And then you started into a possible PhD, Masters, whatever, and did a whole lot of in-depth, very academic research on You would never have realised at that stage that it would come out in this form.

No.

And that's the joy of it, I think.

You know, it was funny.

I was listening to your beautiful introduction and, you know, you talked about me as a storyteller at Radio New Zealand.

And, you know, when I think of that time, I remember my conception of myself, even though I was very, very I love my job and I loved the stimulation of it.

But I always thought of myself as a failed academic.

Yes.

explain cork to us

cork is so much fun.

It's one of those cities that's geographically quite small, but in terms of heart, in terms of culture, in terms of, and I'm going to use a very Irish word here, but in terms of the crack, it is through the roof.

You can have the time of your life in Cork in 72 hours.

By the end of that 72 hours, you will have had a whole life experience.

You'll have met your new best friends.

Do you know the way we were at the radio awards? And for your listeners, it's very hard to encapsulate the sort of the profoundness of that connection, you know, when you go, oh, my God, you're from the Wairarapa.

than me.

It's

often true, isn't it? And, you know, I'm remarkably incurious about this, I think.

You know, I tried to be curious when I was writing Stakes because I thought this is very much a part of what I'm investigating here.

This was a hard book to write.

Like I had to go over and over it again to redraft, to get the tone right.

But that line that you just read, what's the difference between an inheritance and a curse? That came to me very early on because it's a version of a line from Dracula where it's only when Van Helsing comes into the story that these young people in Dracula start to get their heads around what they're actually arraying themselves against, because this is a supernatural creature.

There's nothing in their lives that have prepared them for this thing.

What saved you? Tell us that again.