Michael Bennett's striking début novel, Better the Blood, is a crime thriller with a message about the dark secrets of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history and how they still resonate today.
We're very much looking forward to welcoming Michael to Queenstown Writers Festival and hearing his conversation with lawyer Bryony Shackell. He'll talk about the genesis of his acclaimed novel, his ground-breaking international publishing success and why crime writing is so popular right now.
Michael's work as a filmmaker and author has taken him to some pretty bleak places – his coverage of Teina Pora's wrongful conviction revealed shocking institutionalised racism – but that's not where he lives all the time! We asked him some occasionally frivolous questions about his writing process and more.
1. What is your favourite writing snack?
Ha! I am addicted to the New York Times cooking page. You either know what I’m talking about or you don’t, but there is a small city of us. My day starts with finding the right recipe from the NYT app for dinner, depending on what’s seasonal and who I’m cooking for – the rest of the day is writing (while actually just wanting to go and cook). The one thing in my fridge that I can’t live without is gochujang. Everything tastes better with gochujang. Including ice cream, try it.
2. When do your best ideas come?
Writers are vampires. My best ideas, certainly in terms of characters, come from “borrowing” aspects of the lives of those I love, of those who drive me insane, or of those I’ve casually met who fascinate the hell out of me. I think I should hand out a card when I meet someone – if you are gonna spend time with me, you will end up in something I write. I realised I had maybe gone too far when I borrowed my youngest daughter’s tattoos and put them on the arm of the Addison character in Better the Blood. When Matariki read it, she said, “Dad, you’ve crossed a line.”
3. What is your best trick for overcoming writer's block?
Constant motion. I’m a member of the 5am club – very strong coffee at 5am every day, then watch the sun rise as I do some kind of exercise for the next two hours (power-walking or swimming or riding), then off to the standing desk. I write standing up, and balancing on a wobbly board, way better for spine and musculature, and it keeps you moving and flexing and shifting balance all day.
In my mind perpetual motion is the key – I get the oxygen circulating to my neurons pre-dawn, then keep the synapses firing all day by literally never sitting down. I don’t give myself the chance to get stuck and to stop dead, physically or in my writing. Probably deeply unscientific but it’s a theory!
4. What are you reading at the moment?
My daughter Matariki is just finishing her first collection of poems, E Kō, Nō Hea Koe? It’s so well-written, and wise and wonderful in a way that takes my breath away and makes me wonder what planet this creature fell from. Also reading The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle and Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent.
5. Which writers would you take on an epic road trip?
It’d be a convoy. Miranda July would be in our car with me and my partner, Jane. Every moment on the road with that mad Vermont genius would be to see beauty and wonder in the world in a way I’d never seen it before. It’d be good to have Marlon Williams in there too, I know he’d vibe with Miranda, he’d be the perfect soundtrack to the trip, and I feel we’d write great music together, notwithstanding my complete lack of musical training or ability.
Truman Capote would be in the car behind – I have a feeling neither Miranda nor Jane nor I have sensibilities that could put up with the guy all day, but he’d make good company for an hour or two at night. In the third car there’d be an Irish writer. Any Irish writer. No matter how awful a day is, having an Irish person around makes it okay.
6. Who would play you in the movie of your life?
I feel like I move through the world in a way that is very similar to a meerkat. Wide-eyed, often bewildered, trying to understand what the hell is going on, then ducking quickly back into my burrow. So it would have to be a Pixar biopic, and I’d be a furry prairie animal. I’d like Morgan Freeman to voice me, not cos I sound anything like him (I don’t), but it would be my one small shot at achieving a little bit of gravitas.
7. What are you looking forward to most in Queenstown?
I was born in Reefton, raised in a tiny one-horse town called Ngātīmoti (near Motueka) that is so small it doesn’t even have the horse. Tribally I am Te Arawa, but I was born and raised in Te Waipounamu. Any time I get to go back to the south is a very good day.
I'm very much looking forward to talking writing with you locals and with the brilliant authors – then afterwards Jane and I are doing the rail trail to Dunedin – very very excited!
— On Sunday 12 November Bryony Shackell will interview Michael about Better the Blood and the connections to Teina Pora's story.