Charlotte Grimshaw loves her characters from her award-winning work Opportunity so much she isn't planning on letting them go just yet.
The characters in Grimshaw's collection of interrelated stories clearly connected with a number of people, earning her the Montana Award for Fiction and the overall Montana Medal for fiction and poetry.
And the impact on the Auckland-based writer has been strong enough that she has two more works in mind using some of the characters.
"I've written a sequel to Opportunity, which is another collection of stories using some of those characters, and I'm doing a novel now which has some of the same characters while adding some new ones and a completely new scenario," Grimshaw told NZPA.
"They've become very real to me. They exist in my mind so I can kind of call them up to use in the next project really. And there's a lot of them, so I imagine they'll keep popping up for a long time."
Opportunity was a departure of sorts for Grimshaw, a Remuera-based mother of three who is daughter of prominent New Zealand author C K Stead, as her three previous works were novels.
"I got the idea because Fiona Kidman asked me to contribute a short story to a collection called Best New Zealand Fiction. I did one for her and then I realised that I enjoyed doing it and I started off from there," she said.
However, she doesn't consider it a short story collection in the standard sense.
"They're not quite the normal collection in that they're all connected, they have a little bit extra over just a collection of random stories. I think of it as a novel with a very big cast of characters," she said.
"I just wanted to write something that had many, many different voices, and so each of the stories is in the first person.
"That allows me to write each one in a different person's voice, so that allows me to inspect the motives if you like, get inside the head of the different characters."
Grimshaw was very happy with Opportunity once she had finished it, and knew it had succeeded when it was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
Her new story collection, which she won't reveal her planned name for, should have good prospects as well - it has been snapped up by London publisher Jonathan Cape and is likely to be published next year.
"I'd like to ask Jonathan Cape whether they would like to publish Opportunity as well, but I haven't got to that point with them yet because I've only just heard, literally, in the last week that they want to do the new one."
Adding to what has been a phenomenal year for Grimshaw, she also won the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand award for best reviewer for her work in the Listener.
Grimshaw reviews about eight books a year and thinks it is helpful for her own fiction.
"I think when you're formulating the reasons why a book is good or why maybe it hasn't succeeded, you're always thinking about what's the best way to construct a novel, so you're always thinking about those technical considerations," she said.
"Sometimes you have the slight worry that reading other people's stuff that you don't admire might interfere with your own voice, but I think I'm quite able to read something in a very detached way and then think out a reasoned opinion of it."
Being a reviewer herself also gives Grimshaw a good perspective on how to handle reviews of her own work.
"As a reviewer you've got to be thick-skinned enough to put up with howls of protest if you write a negative review," Grimshaw said.
"I've had one, but not many, which is why I think that when I get reviews, I have to take them on the chin. It's always agonising reading reviews of your work.
"I've been very lucky though. I haven't had to be too tough."
Grimshaw said the Montana and BPANZ awards are something she and her family, including her esteemed father, are all very proud of.
"He and I get on really well. We're a very close family, but we've both got our own voices," she said.
She described her style as based on her own take on the behaviour of modern people.
"I'm not the sort of writer who goes and researches topics like 18th century whaling stations and then transplants characters into that. My notion of how to go about it is more based on observation.
"I'm interested in what goes on in the city, what goes on in our country and all the stories in our country and using them in my fiction.
"But the main aim is tell a good story really. If you haven't done that you've failed."
