection worker, Dana Gibson, who has left Sydney for a job in the Queensland town of Toowoomba. Her first house call is to nearby Crows Nest to assess the children of Sandra Kirby, which results in her getting both her new boss and a local detective offside. Dana soon learns that, in the country, city rules do not apply.
When Sandra and her best friend are found shot dead, Dana is drawn into an investigation that will force her to strip away the friendly veneer of small-town life, while grappling with ghosts of her own. As buried secrets, bitter tension and corruption come to light, how far will locals go to stop her uncovering the truth of what happened?
Can you tell us about what drove you to write this book, and the book’s journey to publication more broadly?
I wrote Crows Nest after reading an Australian coronial report about the thirty-year-old murder of two women. I remember reading about the case in the paper as a child and being haunted by it. At the same time, I’d been wanting to write about child protection after having worked for many years in the field. Child protection workers deal with some of the most difficult and challenging issues in society and are often at the coal face when tragedies occur. I felt that writing from the perspective of a child protection worker would offer a unique lens and was something that wasn’t often talked about. Many of the cases I’d read at work were as interesting and complex as any novel I’d ever read.
I remember reading about the case in the paper as a child and being haunted by it.
I’d been writing for many years and immersing myself in courses at the Queensland Writers’ Centre and writing groups, however my breakthrough came when I took part in the Australian Society of Authors Literary Speed Dating event. I pitched Crows Nest to Benjamin Paz at Curtis Brown during an online Zoom session and from there he asked to see the manuscript. Sydney was in lockdown so he was able to read it very quickly and got back to me and said that he’d loved Crows Nest. Shortly afterwards he sent it out on submission and I was so excited when it was accepted for publication by UQP.
The book draws on your own experience of working in child protection—what made you decide to write crime fiction to tell this story, rather than memoir or non-fiction?
There are so many ethical considerations in writing memoir and I love the relative freedom of writing fiction, of being able to make things up or use situations which are close to real life events and embellish or change them to fit the narrative.
What does your writing process look like? Any particular strategies or philosophies that help you find inspiration or put words on the page, or self-care strategies that help you when writing gets difficult?
My process involves trying to take myself back to a simpler time when I was a teenager, propped up in my bed with a cup of tea, writing in longhand in my diary for pure enjoyment. There are very few places in the world where I feel as free as I do when I’m writing so I try to get out of my own way and have fun.
There are very few places in the world where I feel as free as I do when I’m writing…
When I’m struggling with writing a particular scene, I find that venting about it to one of my friends or submitting a chapter to my writers’ group is really helpful. I’ve also found that Elizabeth Gilbert’s pragmatic wisdom about perfectionism being the enemy of creativity and that ‘done is better than good’ has been invaluable advice in terms of completing and submitting work.
What’s one thing you know now about the writing and publishing journey that you wish you’d known when you were starting out?
That I was going to have to be patient, that getting published would take a long time. When I started writing I naively thought opportunities would come my way on a regular basis and as a result I squandered a few of them.
What other writers or books influenced your writing?
I love Cheryl Strayed, Toni Morrison and Helen Garner for the wisdom, honesty and bravery of their writing. I’ve always been interested in human behaviour so I love reading books by authors who are really accurate in their depictions of psychological states.
What impact do you hope your book will have on its readers?
I hope Crows Nest will shine a light on child protection and the complexities involved in working with families and assessing whether children are at risk. I also hope readers will find themselves absorbed in the book and enjoy the ride!
Crows Nest is available now from your local independent bookseller.
