And how about that aperture? Is that what is the call? Sorry.

Yeah.

That's, that's a program that I created in 2019.

It's had five cohorts now.

It's also a scholarship based program with mountain hardware and it's, it's a, kind of week long program.

There's two travel days, partial days, and three full days of instruction.

The first three were focused on climbing photography.

And how should we be a better ally?

So w- how about the, uh, the expression Queen of the Destination Thriller? That's quite a nice title to have.

[laughs] It is.

It is.

Um, my, my first two books, um, were actually I would say more kind of domestic psychological thrillers.

And then, um, I had an idea, um, over COVID actually, when I was sat in my kitchen looking at the same four walls day after day, um, along with everybody else.

Um, and the last holiday that I had been on with some girlfriends the previous October, we obviously went into lockdown in March, um, was to a place called Deia in Majorca, and I had the photos still on my phone.

And I was looking at them, and this idea for a book came to me.

So tell us about your main characters.

I think I read the same.

same.Was it Josh Turknett? He's a neuroscientist.

Yeah.

It was Josh, if you're listening, we're trying to get you on the show.

Answer my email, man.

[laughs] Like- Yeah ... and it was all about how writing by hand- Yeah ... helps your brain to encode the memories and- Yep ... make sense neurologically of your experience in a way- Mm-hmm ... that doing it by computer doesn't.

It has something- Yeah ... because it forces you, I think if I remember it correctly, that it forces you to slow down a little bit and to encode and integrate memories, thoughts, and experiences into your neural network- Yeah ...

What do I do?"

I

think that this kind of genre title seems to have been... appeared really over the last few years.

But people have been writing destination thrillers for way back when, way before I was doing it.

And obviously there's people, you know, like Lucy Clark is a fantastic writer and I've, you know, had a lot of inspiration from her books and things.

But basically I think it is just a psychological thriller, but with a destination involved as well, or that's how I look at it.

So when I wrote my first destination thriller, I guess you'd call it, which was, I had two books out with Orion, first of all, which were published during, well, the first one came out in lockdown in 2020.

Well, five days, I think, after we went into lockdown.

I was interested to ask you Nikki because your last place you look would be in your sixth book you know but before becoming a published novelist you obviously had an entirely different career did you always want to write a novel?

Mm

... and acquiring more confidence.

Maybe a lot of things they didn't say for a lot of years are gonna kinda all come out at once when they acquire those higher level skills.

But Tanner was always kind of a gentle, quiet soul.

He didn't actually talk a lot.

But in looking back, I really think it's because he was playing catch-up in his mind, and he was trying so hard to learn, and he has auditory processing disorder, and learning is really hard for him.

I think school was exhausting for him.

Mm-hmm.

So what do you think is unique about what you do to kind of help people adjust to that?

I think that one of the things is first of all, that it's very much relationship based.

So I believe that our challenges develop in our relationships from an early age.

And I also believe that we heal in relationship and that we find ourselves in community and, um, When I show you that it's safe to hold space and that your challenging experiences are safe, like it sucks that there is pain and anger and grief and suffering and it's safe and you will survive it.

So when I can show you that in community with you, that's how you learn to do that for yourself as well.

But we continue to do it in community.

What's the first thing you do when something challenging happens? Often we call a friend, right? We call our siblings, whoever we feel close with.

What is normal?