I love the title story in your collection, 'Viral'! All that pent-up energy, talent and the age-old question of what defines success: fortune, fame, or genuine expression? The sense of time and place (Melbourne during COVID-19) feels particularly raw. What was the inspiration behind this story?

Thank you so much! My main inspiration was the infectious desire for fame, which I see all around me every day in the Information Age. Fame is something which historically was reserved for a very select few people. And it was almost always based on physical interaction: think about The Beatles or The Rolling Stones performing to an arena of 50,000 fans. But in 2021, everyone wants to be famous. And with social media, people can completely bypass the physical interaction part, and become famous from behind a computer screen. Thousands—maybe millions—of young people are Insta-famous. COVID-19 and social distancing made this even truer.

At Mary Martin Bookshop we were of course already familiar with two of the five stories in this collection, having heard 'Vuiru Lake' and 'The Tram' read at our Storytime for Grown Ups events. My recollection is that the stories lent themselves particularly well to the time-honoured tradition of oral storytelling in that the tension increased as the story developed, and the audience was enthralled until the final sentence. How did you go about writing these stories? Do the characters come first or does the plot dictate the tale?

Usually I start with an idea or seed, which could be some sort of concept, a character premise, or even a simple mental image. I start with that idea or seed and go from there. And as I'm writing, I definitely go for tension. Usually I find that it's the plot that creates tension (and yeah, reading out loud makes the story even better!). And I've realised that all of my favourite books and stories use engaging plots that you just can't turn away from. Some writers have said they put the character first (for example, Thomas Pynchon, who's on my long list of favourite writers), but so far, I've found that the opposite works best.

The stories in this collection are very different from each other in terms of style, topic, location and even voice, yet I thought they complemented each other well in that each evoked an undercurrent of pathos. What made you decide to put these stories together as a collection?

After I finished writing the book's main feature, ‘Viral’, I sent it to a few people in the publishing industry. A literary agent suggested that ‘Viral’ might be more marketable if the book were a collection of short stories. So I put together what I considered to be five of the best short stories I'd written. I always try to make my stories very different from one another—that way I can explore and experiment with completely different ideas that will hopefully appeal to completely different people. What's more, I wrote these stories while travelling over a period of four years, in maybe ten different cities around the world (there's a note at the end of each story recording where I was when I wrote it). It turned out that even though these stories were clearly so different, there were similarities that made it feel like they belonged in a single book. After all, they're all written by me, so there must be things that keep coming up, right?

What have been your favourite reads during lockdown?

Thankfully I've escaped the last two Melbourne lockdowns—I'm in New Zealand, where we only had three weeks of our one. But lockdown or not, I always try to read at least one book every month, and I always take notes on my phone as I'm reading—on interesting things in the book, techniques the author is using, an element of the book I don't like, etc. Recently I've read The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, The Little Red Book by Chairman Mao Zedong, and What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. I've almost finished A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda's Bhagavad Gītā As It Is. I've loved all of them.

Could you talk to us about your experience juggling your career as a writer and a bookseller?

I'm extremely lucky to have a supportive mother who owns a bookshop—and of all bookshops, the Mary Martin Bookshop! I chose to work for Mary Martin to help support my writing career. My favourite thing to do is to write fiction while travelling solo for extended periods around the world, and my flexibility with my job at Mary Martin allows me to do this as much as I want! So I don't even know if I'd call it 'juggling'—it's more like a dream pairing of two of the most awesome possible occupations.

What is your next literary project?

I have ideas for at least three more books! You'll hear from me.

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