Jane Harper
Credit: Mrs Smart Photography
Jane Harper is the author of bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man, The Survivors and now, Exiles. Her books are published in 40 territories worldwide, with more than 3.5 million copies sold to date. Jane has won numerous awards for writing, including the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year and the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year. The major motion picture adaptation of The Dry, starring Eric Bana as Aaron Falk, took more than $20.5m at the Australian box office ahead of release dates overseas.
We loved chatting with Jane and hearing how she put off writing fiction for years and how winning an unpublished manuscript competition suddenly opened the doors to publishing. We also talked about Australia as a setting for crime novels, discuss whether planners and pantsers are in fact pretty much the same, and chat about why the execution of the writing is far more important than the idea for the story.