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Christian White is an Australian author, screenwriter, and producer whose award-winning first novel, the nail-biting suspense story, The Nowhere Child, has already attracted a major screen deal.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Christian White talks about his latest psychological thriller, Wild Place, which raises the question as old as time itself – why do good people do bad things? He also talks about his screen writing, including co-writing the hit Netflix show Clickbait, which went to No 1 in 41 countries.
Links to this episode:
Clickbait Netflix trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwVLObz0MGs
Wild Place: https://www.christian-white.com/wild-place
Director P.T. (Paul Thomas) Anderson: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000759/
Pentecostal snake handling: https://www.ranker.com/list/history-of-pentecostal-snake-handling/quinn-armstrong
West Memphis 3: https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/west-memphis-three-3039/
The Nowhere Child: https://www.christian-white.com/the-nowhere-child
The Wife And The Widow: https://www.christian-white.com/the-wife-and-the-widow
Relic the movie: https://www.christian-white.com/relic-1
J.P.Pomare: https://www.jppomare.com/
Anna Downes: https://anna-downes.com/
Stephen King; https://stephenking.com/
Gillian Flynn: https://www.gillian-flynn.com/
Harlan Coben: https://www.harlancoben.com/
Alex Garland: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5684.Alex_Garland
The Beach by Alex Garland https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/607639.The_Beach
Haruki Murakami: https://www.harukimurakami.com/
Don Winslow: https://www.donwinslow.com/
Where to find Christian White:
Website: https://www.christian-white.com/
Email Direct: on his website form
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/6872386.Christian_White
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Christian-White/e/B07FZZNLPZ
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.
Don’t forget you can get exclusive bonus content–like hearing Christian’s answers to the Getting-to-Know-You Five Quickfire Questions–by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter for the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month. Details at www.patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading.com .
What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions.
But now, here’s Christian.
Introducing thriller author and screen writer Christian White
Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Christian, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.
Christian White: Hello. Thanks for having me. It’s exciting.
Jenny Wheeler: You’re in Melbourne, aren’t you? We will just establish that for our listeners.
Christian White: Yes, I’m in Melbourne. It is extraordinarily hot today, so it’s good that this doesn’t have video because you’d see sweat stains and a sweaty forehead and I’ve got the air con blasting, but yes, I’m in Melbourne.
Jenny Wheeler: Your first novel, The Nowhere Child, is a nail-biter and you had already attracted a major screen deal for that one. Now you’ve got to your third book, Wild Place, which is the one we’re going to be talking about today. That is just as hard to put down as the first one. You are also the co-creator of a Netflix series called Clickbait which went straight to number one in 40 countries.
You have obviously got a highly developed love of suspense. How did that develop, and where did you get it from, do you think?
Christian White: It took me a long time to figure out that’s what I wanted to write, strangely. I was trying to get paid as a writer for about 15 years before I could actually do it for a living. When I first started out, which was a million years ago, I wanted to write comedy. I fancied myself as a comedy writer, and I tried it and realized, I’m really bad at writing comedy.
With the move to thrillers author Christian White found his niche
I like horror, so I dabbled with horror and tried different genres and weirdly it took me a long time to get around to that thriller/ mystery/crime genre, mostly because I didn’t think I was clever enough, strangely. I have always loved reading them, so looking back it’s a bit of a no brainer. But I thought, no, I don’t think I can do it, I’m not clever enough.
As soon as I started dabbling, I realized, actually, I’m kind of good at this. I was terrible at all these other things I tried, but I’m good at this. I leaned further and further in and then realized it was my space.
Jenny Wheeler: How interesting that it took you quite a while to find that. When you say you didn’t feel clever enough, are you referring to having to do lots of plot twists and that kind of thing?
Christian White: Yes. I always thought a good mystery needs a great twist, but the twist can’t come out of nowhere. It’s got to be built in, and it needs to keep audiences guessing and there need to be twists and turns. I thought, I don’t think my brain can do that. What I realized was, my first drafts are always terrible, but so much of what I do is going back and making it seem like I had all the answers from the beginning. I think I thought that you had to write it from beginning to end. As soon as I discarded that notion, it all fell into place.
Write ‘as if you are ironing the sleeve of your shirt’
Sorry if I’m wrong about this, but I think it was P T Anderson, the director, who talks about writing as if you’re ironing the sleeve of a shirt. This is going to be hard without the visual, but you don’t start from the shoulder, go right down to the wrist, and be done with it. You start at the shoulder, go a little bit down and then go back to the shoulder and go a little bit further.
In writing, that’s so spot on and that describes my process so well. So much of it is building and building and building and making it seem like you are cleverer than you really are.
Jenny Wheeler: Writers do sometimes, when they’re two thirds or so into a book, get that panicky feeling of, this isn’t good enough, I don’t know what’s supposed to be happening. They almost pound themselves or punish themselves about that feeling of uncertainty, but it sounds like you’ve learned to ride it.
Christian White: Yes. My process – and now I’m onto my third book so it’s really a process – is that I will sit down before I start writing at all, and I will come up with what I think is this ironclad plot. You know, it’s really great. It’s got these cool twists and turns. Then, every single time, and there’s no way to say this isn’t really pretentious, but your characters do take on a mind of their own and a life of their own, and I realize around halfway through that I have got to know them in a way, and now I know they won’t do the things I want them to do in the second half.
Another piece of writing craft advice: Follow Your Character
At that time, I generally do two things. Firstly, I always follow the character. That always speaks plot for me. I might have this amazing scene I’m building to, but I think characters are allowed to do stupid things because we all do stupid things. When I’m reading a book or watching a show and a character does something so plot-serving that you can see the writer’s movements behind it, I become completely emotionally disengaged. I’m about just following the character and generally they lead you to very interesting and unexpected places.
The other secret weapon I have is my wife, Summer. I’ll do a first draft and then I’ll give it to her first, even before my publishers, and I’ll say, hey, the ending is terrible. Can you come up with all the twists and give me credit for it? That’s what happened in my second book in particular. I obviously won’t do spoilers, but it was a very ambitious twist. I spent a long time trying to make that twist work. I reached a point where I was about to give up and that would mean missing deadlines. It would mean everything falling apart.
Finally, after weeks I talked to Summer about it and said, here’s what I want to do, and here’s the problem. She was quiet for probably 12 seconds, and then she came up with all the answers. She is definitely my secret weapon. If we ever get divorced, my career will go down the tube.
Jenny Wheeler: You seem also to have a fascination with the question of how well we know one another. Even in intimate relationships, people hold deep secrets from those closest to them. I wondered if that was something you’d grown up with – somehow being aware that there was a lot of stuff going on underneath that they weren’t coming clean about.
Christian White: I think on a subconscious level, I must have always feared this idea that those closest to us will be carrying some secret or do something so huge that it will unpick your relationship. I didn’t realize that about myself until I wrote three books about that very thing. The TV show Clickbait is about that. I co-wrote a film called Relic and even that goes into that territory.
When I’m writing, I am aware of the themes and I do start with certain questions, but only on a surface level. Generally, all the true themes emerge naturally. I didn’t think about it until the first book came out and people started to talk about those questions and, oh, you must be interested in that. I thought, yes, I guess I am.
Looking back now, there are all these recurring themes. In each of my three books, by design very different, there are similar themes tying them all together. That was completely subconscious, but clearly it’s a deep fear I have. I can’t think of anything worse. If a serial killer came in and killed me, yes, that would be horrible, of course. But what if you found out your wife had killed someone or your child? It’s this deep, deep fear.
A fascination with the darker themes
I think we set up these necessary truths in life. You have an idea of your parents. They have to be your idea of it. It’s a necessary truth. When you find out that’s not the case, life can unravel very quickly. That’s very scary. Although having said that, it’s not like that happened to me. I don’t know what I’m working through, but clearly there’s something going on.
Jenny Wheeler: Talking about themes, there is also a fascination with the darker side. The Nowhere Child deals with cult religions, and there’s quite a sinister thing going on there. Then with Wild Place you start with a quote about Satan and a TV clip about some people involved in devil worship. I got a feeling you might have been quite fascinated by those kinds of themes as well.
Christian White: Yes, definitely, in both of those cases. In The Nowhere Child it was Pentecostal snake handling. Weird real-life religion. The church was fictional in the book, but it was cobbled together from real churches. Actually, I made it less extreme than real life because it seemed so ridiculous, but there are these people who worship God by handling snakes and scorpions and drinking poison.
Those little cults and little sects and little groups of people who believe something so extreme have always fascinated me, so very early on, I knew. I read a lot and I listen to a lot and I watch a lot, and these sorts of things stick to my brain. Pentecostal snake handling was one. I always knew that eventually I would write about it, but I didn’t know where.
Satanic Panic a life long interest for author Christian White
Satanic panic is something I’ve been interested in for a very long time, which is what Wild Place explores. Your listeners might be aware of this, but there was the West Memphis Three, these three teenagers who got charged and sentenced with murder and spent years and years in jail. It was all based on the sort of music they listened to, and the kind of clothes they wore.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, Satanic panic was a real thing. People were genuinely concerned that there were roaming bands of these cults out there that are going to kidnap children, and if you play heavy metal records backwards, it has a secret message. There is not a single shred of evidence for any of this, but it was this mass hysteria.
It’s funny with Satanic panic. I’ve had that in my mind for a very long time, but whenever I tried to do anything, it felt sort of silly. I couldn’t find a way in, it was so silly. It wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I began to understand it because anti-vaxxers today and QAnon and things like this, it’s this natural progression of Satanic panic. There are these compelling conspiracy theories with next to no evidence.
Usually, the way they work is they’ll take three or four facts and then they will string a narrative around those facts. It was in our face. A lot of us had people who were close to us sharing these things on social media and, suddenly I found myself in this weird position. First, I got into online fights with people about it. I didn’t listen to them; they didn’t listen to me.
Satanic panic and pandemic panic – there are similarities
But then I forced myself to try to empathize with them. Why are you thinking this? What is this based on? I think when we’re scared and we’re outraged and we’re angry, our standards of evidence drop. We think we’ve got something to fear. It’s easy to fear things that aren’t necessarily there.
Suddenly I understood Satanic panic a bit better. Wild Places is set in 1989 and it’s about Satanic panic, but in a way I got to explore that side of COVID and that side of the pandemic as well. God knows if I answered your question. I feel like I’ve been talking for a long time. In there somewhere, hopefully there’s an answer.
Jenny Wheeler: There was quite a lot of detailed, tactile stuff about the snakes and even the way they bred them in sheds and things like that. Did you get a chance to go to any of those places?
Christian White: No. A huge chunk of the book is set in Kentucky and I’ve been to Kentucky and spent some time there and travelled there, so a lot of that I could use, but I never went to a church service. They might have let me in. I’m sure if I really tried, I could do it. But I’m pretty squeamish and I’m also an animal lover and I feel like it would not be good for me.
I did a lot of research online. You can watch these services. It’s strange because they are not like you’d expect either. You picture dimly lit, people in cloaks and things like that, but it’s these really brightly lit community centers and they are just stomping and dancing around. There’s some pretty extreme stuff.
What happens when a cult reigns in a small community
I also interviewed a couple of people who hadn’t left, because a lot of it is about what happens if you’re in a community where everyone believes this thing and you don’t. You fall out of it. The central family is going through this where Jack, the husband, stopped believing, but his wife still believes and there’s this great tension.
A lot of the research I did was about people who had left religions and how they felt afterwards. I spoke to someone who was an ex-Jehovah’s Witness and her story was really sad because their religion dictates that they shun people who leave the church and all this sort of stuff. A lot of it I could tie back into snake handling, even though it was based on some other religions as well.
Jenny Wheeler: We’ve mentioned Clickbait. You are very productive in both film and your novels, and you seem to be managing to work on both. I don’t know if you do a sort of tag team where you work on a book and then a movie, but which came first, the directing or the writing?
Christian White: I’m trying to think of the year, maybe 2012 or something. I’d been trying to be a writer for a very long time but doing jobs on the side. It was always going to be a novel; I always wanted to write novels, but then I got fired from my job, which is a whole other story.
Getting fired became a gateway to finally writing a novel
I’ll preface this by saying I’m not a creepy person, but I did use to work as a video editor for adult films, which is a whole other podcast. I got fired from there, which is embarrassing. I’ll quickly tell you. Basically, what happened is, there was an old clock-in clock-out system and I abused it. I stole time and I got fired. I’m not proud of it, but all of a sudden I found myself in this crossroads position.
I’d had this dream of being a writer for so long and I’d always wanted to write novels, but I thought, screenwriting feels like a “more realistic” area to go into. That’s when I went and studied screenwriting, and from there I did both. Clickbait only came out last year, but we started developing that back in 2015, so I had a few irons in the fire. I was juggling that and quietly writing these manuscripts on the side.
The Nowhere Child was the fifth manuscript I tried to write, the second one I finished, and the first one that was anywhere near good enough to show anyone, so I was juggling both for that period of time, and the novel just won. The novel won the VPLA, Victoria Premier’s Literary Award, for an unpublished manuscript. Then I got a publishing deal for Nowhere Child.
It never rains but it pours… three successes in quick succession
A very short time later – I had just finished The Wife and the Widow, my second book – and Clickbait got greenlight. It was very close, and now I’ve been juggling both. It is a bit like you say. You go from one to the other, but it’s strange, it never feels like extra work because there are a lot of similarities. It’s different enough to feel refreshing.
Occasionally there’s pressure with deadlines, but they are different beasts. I love the craft of writing so much and I’m so happy that I get to do it with my life. That is all I have to do so I also find it very difficult to say no to things. I’ve only just started saying no to things, to manage my time a bit better, but for the most part I jump between the two.
Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned Relic, and that’s another interesting one because you tackle something that’s slightly different from the things we’ve been talking about. That was described by somebody as the Feel Dread Movie of the Year, and that came out in 2020. It’s a horror movie/drama about a woman who’s sinking into Alzheimer’s. That feels to me like something quite different from the rest of the stuff you’d been doing.
Christian White: There are similarities. So much of The Nowhere Child came about from my interest in memory and how memory works because of my Nan. She died last year. She was 100 years old, but for the last of 10 years of her life she had dementia, which led to this fascination I have with memory and how it works.
Relic: Purging feelings of dementia dread in a movie
That is basically what Relic is about. I co-wrote that movie with the director, Natalie James, and her grandma was going through the same thing, so it was a way to purge all those weird feelings of dread, because it’s an awful thing. That film follows three generations of women – the grandma, the mum, and the daughter – and there are so many layers to it, because as the youngest, when your grandmother is going through something horrific, you also think, my parents might go through that next and then I might go through it.
It’s a really scary thing, so it was a way to process all that. It’s a horror as well. We have imagined, what if dementia was a monster? But there are still similar themes. It’s about someone you think you know changing and not being that, so there are definitely those ties in it.
Jenny Wheeler: Turning away from the specific books and talking a little of your wider career, I think you have been incredibly generous in the way you’ve been so honest and upfront about how long you worked at it. It will give other beginner writers, or even midlife writers, quite a lot of hope to hear that you just had to keep on going like that.
Tell us a bit about the pre-life before you managed to become a full-time writer, and how those things might have contributed to your writing today, how the experiences you had helped with what you’re doing now.
Christian White: Well, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I was about 17 and I’d written a short story or something in my literature class. The teacher read it out and I thought, maybe I could do this. This is a cool thing. And that age I thought, here’s the plan. I will become a bestselling author by 25 years old. I’m 17. That’ll be easy. It’s miles away.
Learning to focus on writing, not being a writer
One of my favorite authors, Alex Garland, was 26 or 27 when his first book was published. I’ll beat him by a couple of years. Then 25 arrived and, surprisingly enough, I wasn’t a bestselling novelist. I adjusted it and said, okay, if I get to 30. I got to 30 and it didn’t happen.
Then somewhere between 30 and 37, which is how old I was when I got published, this image came to me where I could see myself in my mid-90’s. I have just died, and my grandkids are cleaning out my little assisted living unit and they find this pile of dusty, unpublished manuscripts.
That was so crystal clear in my head and I thought, that’s fine. That’s okay, if that’s my fate because, as I say, I really love the craft. There are definitely difficult things about it, but I love the process, so I thought, let’s focus on writing rather than focusing on being a writer. Everything began to change after that.
In the meantime, I worked. God, I worked all these weird jobs. I drove a golf cart around a golf course selling sandwiches. I picked apples. I worked for Coca Cola. On the side of a bottle of Coke there’s a free call number you call up if you want to just yell at someone. I was that person getting yelled at. I edited adult films. I printed t-shirts. I did all this stuff and all of that time I would find these little moments to write. It was my love and my passion and my hobby.
Blocking out the voices who tell you it can’t be done
When my now wife and I started dating, she was in the same boat. She is this creative person, and we both understood that’s what was important to us. We thought, there’s a very good chance we will be poor forever, but we’ll do these things on the side. I think that’s a big part of it. I’ve talked to some people who are trying to get into the field, and I think you really need to love it and keep at it and ignore a lot of the voices as well.
The amount of people who said to me with the utmost confidence, you can’t make a living writing books. You can’t do that. You just can’t. And I would believe it. Then I would think, well, I’ll just write books anyway and if I don’t make a living, what’s the difference? You can make a living. You can make a very good living writing books, but there are these very confident voices that you have to block out.
Luckily, my family were very supportive, although after my publishing deal my brother Jamie said to me, I’ve got to apologize. I said, why, and he said, me and the family have been bitching about you for years saying, when are you going to get a real job? What’s he doing with his life? But luckily, they never said it to my face, which I’m very, very thankful for.
Christian White as reader – his favorite books and authors
Jenny Wheeler: I bet they are too now. Turning to Christian as reader because this is The Joys of Binge Reading, and we are coming to the end of our time. We like to give people some thoughts – and this is very much a popular fiction show, I’m very much into popular fiction that people read for their relaxation or entertainment – so I know you probably read very widely, but in that field of more popular fiction, what would you be reading now, and what would you like to recommend to others?
Christian White: I’m the same. I love airport fiction. Commercial is a dirty word sometimes, but I love commercial books. It has an audience.
Some exciting writers working in Australia
Anything by J P Pomare is incredible and he’s a native for you guys. I love anything he does. Anna Downes is an exciting new Australian writer. She’s got two books out. She brought them both out during the pandemic which sucked, but they are amazing books. I’m a big Stephen King fan. I’m a Gillian Flynn fan as well. She’s got really good crime stuff. I’m super late to the party on this so people will roll their eyes, but I’ve only just discovered Harlan Coben and Don Winslow, two amazing crime writers.
One of my favorite books in the whole world is The Beach by Alex Garland. They made a very mediocre film out of it in the early 2000’s, but the original book is this incredibly brilliant beach read. Who have I missed? Haruki Murakami is literary fiction, wonderful and easy to read as well. Hopefully there’s something in there.
Jenny Wheeler: I haven’t heard of The Beach. When you said The Beach I was thinking Neville Shute. He had something with ‘beach’ in the title. I can’t remember which one.
Looking back down the tunnel of time, if you were doing it all over again, is there anything you would do differently?
If you were doing it all over again, what would you change?
Christian White: Yes. For me, productivity was never an issue. I don’t get writer’s block and I could always write, but my huge issue was showing anyone my work. Genuinely, I think I wasted probably a decade. I would write things and then I would finish them or just not write the last chapter. Then I would put it away and not look at it and not show anyone.
Looking back, I think part of it was fear of failure, but it was also, if I didn’t show anyone my work, I could hold onto the fantasy that one day I will be a writer. Of course, it doesn’t work that way. I was obsessed with trying to make everything perfect before I sent it off. If I could go back, I wouldn’t do that. I would share my work earlier.
Also, the way I got my two big breaks on TV and film were through competitions. I had a very cynical view of competitions for a long time. They almost felt like a waste. I don’t know why. But I cannot recommend them enough if you’re a writer and want to get yourself out there. Simply by being shortlisted, it allows you to skip a few steps. I was lucky enough to win a couple – a screenwriting comp and a book writing comp – and that allowed me to skip several steps.
I think I’d focus on that sort of stuff more and click send on the email. You know, you’re tinkering on something, you want to send it to an agent or a publisher or a producer and you tinker with it forever. You can’t click send. I would go back and click the goddamn button and just do it, because I wasted a lot of time not letting anyone in. That’s what I would do differently.
Jenny Wheeler: It’s very interesting. I guess, as you say, maybe that fear that if you did send it to them and they told you it’s crap, you would be tempted to believe them.
Working together on Audible originals on demand
Christian White: Exactly. The thing is, when you are writing you do have to get used to rejection. You’ve got to earn your stripes. You’ve got to get a few rejections, you have to do it. Even that, I was terrified of. If I got one rejection – and I did get rejections with certain things – it’s hard not to let it get you down but you just have to kick it aside and keep going.
Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned your wife is creative as well. What is her area of interest?
Christian White: She was a director for a long time, a filmmaker for a long time, but recently she has dipped her toe into the writing world. We co-wrote a novella for Audible called Still House. We nearly got divorced in the middle of it, and we are actually writing a second novella as well at the minute.
It’s interesting because, like I said earlier, Summer plays such a huge part in my creative process, so it was a no brainer for me to do it with her. I’d done one novella with Audible called Second Skin, a little horror novella, and they said, do you want to do another one? I said, my wife and I, if we can both do one, absolutely.
We did Still House. It’s a tight little horror story told from alternating perspectives, husband and wife, husband and wife. We each wrote the husband and wife chapters and we are writing another one now. I have a prediction, and she would hate me for saying this, but I think in about five years, everyone will know her name. She is working on a book at the minute. Brilliant writer.
How the pandemic has influence Christian as a writer
Jenny Wheeler: That’s fantastic. I hadn’t picked up on that. So, Audible commissioned that directly from you.
Christian White: Yes. Audible originals, they’re called. J P Pomare has done a couple, I think, one or two anyway. They’re these great novellas, so they are about half the length of a novel. You listen to them in about three and a half hours, four hours. It was a great opportunity. When I get an idea, usually very early on I slot it into, this will make a good film or a good show or a good book. A few ideas were too small for that.
I had an idea for a long time about a man whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances. Years later this little girl comes into his life and says, I’m the reincarnated spirit of your wife, and she was murdered. I had that hook in my mind but I knew it wasn’t big enough for a novel, and I didn’t quite know where it was. Then Audible approached me and it suddenly felt, that’s perfect. That little, 40,000-ish word area is perfect for those smaller ideas. It’s a good space. There’s some good stuff on there.
Jenny Wheeler: Very cool. What is next for you looking ahead for the next 12 months, and even looking back a bit. Have you been too badly affected by COVID?
Christian White: I’ve been very, very lucky with COVID. Clickbait got stalled but generally I could just continue with work, which was very fortunate.
A new movie – Apartment 7A – is under way in London
I have a film called Apartment 7A getting shot in London in March, which is good. I’m also working a couple of things, but generally book four is going to be my main focus this year. I’m hoping to have a draft done by maybe October, but we’ll see. It’s nearly February, so who knows.
Jenny Wheeler: Has that one got a name yet?
Christian White: No, it’s in very early stages. I’m looking at the document now, and the heading I’ve given it is Big, Quiet, so I think that will definitely change. That’s a bit of a hint about what’s in it, but I’m really bad at titles. Usually, they come very late or someone else comes up with them.
The original title for The Nowhere Child was Decay Theory, which I thought was brilliant and everyone else on the planet thought was terrible. Then my UK publisher at Harper Collins came up with The Nowhere Child. The original title for Wild Place was Neighborhood Watch, which was really not quite as sexy as Wild Place. That is not my area of expertise.
Jenny Wheeler: One last question does come to mind, apart from the penultimate one about contacting you. You are living in Australia but the location in your novels, Kentucky for example, comes through very strongly. Do you consciously try and set them internationally or do you like to be able to put them in Australia? Where is the fourth one going to be located?
Christian White: The fourth one, so far, could be anywhere. I haven’t fleshed out that setting, but generally it will come around pretty early and it’s usually dictated by story.
New works on the horizon for author Christian White
With The Nowhere Child I knew snake handling only happens in a handful of states in the American South, and I had spent time in Kentucky, so it felt right. Second Skin, the first novella I did was commissioned by US Audible, so it’s set in America. Generally, it will be dictated by the plot.
It’s very early days, but with book four – maybe when you read it, this will be gone – there’s this area I’m interested in in West Virginia, in America. It’s called the National Radio Quiet Zone, and basically it’s this huge area where they’ve got this observatory and they do space research or gather military intelligence, if the urban legends are true. It is this huge area, but because the telescope is so sensitive, you’re not allowed to have any electronic devices, so no mobile phones, no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth.
There is this group of people who suffer from migraines and get nausea, and they believe it has to do with Wi-fi signals and all of the emission. The research so far seems to be that it isn’t real, it’s a psychological disorder. I don’t know, but it has become a haven for these people, a little melting pot. I’m wanting to do something around that, and it will either take me to West Virginia or I will do a fictionalized version in Australia maybe. I’m not quite sure yet, but generally it will be driven by plot.
Setting stories in America – ‘Like Narnia” – bigger and better…
Clickbait was American. We shot it in Australia, but it was an American show, so it was set in America. I love setting things in America. As someone who has grown up on American pop culture – my favorite books and movies and music are all American – when you write something set in America, it feels a little bit like Narnia. Everything is a little bit bigger and a bit more colorful. It’s this really fun world. I get over to the States as much as I can. I love it over there, so it’s always a pleasure to set something there.
Jenny Wheeler: What were you doing in Kentucky?
Christian White: I went on a family road trip, a very Griswoldian family road trip all up and down America. My sister was for a long time married to an American and lived in Pennsylvania, so we went and stayed with her and did this huge trip. One of the things is we went through Kentucky, and it struck me on a couple of levels. You would get there and go through these small towns and everyone was so lovely, and you’d think, this place is beautiful, the scenery is stunning, but we probably shouldn’t stay here after dark.
There is a great tension, not in all of it but certain areas, and the people we met were so wonderful. There’s also this place called Mammoth Caves which is a network of caves and tunnels. I was obsessed with it. I loved it so much, so I fell in love with it as a place, Kentucky in general. I knew I wanted to set something there.
Where readers can find Christian White online
Jenny Wheeler: That’s lovely. We have come to the end of our time together, so tell me, do you enjoy interacting with your readers and listeners and where can they find you online?
Christian White: Yes, I do. Absolutely. If you go to www.christian-white.com, it’s my website and you can contact me through there. I reply to every single email I get. It does take me a very long time now, I get a few now, which is wonderful, but if any of your listeners want to reach out with questions or anything, I’m very contactable. I’ve gone off social media. I went off last year. I had to for my mental health, but that’s the best way to find me.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful Christian. We will have all of those links in the show notes for this episode, plus the things we haven’t talked about in detail, like your audio books. I’ll find the links for those as well. Thank you so much for being with us.
Christian White: No worries. Thank you so much for having me.
Next week on The Joys of Binge Reading we’ll have USA Today and Amazon best-selling author Kaira Rouda, who was a highly successful marketing entrepreneur before she set her mind to writing spine-tingling psychological thrillers that dig “beneath the surface of seemingly perfect lives.”
Links to this show and all the things we’ve talked about can be found on the Binge Reading website, www.thejoysofbingereading.com. That’s where you’ll also find links to Binge Reading on Patreon, the gateway to exclusive bonus content.
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Until next time – happy reading.
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