Nigel, when did you first start writing?

Let me see.  I think it was 2004.  What happened was that my lady and I were having coffee at a pavement café in a small town near where we live.  We were discussing J K Rowling and how she was now richer than the Queen, after being on the dole.  We were incensed.  She may be an immensely popular writer, but then everything she does is borrowed from Enid Blyton (“platform 3-and-a-half”) or Roald Dahl.  So we both decided to write something.  After all, if Rowling could, why not us, too?  I went off and bought a scrap book right there and then.

What made you decide to try your hand at fantasy writing? Is that your first love (I mean in writing?)

Well, the novel I started writing that day became ElvenSword.  Actually, it was cowardice (or perhaps realism) that made me write fantasy first.  I had tried to write often over the previous thirty years, ever since I was a teenager.  But everything I wrote was rubbish.  So I decided that I would write fantasy, because readers are more forgiving about inexact depictions of life in a fantasy novel.  If you write a contemporary novel, it must reflect life as it is.  Getting that right is hard.  But I don’t like just fantasy.  In fact, lots of fantasy is crap – badly written pseudo-medieval piffle with flat, unconvincing characters.  But I do confess that Lord of the Rings is one of my favourite books.  I used to read a couple of pages a night to my children every night before they went to bed.

Your favourite subjects to write about seem to often involve bisexual men in triangular relationships.  Why? 

Well, my own conviction is that human beings are driven much more fundamentally by love than by sex.  Of course (smiles) the two may be the same thing.  Love isn’t gender-specific.  I can’t imagine being monosexual.  Women are sexy and desirable.  And so are men.  Or at least, some men are!  And I have to say, when the kids were small, it would have been great to have another adult to share the load.  I’m pretty sure the nuclear family is not the best way to organise society, child-rearing, incomes, sex, etc. 

You are very good at depicting the Australian character, the diction and general feel of Australia and the Aussie male.  How do you think you have achieved this given that you’ve only been an Aussie male yourself for about 15 years (how many years is it?).

Unbelievably, nearly 18 years now.  I suppose it’s because I like Ozzies (though you blokes have no idea how to spell!)  Ozzie men and women are unique – a wonderful blend of down-to-earth frankness and fundamental decency and strength.  Where else would people say it sticks out like dogs balls?  Or, rare as rocking horse crap?  Yet Australia is also a marvellously sophisticated and cultured society.  And to a linguist, even an amateur one, Ozzie vowels are a delight.  I love the hints of cockney and the brogue in Ozzie diction.  Ozzie men seem so tough and manly.  And they end up being so generous and kind, even tender, to their friends.  That dichotomy is endearing.

How come you moved from South Africa and how come you ended up in Macedon?  How did political events in South Africa affect you?

We wanted to bring up our children in a non racial society, where your skin colour didn’t matter.  Of course, there is still some racism in Oz, but everywhere you go you see this rainbow society where who your parents were doesn’t matter.   Amazingly, we’d seen pictures of Macedon before we came here.  In an issue of National Geographic, dedicated to the Ash Wednesday fires, there was an image of Macedon High Street, with the mountains behind.  So very beautiful!  And I thought, I wonder if we could live there and still work in Melbourne?  I supposed not, and it was only years later that I found the magazine in our bookshelves and saw the picture and recognised it! 

Serious writers, good writers, and I include you in this, have something that they are trying to say in their writing, that drives them to write.  What is it in your writing that you feel you are trying to say?

When I started writing I just wanted to tell a rattling good yarn.  But as I wrote I realised I was becoming intrigued by the moral dimensions of the story.   What is right and wrong?  Why?  What if different ideals conflict?  How do people in power retain their integrity?  I was brought up with old fashioned values.  My parents believed that the greater your birth or wealth or influence, the more important it was to do right, to sacrifice something for the good of mankind, to serve the greater good.  The really important questions aren’t about sexuality, actually.  They’re about power, and integrity, and honour, and trust, and justice.  And I think that when I write about these things they resonate with my readers, and (I hope) make my stories memorable.  The hard thing when you do this, though, is not to turn your characters into mouthpieces, but to keep them real.

How do you do that?

I cheat a little.  I create characters based on real people, people whom I’ve found interesting because of their internal conflicts or unhappy childhoods, people who struggle with their self-worth and self-respect.  But once I start writing, my characters come alive to me, and they change in ways I don’t foresee.  In my head they are very real.

What is the exact nature of that stressful, time-consuming job of yours?

I’m a partner in a firm which advises on investments, tax, superannuation and so on.  The interesting thing about my job is that it’s always changing.  Markets are never stable, because they’re composed of people – and people get greedy, fearful and from time to time, even wise.  I have to choose the shares to buy, when to buy and sell them, and in what proportions.  My colleague advises on tax and superannuation law.  Every day I learn something new.  I love my job.  But it is a bit stressful, every so often!

So why is it so stressful?

You have to get it right!  That’s why your clients pay you!  And sometimes you make mistakes and they are costly.  I know all our clients and I worry about them when markets are falling.  I feel responsible for them.

Who are your favourite writers? 

Jane Austen is my favourite.  She’s so sly and sharp and funny.  So many readers mistake her for a soppy romantic.  But she isn’t.  Some of the people she portrays are really nasty.  Rev Collins, for one.  I read her books every year.  This year I’m reading Graham Greene.  He’s a consummate writer, and his obsession with right and wrong echoes my own.  But he’s a much better writer than I am.  Oh, and, Lawrence Durrell.  The Alexandria Quartet!  What a masterpiece!  I could go on for ages.  But when I want to relax, I pour myself a glass of Ozzie champagne and read a thriller.  Dorothy Sayers, Michael Connelly, John Connolly, Michael Dibdin, and a host of others.

Your favorite m2m writers?  What do you like about them?

Tanya Huff, Lynn Flewelling, Michael Nava, John Morgan Wilson, Mary Renault, Ethan Mordden, Armistead Maupin, to name just a few.  I like them for the same things I like in all my reading: characters real enough to make their stories interesting, some sorrow, some humour, but a happy ending, or something like.   

What are your views on erotica within stories?  How much should there be in an average story (as opposed to specifically erotic stories)?

Well, some.  But it’s not essential to a good story – look at the writers I’ve just mentioned.  On the other hand, Shakespeare can be pretty graphic.  "Stied sheets"!  And it’s very hard to write good erotica.  It’s only too easy to be ludicrous and unintentionally funny “his throbbing manhood filled her juicy joyful quim.”  I think I’ll be writing less erotica in my own stories.  I’m more interested, these days, in the emotions inside my characters’ hearts than in their hot tight butts.  Seriously.

What role do you think stories about gay people can play in the promotion of gay rights?

Just writing about gay and bisexual people as ordinary people with feelings and worries and joys, people who fall in love and quarrel and try hard to be decent, will make gays who read these stories feel part of our culture, and will make straights less ignorant and apprehensive.  Our western civilisation is very odd, don’t you think?  We gave people religious freedoms first, then racial equality.  Only in the last few years have we started giving sexual minorities equality.  Other civilisations, historically, had different priorities.   Race and sexuality were unimportant to the Romans.  But there was never religious freedom as we know it.

What do you think of women writing stories about gay men?

I approve!  Women, on the whole, write wonderfully emotionally deep men.  Think of Mary Renault – Laurie and Ralph in The Charioteer are profoundly imagined three-dimensional men, and their love for each other is entirely convincing.  It’s the woman’s POV of male-to-male relationships that first drew me to slash.  Men are often too inclined to focus on the sex, as if that was the most important part of the relationship.  Women see into the emotional wellsprings.  I like that.

What is your favourite sex position? (hee hee)

That’s like asking, what’s your favourite song?  There are so many!  (grins)

Finally, if you were supreme world dictator, what would you like to do to make this a better world?

I’m not sure.  People have to fix their own problems.  We can’t force morality on them.  The kingdom of heaven truly is within.  But I hope that my writing influences some people for the better.  I hope some young men just coming to grips with their sexuality will be able to draw comfort from what I write, and see not only that loving another bloke isn’t wrong but that it can be utterly, entirely right, and that love is good and uplifting and not soppy and feeble.  I hope that one day, when I am a best seller, that someone who’s never thought about it, reads a story of mine and has his or her outlook on same-sex love changed and actually thinks, really thinks, about the unspoken dogma that still underlies so much of our values and judgments about gayness.  Oh, I want to change the world – just not as dictator!  As Kobayashi Issa wrote:

Oh snail
Climb Mt Fuji
But slowly, slowly!