Your new novel, Glass Barbie, has been described as a gritty, darkly humorous crime story set in Northland. What inspired you to write this particular story?

In 2015, just after I moved to the backwards, archaic northernmost city of Whangārei, I got a job as a researcher on a drug & alcohol project for Massey University. My job was doing in-depth interviews with people who had been arrested and were sitting in jail cells awaiting court. They were bored out of their minds and happy to get out of their cells, so we would chat about their various crimes and various intoxicants, so I got inspired by lots of colourful characters. Between interviews, I would hang out in the break room with police officers, then once my shift finished I would head across the road to the nearest cafe and write about - what else? - crims and cops in Northland.

The novel’s protagonist, ‘Cockroach’ Karl Copley, is an unpredictable and chaotic character. What drew you to writing from his perspective?

He’s original, his voice is pretty different from every other narrator in every other book. Plus, I’m inspired by a lot of the inner monologues of the unreliable narrators in books such as Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff, all of Irvine Welsh’s characters. In New Zealand literature, we have far too many well-spoken, privileged, comfortable characters in our stories. I look out the window in Whangarei and roughly a third of people look pretty downtrodden and poor and inept. Therefore, at least a third of the characters I write about should be like that.

You mention that Glass Barbie is rooted in real-life experiences. How much of the novel draws from personal encounters or stories you’ve come across?

Pretty much all of it. I read far too many NZ Herald true crime stories and court reports. If you’re like me - a journalist, a fabulist and you have a strong imagination - you’ll take a small amount of real-world information and mix it up with lots of harsh real-world stuff. Plus, I’ve had an interesting life and rubbed shoulders with a lot of interesting people. I’ve been to a neo-Nazi skinhead music festival, dodgy pubs full of Crips and Black Power people, 4am biker bars, scary parties… Numerous people from my high school went to jail for some serious stuff… And I’ve profiled all sorts of crooks, crims, activists, radicals, murderers and troublemakers for news stories in my freelance journalism career.

Check out my poetry and you’ll enjoy a lot of tales about people and bad behaviour, from all sorts of perspectives - judgemental, empathetic, mournful, encouraging…

The novel’s plot revolves around a botched ransom rescue. Without giving too much away, what can readers expect from this twisted journey?

The story is about two friends on a road trip to reunite with a high school homegirl and relive their glory days… at least, for the delusional one of the friends it is. The other friend has no interest in a messy, risky, deadly trip down memory lane.

Glass Barbie is full of dark humour. How do you balance comedy with the heavier themes of crime and desperation?

Most Kiwi crime writers take their prose far too seriously, but I’ll bet very few of them have ever hung out with real crims. There’s no point pretending to represent the underworld if you can’t walk the talk. Also, crims have most of the same sense of humour and same motivations as the straight world.

You've been called a writer of “the downtrodden and damned.” What draws you to telling these kinds of stories?

The stakes in any strong story should be as high as possible. If you can write about life-or-death predicaments, that’s entertaining for the audience (and your job, as a writer, is to entertain). If you can’t quite manage life or death, it’s important to have the people you write about battling against difficult odds to make their lives better - to get their loved ones back, to stand up to bullies, to kill adversaries, to get revenge, redemption, to get even, to get one’s mana back… You won’t find exciting high stakes if you’re writing about privileged people with first-world problems. There’s much more powerful material amongst the downtrodden and damned who are that much closer to life versus death.

You've written across multiple genres, from crime to horror to short stories. Where does Glass Barbie fit within your body of work?

It’s my second crime novel, only black comedy novel, and most recent of four novels overall.

Over the years, when literary magazines paid me for stories and poems, they were almost always ‘Dirty realism’ pieces about Kiwis in criminal predicaments. Since people like that material coming from me - and since hardly anyone else is covering this beat - it makes sense to expand it into a novel – and to celebrate all of Northland’s wonderful and shitty aspects.

What’s next for you after Glass Barbie? Any new projects on the horizon?

I have been writing horror feature film scripts over the last four years based on stories from Bloodalcohol and The Devil Took Her. It’s so so SO hard to get one optioned for development. I’ll probably have to get a couple of successful short films made to convince the powers-that-be to support one of my elevated horror scripts. I have learned screenwriting from the absolute basics, as a novice, but I’m a hard worker and I’m bringing original ideas and I’ll never give up. Giving up is for all my critics to do. Good luck to ‘em.

Glass Barbie
Published by Lasavia Publishing, February 2025
RRP$34.99