This post was originally published on Audible.com.au
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Emma Rusher: Stephen King describes the author you're about to meet as a born storyteller, and this is the best. Hi, I'm Emma Rusher, editor for Audible Australia, taking you front row with your favourite Australian authors and narrators. The author with us today is Michael Robotham, and he's talking about Tell Me Something True. Known as Robbo to his fans, this is his first book set in Australia, and it delivers on his three-word mantra hanging over his writing desk: make them care. Michael Robotham, welcome to Audible.
Michael Robotham: Thank you, Emma.
It is so lovely to have you here, and especially to talk about your new audiobook. You have published 19 novels, but none of them have been your first, and none have been set in Australia until Tell Me Something True. Why was it languishing in the bottom drawer for so long?
Well, basically, because it was my first novel. I began writing it at 22. I finished it when I was 28. I was living in the UK by that point. It almost got published. I missed out by a single vote in an acquisitions meeting. And I was told at the time, if I'd set that book in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Wales, they would have published it in a heartbeat. But because it was set in a small town in Australia, it was too hard to market.
You were prescient. You were ahead of the Australian country genre.
Well, yes. It was before Jane Harper, before Liane Moriarty So, I put it in my bottom drawer, and 14 years later, when I wrote The Suspect, I set it in the UK because I think in the back of my mind I remembered what had happened, that feedback. And obviously that book triggered a bidding war at the London Book Fair and sold into 20-plus languages and launched my career in a stunning way. And so Tell Me Something True went in the bottom drawer, and periodically I would pick it up and I'd read it and I'd fall in love with the characters and the story. But I just thought, "It's not the time."
And now it is.
Yeah. After 20 books, I thought it was time I came home. Because it's the question I've most often been asked, particularly when I tour in Australia. For a long while, people didn't even know I was Australian. Readers would come along and say, "How long are you here for?" as though I was literally flying in and flying out. And they would always then ask, when they knew I was Australian, "Why haven't you ever set a book here?" And I would jokingly say, "Well, I have the greatest-ever unpublished novel in my bottom drawer." And they'd go, "Well, take it out, please." And I'd go, "Yes, but it won't be Australia's greatest-ever unpublished novel when I take it out."
It'll be in the world.
It'll be in the world. But after 20 books, I thought it was time to come home and end the questions.
After 20 books, I thought it was time to come home.
What a great trajectory. And when you look back at this novel, what is something true that 22-year-old Michael got right?
Well, when I read it again, you get this mix of reactions. I read some passages and thought, "Damn, that guy could write—what happened to him?" And then I read other passages and cringed, and thought, "Oh, that was a very self-conscious 22-year-old who was either naive or full of himself." And so I think I'm a better—I hope I'm a better writer now, because the book has been seriously rewritten and reimagined. The story's the same, the characters are the same, the setting is the same. But I've done a lot of rewriting.
Well, listeners are about to spend 10 hours inside your world of Arlo and Luke, two brothers. It's a coming-of-age story, a murder that takes many years to find justice. And the town is called Yulara, alongside the Murrumbidgee River. It sounds very similar to where you grew up. Is it?
Yes, it is. I fictionalised the town—it's the town of Gundagai, a very famous country town in Australia. You know, where the dog sits on the Tucker Box. I think there'll be more songs and ballads and poems written about Gundagai than any other country town.
Now you're contributing to the canon.
I am. But I guess for two reasons I fictionalised the name. One was because I didn't want people to play some guessing game. In a small town like Gundagai, there's only one school principal, and there's only one sort of senior police officer, and I didn't want people playing this game, thinking I'd based it on real characters. I also want to perhaps be allowed back into Gundagai at some future point. But that's the reason I sort of did it. But anyone that knows the town will know the locations.
It will resonate with them.
Yeah, I've changed street names and other things, but they'll know that's where the library is, and that's where the church is, and that's where the courthouse is, and that's where the police station is. Yes.
Oh, that's lovely. Well, we love authors speaking their own words here at Audible, and we're hoping that you might share some of your words.
I can do that.
Thank you.
This is from the very opening.
In the years since that day, people have told stories about how far Luke carried her. Some said it was two kilometers. Others thought it nearer four. A few extended it even further, never letting the facts stand in the way of the truth or an accurate map. Nobody disputes the weather. Rain swept across the public common in sheets that blurred the air, filling drains and gutters and creeks, each feeding into the river that rose by the hour, becoming a mud-brown torrent. At midnight, the Murrumbidgee broke its banks and washed away the crime scene, covering another layer of history beneath silt and debris.
Luke began his walk at the stables on the eastern edge of the Illawarra showground. He circled the southern boundary of the dressage ring, passing the livestock barns and show pens and covered pavilion. He followed the narrow strip of bitumen that ran across the river flat, past the flood memorial and the equestrian jumps and the ruins of an old school building. He carried her in his outstretched arms like a bride being lifted over the threshold on her wedding night. Her head, rested against his chest, had a face tilted upwards, her eyes open unblinking as the heavens wept.
That was so special to hear that opening in your words. You really set the scene for us. And Luke, who's carrying this person who we'll get to know during the novel, is such an enigma in many ways. Is he based on anyone in your life from that time?
I think it's interesting. People are going to draw parallels with this story, and some of them are going to be quite accurate. I guess at the age of 22, there are a few writers that influenced me. I mean, all writers, all authors, I think, have been influenced by people. And back in those days, when I began writing Tell Me Something True, which was initially called Blessed Are the Meek.
Oh. That's interesting.
I created the character of Luke, and I was very influenced by John Irving and The World According to Garp and Hotel New Hampshire. I loved authors that could make you laugh and cry on the same page. But also by John Steinbeck. And there are certainly parallels between a book like Tell Me Something True and Of Mice and Men, you know. I can sort of see my influences when I go back and read it. I can see the writers that were influencing me.
Well, your real-life girl next door, Vivien, was the first person to read the original manuscript, and decades later she was the first person to read what's become Tell Me Something True. What was more terrifying for you as a writer?
It's always difficult. Vivien and I have been married for nearly 40 years, and the reason we've been married so long is that she says everything that I write is brilliant. And she leaves it up to editors and agents to tell me if something's not right. And when I say to her, "Well, give me some feedback here—I mean, I need to know, is this working for you?" "It's brilliant," she says. "It's brilliant." But it's also one of those things that, when she's reading, I want to watch her, and I want to look at her reaction, and I want to say, "What was that bit? What made you smile?"
You know her so well.
And nobody has seen this book. I show it to nobody until it's finished. And so I literally want to look over her shoulder, and it drives her nuts. So she sends me out of the room, and I peer through a crack in the door, and I watch her, and I see her laugh and I think, "What was that bit? Which bit was that?" And eventually I get exiled to the Cabana of Cruelty [my writing room]. And then something terrible will happen in the book, and she'll come running out and she'll hammer me in the chest and go, "Bring them back, you bastard! Bring them back."
I just love everything about that. That's beautiful. I really felt like that at times in this novel.
I think this is going to get me a lot of emails from people, which I love. When they say, "You made me cry on the bus, you bastard," yes, my job is done.
So, when people are listening, they need to think about the listening occasion, whether they're commuting or out on a street. You don't want to get caught out with this one.
I know, it's funny.
It'll catch you unawares.
I love audiobooks, and I remember listening to Lessons in Chemistry, the Bonnie Garmus book. I was on a walk over a headland, and I was sobbing, and these people actually stopped me and asked me if I was okay, because they thought I was a possible suicide risk, because tears were just streaming down my face.
So immersed in the audiobook.
Absolutely.
We actually just worked with Jennifer Coolidge in Sydney recently, and that was the premise of her appearance with Audible—that she was getting so lost in The Odyssey, she walked out of the supermarket and to Bondi Beach with a shopping trolley! So we understand how immersive audiobooks can be. Once a book becomes an audiobook, something changes. Somebody else gets to inhabit the character. The way they breathe, even, or pause, or the intonation changes the flavour of your words. Do you ever write with audio in mind?
No, I never write with audio in mind. Although, it's interesting, this book, because it's narrated—Steve Shanahan, who narrates the audiobook, does a brilliant job. I got a chance to go and talk to him beforehand, and to go into the studio and watch him working, and to talk to him about the characters. And he did an initial sort of chapter read of Arlo, who's the narrator of the book—Arlo Hackett's character, Luke's brother. And I remember saying to him, I think my notes to him were this: Less Bryan Brown and more Sam Neill, because you couldn't make Arlo too—
Sam would have loved that.
Yes. Absolutely.
Yes.
He couldn't make him too Australian, if you know what I mean. And so I love that opportunity of being able to be in a studio and watch it.
Oh, wonderful to work with Steve at that level.
I've never had that opportunity before, because the audio has always been recorded overseas, in America or the UK.
So, that's the gift of an Australian setting for you.
Yeah. It was wonderful. It's funny, I think in terms of, occasionally, it doesn't influence the way I write; I do think, having had several books made into TV series, I do think a little—film, actually—but not in terms of influencing the way I write. It's normally I'll write a scene and think, "Oh, that'll be expensive to film."
I can imagine you also are thinking about Vivien's reactions sometimes.
Oh, I sort of know at times. I am married to a woman whose idea of perfection would be if I became the first crime writer in history to write a crime novel without a crime.
So, you really know how to play her in fiction. When you were collaborating with Steve at the studio, did he bring a flavour to characters like Arlo and you thought, "Oh, that's what he sounds like"?
Yeah, it's interesting that, isn't it? It's an odd thing, Emma. I love audiobooks, but I don't listen back to my audiobooks, if you know what I mean. But Steve's voice is sort of in my head now, and I think it's a bit like—I once asked the wonderful Val McDermid, the Scottish crime writer, when they made the Wire in the Blood series out of her Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series. Robson Green played the lead role of Tony Hill. I said to Val afterwards, "When you write those novels now, do you picture Robson Green?" And she said yes. So, Robson Green was now Tony Hill for her. And that doesn't sort of happen for me. But I could understand why it does.
I think this is going to get me a lot of emails from people, which I love. When they say, 'You made me cry on the bus, you bastard,' yes, my job is done.
The title implores us, Tell Me Something True. So, Michael, tell us something true.
Oh.
Something we may not know about you.
Goodness me. I guess I've had three careers, which people do know. But that's led me to some sort of remarkable places and to meet some fascinating people over the years. I was the first Western journalist to get access to the Moscow State Archives, and I uncovered the Nicholas and Alexandra love letters, which were so poignant because they were so in love. And the Romanov children's diaries, which still had flowers pressed between the pages of that poor, tragic family. I held them, I saw them, and I ultimately wrote about them.
What an extraordinary experience.
Yeah, it was amazing. It was an astonishing time to be a journalist, because also in those archives were the Rasputin files, all of the surveillance on the "Mad Monk" when he was embedding his way around Saint Petersburg. It was a fascinating time.
Wow. That's incredible. Finally, would you share with us what book would you press into somebody's ears right now?
I have just finished, on the walk today, The Sellout by Paul Beatty, which won the Booker Prize in 2016. It is a bitter, acerbic, laugh-out-loud satire on racism in America, about a Black guy who finishes up in front of the Supreme Court arguing that segregation and apartheid should be reintroduced because Black people were better off. It is such a clever, clever idea. And it's one of those books, though, it's funny—as much as I love the audio version, I'm going to go and buy the physical version, because the one-liners can come so thick and fast. I'm either going to relisten to it or I'm going to actually read it so I can pause and enjoy them.
That’s what we love at Audible. We love people listening, reading, watching their favourite stories. Thank you for coming in and sharing yours today, Michael. It's been so lovely to have you.
Thank you, Emma.
You can enjoy Tell Me Something True and dive into all of Michael Robotham's brilliant stories on Audible now.
