Anna Snoekstra is the author of Only Daughter, Little Secrets and The Spite Game. Her novels have been published in over twenty countries and sixteen languages. She has written for The Guardian, Meanjin, KYD, Lindsay, Sydney Morning Herald, LitHub, The Griffith Review and is a profile writer for The Saturday Paper. In 2022 she released the critically acclaimed Out of Breath, which is in bookstores now.
Something is going on behind closed doors…
Meet the Jansen family:
Since the weekend of the party – the one twenty-two year old Liv can’t remember, the one that left her covered in bruises – she’s been locked out of her bedroom by a padlock. Her parents are behaving oddly and her best friend won’t respond to her texts. Maybe she really was out of control that night.
The guilt is getting to her father, Janus. He brought his family from Australia to L.A. to chase his dream of seeing his novel on the big screen, and he can’t let them down. Not again. But he’s not sure he can do what is necessary to keep this secret hidden.
Kay gave up everything when she had kids. So now she’ll do whatever she has to do to take care of them. Her marriage, though, is a different story. And the neighbours – well, she’ll just have to be more careful.
Every family has its secrets, but what do the Jansen family have to hide?
Keep reading to discover a fascinating Q&A with Anna Snoekstra, thanks to Ultimo Press! Let’s dive in…
- Tell us a little bit about yourself…
I’m a writer, a teacher, a lover of monster movies and a reading addict. I have published five novels, all suspenseful stories about everyday people that get caught up in exceptional circumstances. I teach creative writing at RMIT University in Melbourne/Naarm and also write profiles of artists, theatre directors and musicians for newspapers and magazines.
2. Describe The Ones We Love in one sentence – it’s tricky, we know!
The Ones We Love tells the story of parents who struggle to keep a devastating secret buried for their daughter who can’t remember what she has done.
3. What was the starting point/inspiration for The Ones We Love, and how did that develop over time?
I started writing The Ones We Love from my tiny apartment balcony at dawn each morning during 2020. I was spending all my time in that apartment teaching my university classes online and trying not to rip my hair out. The novel I was writing was set in the last overseas place I’d visited, Los Angeles, and followed an Australian family who moved there together for a year. A mother. A father. A younger son and a daughter who was in her twenties and who was the main character of my story. But then I got pregnant, and my morning writing got replaced by lying on the bathroom floor trying not to puke.
After my daughter was born, the world looked different. The night I got back from the hospital, in the post-partum haze of shock, sleep deprivation and endorphins I opened my laptop again at four am. I wrote a new chapter of the novel, but this time I wrote from the mother’s perspective. The next night I wrote from the father’s. Then, finally, from the younger son’s. The novel morphed from a coming of age story into a family-led psychological thriller.
5. What does your writing process look like? Do you listen to music? Start with characters or are you plot driven? Do you write in a specific place or during a certain time of day?
My writing process changes from book to book! This one was entirely driven by the characters. The four members of the family are very different, but also have been integrally shaped by one another. That goes for plot as well, since this novel is mostly set over one week, I ended up having to create a spreadsheet so I knew exactly where every member of the family was at all times.
I started this novel in lockdown, with long stretches of uninterrupted time to write. I then took the characters but totally re-wrote the story after having my daughter, where I was clutching tiny shreds of time to write during naps. I think that added to the urgency of the writing and the quick pacing. Things had to move quickly because I knew I’d have to stop at any second!
6. Can you tell us a little bit about how you became a writer?
When I was a child I had hearing problems, which delayed my speaking as well as my reading and writing. Because of these issues with communication I was a dreamy child, very much in my own head. When I could finally write, long stories poured out of me. They were often quite strange and intense. They still are!
As an adult, writing was always my happy place. I resisted getting a full-time job for a long time so I could pursue it. I’d work nights at a cinema and write novels during the day. I was very lucky that my debut, Only Daughter, was published when I was just twenty-six. That has now led to me teaching writing at RMIT University, which is the perfect job to balance my career as an author. I get to talk about writing and stories at work, then come home and write my own.
7. How do you select the names of your characters?
The names reveal themselves to me along with the character. Most of the time, it’s straight away. The only issue comes when I have two characters with names that are too similar. In my last book, Out of Breath, there was a Denny and a Danny. In The Ones We Love, I had a Janus and a Juana. That is a problem for the reader.
I remember reading a book where the main characters where James, Jake and Jacob and I couldn’t keep track of them! So I’ll have to change one of the names in that scenario, which is painful because it already feels so tied to the character. It often takes me hours and sometimes I’ll change it multiple times over months and have to work through the novel each time.
8. What kind of research do you do and how long do you spend researching before you begin to write?
I do a lot of research! Letting the subjects of the book swallow me whole is one of my favourite parts of writing novels. Sometimes that can mean travelling to a place and talking to people, sometimes it can mean studying a specific kind of job or system. Or it can just mean listening to certain podcasts or watching documentaries. All of it is a huge joy that lasts from the planning to the book, and through both the writing and editing.
Researching this novel took me to all kinds of places. I looked at maps of Los Angeles, as well as the interiors of buildings and the menus of restaurants. Luckily I had already spent a lot of time there, so that part was easy and fun. I also spent a lot of time trying to understand the minutiae of the bail system in the US as well as the legal system over there in general. I researched sleepwalking in detail and the science behind it. I also studied ballet and the way it affects young women to grow up doing ballet professionally. There are many other things that I can’t tell you because they’d spoil the book!
9. What is the most important thing you’d like readers to take away from reading your book?
I’d like them to think honestly about the way they love. Is their love tinged with resentment? With laziness? Do they hold their loved ones too rigidly, try to control them? Do they hold them at arm’s length and not let people really know them? Loving people and being loved can be challenging and scary, but life is brief and love is everything.
10. What do you look for in a good book?
For me, it’s usually voice. It’s a hard one to deconstruct, which is part of why I enjoy it so much. Plot, structure and even character are things I teach and pick apart with my students. A strong voice that is surprising and confident and honest is something that can’t really be taught, which lets me admire it without trying to overanalyze it.
11. Reading is such a beneficial experience, it increases empathy, lowers stress, offers the reader different world views. How does reading enrich your life?
Reading enriches my life in profound ways. It’s an integral part of my identity as a person, as well as how I understand the world. It gives me insight into other identities, cultures and ways of living. It helps me communicate better and understand myself more. Reading makes my world bigger and more beautiful. I’d be lost without it.
12. Who do you think would play the main characters in a TV/film adaptation of The Ones We Love and why?
The parents could be played by Aussie acting royalty. I’m thinking Rose Byrne as the mother, Kay. I can imagine Simon Baker as the father Janus, although he might have to put a ginger wash through his hair. Marlo Kelly is a sensational young Australian actress who would kill the role of the daughter Olivia. I was already a fan when I watched her in Dare Me and The Three Body Problem, and had no idea she was Australian until recently. And as for Casper the son… maybe Kodi Smit-McPhee or Finn Little? Both would be phenomenal!
13. What is the last book you read and loved?
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter got into my dreams! I read the whole book very quickly because I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The voice is just completely off the wall, and the description has so much texture. I don’t often get surprised by books, but this one was unlike anything I’ve read before. It’s a thriller, a portrait of a marriage, a character study of an artist, but really just entirely its own thing. The writing felt alive. I loved it!
14. Of all famous authors – living or dead – who would you invite to dinner? Why?
I’d have a dinner party with what I call ‘magic writers’, authors who transgress what I thought was possible to do with words. That would be Celeste Ng, Joan Didion, Stephen King and Alison Bechdel. There are others, but I believe in keeping dinner parties intimate. Not that it would matter, because I’d be hiding in the bathroom hyperventilating.
15. What’s one piece of advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Fall in love with the process. It can be so easy to get ahead of ourselves thinking about publishing, but I believe you’ll be a better writer and happier person if you focus on process not product. Consume yourself in research and character, fill your walls with plot diagrams, make soundtracks and mood boards. It’s the best part!
16. Finally, what’s next for you?
This is actually a huge year for me! I have an audio novella being released in late October. It’s about a journalism lecturer struggling to re-enter the workforce after maternity leave who stumbles upon a photograph linked to a decades-old mystery of a double murder in the Snowy Mountains in 1980 and decides to re-investigate the case herself. It was my first time writing a whodunnit, and it was great fun!
Get your copy of The Ones We Love in-store at QBD or online here.
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