Kim Hunt's Blog

They thought they'd gotten away with it. Until now.

In the endless tracts of the New South Wales bushland Ranger Cal Nyx finds a dead body under unusual circumstances. It soon becomes apparent this is a historic death. Growing attention on the crime puts the blowtorch to a murderer who’s managed to evade justice. For now.

Detective Inspector Liz Scobie leads the police investigation while her partner, Nyx, uses her own considerable - some might say unorthodox - methods to chase down a killer. With speculation growing in the small community, someone privy to information becomes a new target for the killer.

Join Nyx and Scobie in their dogged pursuit of a bold predator with everything to lose.

 I’m really excited about this one. It's been great fun developing some of the other major characters in Cal’s realm. Of course there’s a mystery to be solved, hi-jinks and trouble aplenty.

We're having a wee launch par-tay at our local indie bookstore, Books and Co, Otaki on 1st December, 4pm. The ladies-of-the-books always put on a special event and we're chuffed to join with them for this one. There'll be an opportunity for book signings and chat so please drop by if you're in the hood. We'd love to see you there.

The Cal Nyx series will be available from Books and Co in person or via their online store. Ebooks and paperbacks can also be purchased from Amazon outlets.

#workingclassartists #lgbtqreads #butchfemme

I've been back from my South Island roadie for a few weeks now and I've yet to download my pics from the trip which means the missus hasn't even seen them let alone my blog post. What is going on? Weeeelll, it's pedal-to-the-metal with final tweaks to The Freezer and there's no time to scratch. That's just how it is. But it seems nuts not to have some shots from the journey so I'll post a few on here.

Seriously, getting down one side of the island then visiting one old buddy then doing the thang at the Invercargill Library - lotta fun and met some lovely peeps - then skedaddling over to the West Coast, yes, in a snowstorm and making it back up to the top in time to visit another pal was full-on driving. We're not talking flat, straight highways for days here folks, plus I was towing my wee camper.

The Mt Aspiring National Park and Haast Pass are jaw-dropping magnificence to the max. The roads are so precipitous you can't stop to take photos but you'd be stopping every 30 seconds if you could just trying to capture the mind-blowing mountains and rivers and waterfalls and sheer cliffs and primordial forests. This is what NZ looked like before we cut everything down and recreated some facsimile of a tamed European landscape. Makes me weep.

I love this part of Aotearoa because, aside from the tourist villa shite at the glaciers and Haast, it's just forest and rivers and mountains and coast. No kiosks, nothing. Brilliant.

Anyhoos it was a great adventure. It was tiring and it was fab to see some old buddies and it was magical to meet Harry and Mildred. If you ever, ever, get to the far south, go to Queens Park in Invercargill and meet the tuatara. These amazing little dinosaur reptiles are just the bee's knees. They're not lizards. They don't even like getting too warm but they do like to come out of their burrows for the sun. I came back twice hoping to spot them before I left. And I did. And then I didn't want to leave.

They reckon Harry is 130 years old. That's him on the far right below and bottom right. . So he was born in the late 1800's. Makes my brain explode imagining what this little fella has seen and lived through, albeit at a rather slow pace. They can survive on one meal a week and can slow their breathing to one breath every few minutes. Talk about zen. Mildred is only about 80yrs old from memory. She's been growing a new tail for the past couple of decades. I am utterly enamoured. What a treat.

Looks like a South Island road-trip is coming up, Yii Haa. So excited to not only visit a very old friend way down yonder, but keen to meet some reader folk at the library and have a chat about books and writing. Big thank you to Grace Roscoe-Squires at Invercargill Library for setting this up.

I've never been beyond Dunners so this will be a first. The rest of my trip will be following my nose, a wee adventure and chance to further plot out a follow-up to The Corrector, a NZ-based thriller that's been on the back-burner while establishing the Cal Nyx series. It's due for publication in early 2025. Been a while since I've written a novel set here in Aotearoa so I can't wait to sink my chompers into this fresh project.

And speaking of upcoming publications, the third-in-series Cal Nyx mystery thriller is due for launch Dec 2024. I'm very hyped about this one. We'll be looking for ARC reviews shortly so if you're interested in a freebie in exchange for an honest review, please be sure to add your name on the Contact page so you don't miss out. Early reviews mean that other readers can find the books so if you like the sound of that, be sure to leave your details.

Beside myself.

I wonder if y'all are as ready for spring as I am. Jeez it's been a long, dark winter. Bring on the sun and the dancing girls I say.

The Welcome Swallows are back, ready to raise another tiny brood in their mud nest on the rafters of the carport. I never sure if it's the original mum and dad pair or one of their sets of offspring. Whichever, they're true to their moniker. I love their return each year.

I did a quick over-nighter camp with Gabby this week to finish the final edits of The Freezer and test-run the camper again before my trip away. Yes, that's snow on the ranges. Sparkling days, chilly nights peeps, but we survived.

PS: Don't forget to sign-up for the Mailing List. ARC's ready for reading sooooon.

#amwriting #workingclassartists #butchfemme #ARC

In a recent post I referred to the twenty five years since my writing journey began. Two and a half decades and only two novels published, two pending. Are you are really slow writer? Um, yeh, I guess I am.

I came to writing late. I was a mature age student at UTS in Sydney, in my mid-thirties when I did my undergraduate degree. The first person in my family to go to uni.

But my writing/publishing journey includes a lengthy disruption of nearly ten years when I was stalked.

I've never publicly talked about this, but it's significant.

One of the reasons I've not talked about it is because, as every trauma survivor knows, revisiting the trauma is like living it all over again. So, I'm being oblique here, to keep the horror at arms length. Even as I tap those words out I feel nauseous.

See, the body never forgets.

The stalking wasn't the first trauma in my life. The other injuries began in childhood. More of a similar nature, piled on in my teenage years, plus some new ones specific to my gender and sexuality as a young adult. A fairly substantial mountain of wounds.

So, when the stalking began in my early forties, it sat on a historical accumulation of damage. Things were intense.

Without going into detail, suffice to say that at a point when my writing habits and production were getting established, I was dealing with police on an almost daily basis, and later on, courts and lawyers as well. For years.

I was dealing with an extremely determined and malevolent individual. For my own safety I changed my name and moved several times. I lived in hiding.

With that level of attention and violence, it's not easy to maintain a working life, but my writing literally helped keep me alive. I clung to it, documenting what was happening to me.

The nature of the violence I endured was both misogynistic and homophobic.

I still can't write the specifics because it does my head in and skirting even thinking about it takes me to a place of such despair and horror and grief I can't/won't go there.

I eventually left NZ, again, and when I returned six years later, I occasionally ran into the vet who was a witness for our court case. He would always ask me, "What happened to him? What did the police do?" and I'd have to tell this lovely man that the perp essentially walked free, because on the day of the trial and swearing in of the jury, the court deemed there were too many child sexual abuse cases to deal with that day.

So the judge "passed over" our case. The judge also apparently decided that since the perp hadn't reoffended since the Protection Order was placed, he'd basically done his time. As I said to the Senior Sergeant who'd dealt with our case and was reporting this to me as we waited in the Witness Room, "He hasn't fucking re-offended because I'm living in hiding." The court rewarded the perp for and by my constrained and constricted life. The lengthy list of offences prior to installing the Protection Order were nothing. The Local Court Victim Support person who dealt with our case for years, said that they'd never had such a huge file of offences for one person. That file was the accumulation of what he had done to me and my dog.

But I never got my day in court. I sat in a Witness room after my life had been all but destroyed for nine years. A Crown Prosecutor and a judge made the call. I never met them, but I've never forgotten the name of the CP. He's pretty high profile now.

No one has ever been able to explain to me the legal finangling that resulted in that outcome, but after the nine years spent pursuing 'justice' I was done with it and wanted what remained of my will to live, to go into writing 'our stories'.

And to honour myself and my then partner and our murdered dog.

There, I've said it.

So, my writing journey/timeline has a massive rend of nearly ten years. Hard to produce much when you're packing up and moving, again, and barely functioning because the violence happening to you is not simply specific and personal and oh-so-real, but also part of a bigger narrative of your own history of abuses, and also more broadly, a conjoined abuse/violence/trauma/grief/of women/queers/butches/Othered/Othered/Othered that is not confined or specific to yourself alone. The Foreshore and Seabed protests and hikoi were going on in the midst of my own traumas. I joined that hikoi twenty years ago. Two hundred years and it's still going on.

I'm a pakeha. I have white privilege by dint of my birth in this country. That privilege is not insignificant and its cost is born by those whose sovereignty was stolen, Maori. The cost is borne by every successive generation post white-invasion because we all now pay for the paucity of white-supremacy culture and thinking. None pay more than Maori, who are expected to function in this wasteland of industrial capitalist rampage and destruction of the whenua, while dealing with institutional racism, massive cultural losses and land-thefts and generally being behind the 8-ball in every possible way. How they manage this while exhibiting generosity to tangata te tiriti is testament to their open-handed and high-minded manaakitanga.

Our world is splattered with people being Othered, domestically, socially, nationally, ethnically, globally. Every one of those individuals, their whanau, their communities, carries the grief of loss and the profound disturbance of living with historical and current trauma.

My writing was and is the thread I cling to. My writing is my obstinate vow to make something of the losses, the anguish, the hopelessness I sometimes feel.

So, yeah, slow process.

Getting there. Doing the stuff.

Trying to make meaning.

#lgbtqreads #toitutetiriti #workingclassartists #butch4femme

Among several other acronyms, I think I can safely add SAD to my list. Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don't like the drippy, grey, finger-numbing drag of winter. So, what better way to get through the drear months than an obsessive project or two, my focus drawn elsewhere until spring arrives with her daphne, daffs, freesias, blue skies and warmth.

Writing is sedentary and solitary and I can only manage staring at a screen for a limited number of hours, so, when my writing work is done, I give myself playtime, which means getting outside, no matter the weather, and working on a practical project, like a restoration or repair of an old vehicle. This stuff is the antithesis of writing. Though frustrations abound, the positive outcome of mechanical problem-solving and toil can be apparent in hours, days or weeks, unlike the production of a novel, which requires many months or years to reach completion.

I'm a strange bugger and an impatient sod. For someone who rails at impediments and hold-ups in many areas of my life, you'd think that novel-writing would have dropped off the list of worthy pursuits twenty-five odd years ago, when it first made its ghostly appearance as a possibility. But somehow, four novels later, an ineffable psychic override seems to operate against my restive inclinations where writing is concerned. Go figure.

So, with the 3rd Cal Nyx novel, The Freezer, due for publication in Dec this year, I'm in the process of outlining another novel, this time set in Aotearoa NZ, and introducing a new protagonist. The start of a fresh project is exciting, a little scary, and full of promise and revelations. I'm keeping it under wraps for now, more to come as it evolves.

To coincide with this, I have the current restoration campaign involving a 40 yr old van, neglected and rusting, and requiring a fair bit of work. My plan is to have said vehicle roadworthy by early next year so I can go away with Gabby dog, and do some on-the-ground geographical research for the new novel. All this anticipation should keep me going through the final edits of The Freezer.

Meanwhile, the Matariki stars, marking the Maori New Year, hang in the eastern sky. This time for mourning the deceased, celebrating the present, and preparing the ground for the coming year continues. My beloved writing mentor, Renee, who died in late 2023, is always present in images and memories around me, though without her here, I feel well and truly fledged. I miss her.

"Just do the work" she would say. I never argued that, but allow myself a bit of frolic each day as well, a keyboard at my fingertips, and later a spanner in my hand.

#amwritingcrime #workingclassartist #butch4femme

Type it into your diary, scratch it onto the back of your hand, gouge it with a bent nail across your front fender:

'Villainous Newtown'

at Newtown Library

Friday 22nd March 2024

6 pm - 7 pm

It's the first of the 'Mystery in the Library' author panel events kicking off across Aotearoa NZ, marking the beginning of this year's 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards. I'll be joining Charity Norman, who won last year's Award, along with Jennifer Lane, a Best First Novel winner, and Nick Davies, Debut author and 2024 entrant.  

These panel events bring crime writers and readers together in libraries all over the motu. So, if you love mystery fiction, thrillers, true crime and everything between and beyond, come join us.  There’s usually time for a bit of Q & A from the audience, so bring your crime writerly mates and friends to vex us with your questions and generally join in the fun. I’m sure the other panelists enjoy a spiky question as much as I do.

There'll be other related events running throughout the year as the Ngaio’s judging progresses and the angst ramps up.

Hope you can make it to Newtown Library on Friday 22nd March. I'll be the one sharpening blunt pencils with my penknife under the table. Come say hello and I'll be happy to sign a book for you.

Got some rather exciting news to feed into the new writing year. I was named a runner up in the Sisters in Crime US 2023 Pride Award for EmergingLGBTQIA+ Crime Writers. Holy moly.

I congratulate Nicole Prewitt, the Award Winner, and my four fellow runners up.

Chloë Belle, Chicago, Illinois; Melissa Berry, Canton, Ohio; Kim Hunt, Wellington, New Zealand; Linda Krug, Duluth, Minnesota; and Emmy McCarthy, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

It’s so cool to see my name and home of Aotearoa NZ alongside North American based writers.

As a writer from a marginalised community, these kinds of recognitions are crucial to validating our ongoing work which is so often overlooked by mainstream awards and events.

I’ve included an excerpt from my submission below as it’s not often I get to speak to my position as a writer from the margins.

Author Statement

My status as an emerging writer relates neither to my age nor being newly graduated. As a working-class Kiwi butch living abroad, let me take you back to the mid-nineties in Sydney, when queerness was newly celebrated in some places.  I lucked-out as a youngish, mature-age student at Sydney’s University of Technology. Glenda Adams, who had taught at both Columbia and Sarah Lawrence in the US, set up and developed a post-grad writing programme at UTS Sydney which later became a model for similar programmes throughout Australia. In the nurture of her classes, I discovered and explored my own writing.

I write partly as a response to a lifetime of reading ‘against the grain’, of trying to find people I recognise on the page. I write the kinds of books I wish I could have found when I was younger. Books peopled with a diversity of characters usually absent or invisible, working-class gender outlaws, fierce femmes, queers and precious misfits. 

I’ve been around a long time and lived through a lot. I’ve experienced traditional publishing. It’s offered me a great opportunity and has also presented me with a place to learn how to navigate commercial straight-washing, compromised language and an often-unacknowledged pressure to conform.

I’m approaching publication of my second-in-series in a different way. The Wellington (NZ) -based feminist Spiral Collectives knowingly refer to themselves as a publisher of last resort. They were behind Keri Hulme's 1985 Booker Prize winning the bone people. Together with an editor and designer, I have formed a new Spiral Collective to facilitate The Quarry's publication. By this arrangement we will be self-publishing under the Spiral Collectives imprint in mid-2023.

I write for myself and for others who want to see characters living complicated lives who also happen to reflect marginalised and, many of us might say, vilified identities. It’s important to me that I redress the vacuum and paucity of material currently available to butches and their allies.

That’s why I write what I write.

I also enjoy reading other emerging writers and I understand the difficulties and hurdles that many of us face. The SinC Emerging LGBTQIA+ Award is a valuable moment to grasp long-awaited momentum and get on with it.

How the award would be used: If I won the award, I’d fill the petrol tank in my pick-up, which I can rarely afford to do. I’d take my missus out and show her a good time. If there was anything left, I’d book an appointment with my dentist.

Trigger warnings: rape, assault/murder, profanity.

I’m happy for my name to be used publicly.

*

So, as 2024 kicks off, I’m head down writing the third Cal Nyx mystery, The Freezer.

The second printing of The Beautiful Dead, the first in Cal Nyx series is slated for April 2024.

And the second-in-series, The Quarry, is currently available in paperback and ebook.

It’s a year of Cal Nyx. Can I stand it? I may need to sink my head into an ice bath.

Thank you to my readers and Cal Nyx fans. And thank you Sisters in Crime US for noticing this writer from the Antipodes. Y’all make it worthwhile.

See the website kimhuntauthor.com for updates. Sign up for email news on launches and events.

When I got several messages that Renee had died, I was camped by the ocean. I’d had my phone off for days. It had been a wild old night. The little camper trailer was buffeted by wind gusts and the noise of the sea was almost painful in its intensity.

The news wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t reduce the dull stab of anguish and sadness. As I walked the dog along the rocky shoreline, I thought of Renee’s spirit making its way to Te Rerenga Wairua, the leaping place of spirits at Cape Reinga. The waves were coming in rough and loud. Alive, so alive. I thought of the way Renee did everything, with such verve and fullness of spirit and energy. So evident even in the way she walked. Near-blindness or no, walking stick or otherwise, she always looked like she was on a mission, and you’d best stand aside.

I didn’t meet Renee until about 2013. I didn’t know who she was, having lived across the ditch for nearly twenty-five years. I’d left in 1981, that decade of so much political upheaval and social justice protests in Aotearoa. Renee was in the thick of that stuff. While she was here writing her amazing plays, putting women and working-class folk centre stage, I was fighting slightly different battles in Australia; Land Rights, Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, AIDS treatments that excluded women and resulted in the deaths of several of my women friends, along with the dozens of male friends we lost. Anyway, I think Renee would have approved of my efforts.

I met her when she responded to an ad for a gardener. We bonded over roses and the like and she loved that I was a supposedly “gun” rose pruner. Many people seem to approach the pruning task with hesitant, fearful snips here and there. A disaster for the vigour of the plants. When people gazed adoringly over Renee’s fence, wondering what her secret was she’d tell them, “I treat them like weeds.”

For a long time, I never let on to Renee that I was a writer, despite our regular cups of tea when I worked in her garden. That simple act, insisting that I have a cup of tea with her, meant so much to me. I’ve worked in the building trades much of my life. She treated me like a human and with kindness. Simple but sadly rare qualities. No one exemplified ‘walking the talk’ like she did. She absolutely lived her politics. In the decade that I knew Renee, she mentored three of my novels. She never charged me a cent, saying that she mentored on a sliding scale and always did one freebie each year. When my latest second-hand computer crashed, she wanted to buy me a replacement. She knew I lived on very little and had no savings, just getting by week-to-week. I was dumbstruck at her offer. I literally couldn’t make words for a moment and of course, because she couldn’t see, she probably wondered what this eejit was doing. Knowing the background of extreme hardship that she came from, I couldn’t accept it, I just couldn’t. But she was utterly genuine. I will never forget that. It was one of many, many acts of generosity and open-handedness from her. (In the event, another caring friend, of much greater means, came to my rescue with a refurbed desktop. Where would creatives be without the consideration of others?)

I called Renee Boss. She was Boss in the garden despite my training in Horticulture and years at Wellington Parks and Reserves. Like so many “amateur” gardeners, she had a deep knowledge and understanding of growing and I was happy to be deputised. Eventually she trusted me and deferred, mostly. She would sometimes refer to me as Kid, which I loved.

Like Renee, I’m from a working-class background. I will miss her sensibility around such things. Our voices are still a tiny minority in print. She called herself a lesbian or queer and a feminist. I’m a non-binary queer. How lucky I was to share the friendship of such a mentor.

I tried to have a quiet day when I got the news that she’d died. I was reading a book near the ocean, reminded of that fabulous quote from Rose, her mum. “Better get your nose out of that book my girl or you’ll end up on Queer Street.” How right she was.

Just before Renee went into hospital recently, I took down the proof copy of my latest novel. It was the only copy of the book that I had. It was one of the books she worked on with me. She held it in her hands and that big smile split her face. I’m sure she couldn’t see the bloody cover, but it didn’t matter. She beamed. Despite being bedridden, she was insisting on a book launch “We’ll get a few bottles of wine, I’ll do a speech if you like…” The woman was crocked, and getting so near the end, and still she was wanting to support me. It broke my fucking heart. It’s doing my head in as I write this.

How many writers did she help? Numerous that I know of and many, many more I have no doubt.

As my partner Biz said, “Otaki just didn’t feel right today. It seemed off-kilter.” Life goes on, but Renee’s great absence has sent a wobble through our universe.

Boss, I love you and I miss you. You’re a bloody legend.

Trigger warning: Semi-rant follows.

So, funny thing. Not.

In the lead-up to the recent election, when the now-in-power righty-tighty gangs were outlining the specifics of what they would do if they gained power, (regressive, mean-spirited, short-sighted, and self-interested), I said to the missus, "If they get in, if they try to pass this stuff, I'll be on the effing streets protesting."

"So will I," she said.

Last time I did that here in Aotearoa was in the early 2000's over the Foreshore and Seabed Act when I waved goodbye to the Labour Party. Across the ditch through the 80's and 90's it was Land Rights Marches, Anti-Bicentenntial protests, Reclaim the Night marches and numerous events around AIDS policies, or lack of them, while we visited dying friends in hospitals and funerals every week.

BTW, and before I go any further, I don't have pretty pictures of recent projects here because a) they're not finished (handed over to the missus for lady touches, my filthy paws not allowed near fabrics) and b) the missus is busy with her own multiple projects and c) I've been hobbling after a fall (into one of said projects on ill-advised version of a "step". Dr was not impressed with the construction I described ie; cobbled together, upturned bucket and slab of wood, First job when I was semi-mobile was fabrication of a new, sturdy, hopefully H&S approved step.)

So, in the absence of project progress pics, and because the nature of this post churns my guts and sends steam from my ears but aroha to those of my fellow kiwis who're already being bashed by this govt crew, I will adorn this post with late spring blooms cos we all need some pretty. Here's some stuff Mother Nature has been working on round here...

Anyhoo, now that the Triumvirate of Toxic have hand-shaken their vows of destruction, the ugliness is underway, or threatened, or hinted at. Testing the waters perhaps? They didn't muck about did they? Seriously, can anyone bar a tobacco executive, think there is any benefit to repealing the Smokefree Laws and Regulated Products Legislation? I guess all those blue billboards and blanket-coverage political advertising came with a hefty price-tag. Whoever pays the piper calls the tune and all that. Yeh, well, we'll all be paying for this one, and it's doubtful we'll be getting our own playlist aired.

Then this morning I read this piece by Emma Wehipeihana, "We’re done with being asked to justify our ‘privilege." A painful, embarrassing and infuriating read and a response to something this household has feared would be coming. Yes, it's the brownskin-bashing and "special privileges" rhetoric that was foreshadowed in the lead-up to the election. Namely, potential wiping out of Maori and Pacific medical school admission schemes. (MAPAS)

Can I just say, I've never specifically made any of my previous blog posts political. But life is political isn't it. And, simply being alive and visible as non-binary and queer is political, but that aside...

I now quote someone I can't remember, "privilege is always invisible to those who benefit most from it."

My pakeha privilege is not insignificant. But as a non-binary, queer, working-class woman writer, I know a little bit about marginalisation, a little bit about invisibility and a teeny-tiny bit about homophobic violence.

I'm guessing that the gang who are now pulling the strings are not only wilfully blind, but also technically so because they really seem to believe that their ready access to institutions and lack of hurdles in a racist, colonialist country are down to their own hard work and merit. In the words of one of my fav You Tube guys, Derek on Vice Grip Garage: "Well I'll be dipped."

I'd like to live in a country where past injustices are put to rights because it's the dignified, proper and humane thing to do. It's not OK to turn away from the wrongdoing of our forbears. We who are pakeha benefit from the injustices of the past and present at the expense of Maori and Pacifika people. Dawn Raids anyone? Ignoring this doesn't change the facts.

If this government pushes back the hard-won but so-much-more-to-do changes required to redress the wrongs committed in the past and continued in the present, I for one do not want to stand on the sidelines and watch it happen. We need to be vigilant and we need to speak up.

I want to live in a country where the people who are currently disadvantaged by historical and contemporary racist practices are given every educational and health opportunity as of right. And that is just the beginning. There is so much to be undone or repaired or rebuilt in our race relations. It's not an impossible fix. But the threatened retrograde backsliding on Maori Health initiatives is wrong-headed and will have deadly consequences.

Lets not be silent. Setting things to rights requires the input and goodwill of non-Maori. To move forwards for the benefit of everyone, we need to uplift all the peoples of Aotearoa, starting with those who have suffered the most egregious losses, Maori, the first peoples of this land. The people whose land we stole and whose culture we demonised and silenced and tried to obliterate.

If we choose to stand with our Maori and Pacifika brothers and sisters, to fight for fairness and equity, we all benefit. The generations to come benefit. We can be proud of our country. I'm not proud today. I hope that changes.

A quote from Emma Wehipeihana in this morning's Spinoff, "Being kind is out. Being strategic is in. In the words of my Tukorehe cousin, Anahera Gildea – author, artist and aunty – we don’t need allies, we need accomplices. See you on the protest line, e hoa mā. "

For sure. I'll be there.