It’s been more than 20 years since Nelson-based author Fiona Sussman hung up her stethoscope to write her first novel. Exploring the human psyche is what fascinates the former GP, who explains she “loves the human story”.
Fiona is part of the line-up for the upcoming Pukapuka Talks: Crime in Context session at Te Noninga Kumu-Motueka District Library, alongside fellow storytellers Michael Bennett and Rachel Paris.
The event is a chaired conversation between the authors, exploring the “social, psychological, cultural, and political contexts driving their page-turning stories”.
Fiona muses that being a writer is a strange dichotomy. “You kind of stay hidden away in your study for two or three years with your characters, and suddenly you’re out in public.”
At the point where the book is out in the world, “your control ends” and the two-way conversation begins, where readers have a chance to interpret her characters.
With crime-writing, you need to have the end in sight and work back from there, “dismantling the puzzle backward” to make sure the clues add up, she says.
Those clues have to be unveiled to the audience alongside the story’s investigator or narrator.
“With a good crime novel, you need to play fair with the reader,” she explains.
However, that’s not to say that the characters don’t get in the way.
“As characters fill their skin and you as a writer start to know them better, they will sometimes start to pull the story in a different direction,” she says.
Fiona, who was born in South Africa, usually resides in Auckland but is spending a year in Nelson while her husband completes a course in fine woodworking. Their tenure ends in a couple of months, and Fiona is effusive about the ease of walking along the long sweep of Tahuna Beach or ducking into one of the nearby national parks.
“It’s quite incredible to have that on one’s doorstep.”
Crime in Context is on at Te Noninga Kumu-Motueka District Library today, Thursday 23 October, starting at 6pm.
Tickets can be purchased via nelsonartsfestival.nz/event/crime-in-context.
Books will be available for purchase on the night.
