Month: August 2022

3 Burning Questions – Crime After Crime

// What's on

We are thrilled to host Crime After Crime: the world’s finest crime writers come to Palmerston North on 13 September. We expect a criminally good night!

Val McDermid is considered to be crime-writing royaly. Over 18 million copies of her books have sold to date, and there have been several TV adaptions. Her latest book, 1989 is the second book in the Allie Burns series.

Michael Robotham is Australia’s hottest crime writer; his Joseph O’Loughlin series was a worldwide bestseller and is currently being adapted for the screen. He’s also well known for his bestseller The Secrets She Keeps, now an award-winning TV drama with Season 2 streaming now on TVNZ+. His latest book is Lying Beside You.

Rotorua-born J.P. Pomare’s debut novel Call Me Evie won the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel, and his second book In the Clearing will soon grace our screens via Disney+. His fifth book, The Wrong Woman, is out now.

To get our interrogation started, we sent 3 burning questions to the authors. Here’s what they had to say for themselves.

What’s the weirdest thing in your (writing-related) search history?

J.P.POMARE: The one thing I think that has put me on a watchlist (If I am on one) was ‘How to drown a child’ which I searched for In The Clearing

VAL MCDERMID: It would have to be a toss-up between ‘home-made bomb 1994’ and ‘how to climb the Inaccessible Pinnacle on Sgurr Alasdair.’ And lots of searching for accurate names for characters of different nationalities. ‘Most common Lithuania surnames,’ that sort of thing.

MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: When I was writing Bombproof, I had to research how to make a homemade bomb known as the ‘Mother of Satan’. I was convinced that the security services were going to pick up on trigger words and come storming into my house to arrest me.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you know how the book will end when you start writing?

J.P.POMARE: I know how the book is going to end, but I’m still a pantser when it comes to the writing. I view the end of the story as a point on the compass and will generally head in that direction but won’t follow a map, or have a plan as to what is going to happen. I just like to be surprised as I write.

VAL MCDERMID: I used to be a plotter. When I started out, I thought plotting was my weakest area, so I worked hard on getting the story coherently laid out on file cards before I started. Then that suddenly stopped working for me mid-book. Now, I know the broad brush strokes of the story, the ending I’m aiming for and a couple of crucial turning points along the way. Writing is a process, and we don’t always control what works for us!

MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: I’m definitely a pantser. When I was writing LYING BESIDE YOU, I was three quarters the way through and still didn’t know who the villain was going to be.

One of the benefits is that I make each of the suspects equally credible, because I don’t know who I’m going to choose. I think sometimes when you know too early, you can make the villain either too obvious, or tried to hide them too well and not give the reader a chance to guess the ending. I figure, that if I don’t see the twists coming – neither will the reader.

What pseudonym would you use if you had to go on the run after a – hopefully non-lethal – crime?
J.P.POMARE: Paul Gilbert — it might be a little obvious, and I’m sure Reid would figure it out in ten seconds but it’s my middle name and my Grand Mothers Maiden name.

VAL MCDERMID: Something really bland and common. Emma Taylor, Sarah Robertson, Jane Brown. That sort of thing. And if I dyed my hair its original colour, nobody would recognise me!

MICHAEL ROBOTHAM: Inspector Endeavour Morse. (Nobody would ever suspect me of anything).

Tickets are now sold out.

Check out the winners!

// Books

The New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults champion and honour New Zealand’s literature for tamariki and rangatahi. The winners were announced on Wednesday August 10, and now’s your chance to check them out.

The awards are a celebration of New Zealand’s children’s authors and illustrators, and the contribution they make to building our national identity and heritage. So without further ado, here’s the winners of 2022! We’re including a link to the book in our collection, so you can see if it’s available. If it’s not, place a reservation

Margaret Mahy Book of the Year, Elsie Locke Award for Non-Fiction and Russell Clark Award For Illustration

Atua: Māori Gods and Heroes, written and illustrated by Gavin Bishop

 “Before the beginning there was nothing. No sound, no air, no colour: nothing. TE KORE, NOTHING. No one knows how long this nothing lasted because there was no time. However, in this great nothing there was a sense of waiting. Something was about to happen.

Find it in the library.

Picture Book Category Winner

Lion guards the cake, written and illustrated by Ruth Paul

“Lion is full of pride when it comes to guarding his home and when the birthday cake has been made for the next day’s celebrations, he goes where he is needed most … to guard the cake. But in the morning, the household awakes to a chaotic scene. What happened when Lion was guarding the cake?”

Find it in the Library.

Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction

The Memory Thief, written by Leonie Agnew

Seth has been trapped behind the iron bars of the public gardens for as long as he can remember. By day he’s frozen as a statue of a shepherd boy, but as soon as the sun sets he roams the park, ravenously hungry. He is a troll, and the food he seeks is human memories. Then he meets Stella.

Find it in the library.

Young Adult Fiction Award

Learning to Love Blue, written by Saradha Koirala

With Vox Pop and high school behind her, 18-year-old Paige arrives in Melbourne with her suitcase and bass guitar; a copy of Bob Dylan’s Chronicles and Joni Mitchell’s Blue – a gift from her estranged mother that she’s still learning to love. Following in the footsteps of her musical heroes, all of whom left home to make it in 1960s New York, Paige knows Melbourne’s the new rock and roll capital of the world: if she can’t make it here, she can’t make it anywhere.

Find it in the Library.

Wright Family Foundation Te Kura Pounamu Award for Te Reo Māori

I Waho, i te Moana, written by Yvonne Morrison, illustrated by Jenny Cooper and translated by Pānia Papa

Out in the moana, underneath the sparkling sun, lived a mother sea lion and her little pup one. A playful retelling of the much-loved traditional story, Over in the Meadow.

Find it in the library.

NZSA Best First Book Award

Spark Hunter, written by Sonya Wilson

Over a million hectares of wild bush-clad land and one young hunter… Nissa Marshall knows that something is hiding deep in the forests of Fiordland National Park – she’s seen their lights in the trees. But what are they, and why does no one else seem to notice them?

Find it in the library.

Congratulations to the winners! You can see the full shortlist at the New Zealand Book Awards Trust website – it’s a great starting point for some of the newest and best stories for tamariki (children) and rangatahi (youth).

Book recommendation: ‘A Fatal Winter’ by G.M Malliet.

// Books

Thanks to one of our library members from the Awapuni Library for the following book recommendation.

G. M. Malliet intrigued readers with Wicked Autumn, the first mystery featuring her captivating lead character, Max Tudor, and the little English village of Nether Monkslip.

In A Fatal Winter, Max – Anglican priest, former MI5 agent and village heartthrob – investigates two unusual deaths at Chedrow Castle. His investigation is complicated by the arrival of a rather ghastly group of long-lost, greedy relatives, any one of whom has a motive for murder. With a fast-paced plot, vividly written characters and a good-looking priest doing the sleuthing, the books in this series are likely to become instant classics for those who enjoy the murder-mystery genre.

Physical media at the library

// Music

For many years the library boasted a large and seemingly ever-expanding collection of music CDs, and movie/TV DVDs. These days, due to a decline in the amount of physical media being produced, the supply is slowing to a trickle. We must also be aware of our place in the supply chain: we’re at the end, far away from the biggest producers. Companies that import CDs and DVDs for distribution in Aotearoa now bring in a smaller number of items each month. As sales decline in the shops, the range of choice for the library to purchase grows ever smaller, because we aren’t allowed to buy them from overseas like individuals can.

Library discs which are damaged or lost are basically impossible to replace, so the collection shrinks from year to year.

There is still demand for physical media among the people who use the library. So we hold onto these plastic discs because they still have value in our community. After all, it’s no good saying you can stream all that stuff if people don’t have a computer/internet connection/spare cash to subscribe.

CDs and DVDs are – at time of writing – free to issue from the library, and can be reserved and returned at any library location.

Another way in which we help fill the gap is by providing free internet access on our PCs. You can jump on with a guest pass, or use your library card to access them. If you want to see what Justin Hawkins thinks of a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard music video, you can do that at the library.

From now on you will see music, movies and cultural performances on the big screen in the Sound & Vision area (Central Library, Mezzanine Floor). If you’re part of a group that has video footage to share, please get in touch! As long as you have the rights to the soundtrack (and any music included), and permission from any people appearing in the footage, it can be played on the screen and help you reach a wider audience. Contact us to enquire about this initiative.

Finally, work is beginning on a local music database, to help people discover new music. This database will house short features on local bands, with links to the artists’ own sites, so that anyone interested goes right to the source. If you’d like your band to be featured, please contact craig.johnston@pncc.govt.nz. Initially this content will be found on the library’s blog, but as it grows it may split off into its own entity.

The methods of delivery of music and movies might change over time, but the library will change to adapt, so that you can still see and hear the things you enjoy.