Behind The Scenes with Famous Kiwi Author - Christine Leunens

Christine Leunens, author

Ahead of our 'conversation' at the Queenstown Writer’s Festival 2022, Christine Leunens, internationally bestselling author, and screenwriter, generously answers some nitty gritty, behind-the-scenes questions.

1.What do you read for pleasure? What are you reading right now? 

Mostly literary and historical fiction. Dr Monty Soutar’s Kāwai: For Such a Time As This.

2.You were born in the US to an Italian mum and Belgian dad, what languages did you speak at home, and which language do you write in? English, because my mother needed to learn and practice her English. 

3.Where do you write, do you have a special room, routine, do you write every day? 

I have an office space, rather than a room, sort of open and vulnerable to invasion from other family members. My routine is undergoing a major overhaul, as I try and fit in fitness, which does get comical at times. 

4.When and where did you learn to play the violin?

I joined a youth orchestra when I was around ten years old, and the conductor handed us each an instrument, some sheet music and got us all to just start playing, explaining as we went along. It seems kind of surreal today. 

5.What books did you read as a child, were you a bookworm? 

I read everything I could get my hands on in the public library. I started with children’s series but then moved to adult fiction when I probably too young - Albert Camus’ The Stranger, and the Brontë sisters, not fully understanding what was going on but feeling there was a strange adult world to navigate out there.    

6.Your paternal grandfather was a well renown Flemish painter and sculptor, Guillaume Leunens, was he an influence on your creative life? 

My grandfather was the one to predict that one day I would become a writer from the letters I used to write.  He influenced me not just in art, but also made me keenly aware of the many challenges artists face in life. 

7.Do you remember your high school English teacher? 

Of course. Every time I start a sentence with a “but” or end one with a preposition.

8.Did you keep diaries or write letters or stories as a child? 

I used to write long letters to family and close friends when I was young. 

9.Did you have your sights set on becoming a model when you left school and moved to Paris? 

I was studying a year at university in Montpellier, France, when I was approached by an agency and offered an apartment in Paris and what to me seemed like a very timely summer job. I had no idea it would soon have me travelling around the world and forever after preferring faces with no make-up. 

10.You lived on a French stud farm in France in your 20s, do you ride? 

I used to, until an accident left me too afraid to anymore. Occasionally I have the odd dream of galloping through a forest and jumping a log the way I used to – without falling. 

11.Did you suggest Taika Waititi play Hitler (young Johannes imaginary friend) in Jojo Rabbit? 

In an email, “Hey, Taika, don’t take this the wrong way, but I could really see you as Hitler”. But it was when Searchlight suggested it that Taika took the idea seriously. 

13.Is attending the Oscars as glamorous and fun as it looks? 

Absolutely, and a little daunting too. A few times I had a natural reflex to go to someone I recognised, only to realise, hey, wait, that’s such and such, and stopping in my tracks. 

14.What advice do you have for wannabe screenwriters? 

Persist. 

15.Is the mother-in-law in “A Can of Sunshine” based on anyone you know? 

Edith? Hm. I’m a bit of a Dr Frankenstein in that I tend to borrow a bit of this and that from various people I know to create a given character, but then somehow they come to life on their own and take on their own unique personality.  

16.What are the repeating themes in your books, if any? 

How someone can get themselves impossibly enmeshed in something that they never saw coming, with seemingly no way out. My characters also tend to get caught up with what’s happening in the wider world. 

17.Which famous writers would you have around for dinner, and what would you serve? Oscar Wilde. Kazuo Ishiguro. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Homemade ravioli, insalata mista, spinach and ricotta, and strawberry tiramisu. 

(I'd like to attend that dinner!)

Short Shorts

Cook/Wash the dishes

Pasta/Risotto

Gnocchi/Fettuccine

Chianti/Marlborough sauvignon blanc (Sorry, but I am after all Italian)

Coffee/Hot chocolate

Book/Movie

Novel/Memoir

Classical music/Pop 

Ballet/Pilates

Morning person/Night owl

Designer clothes/Jeans & T-shirt

Walk/Ride a bike

Meditate/Sit on the beach

Write/Read  Both – for a writer one is like exhaling, the other one like inhaling. 

You can hear Christine Leunens in conversation with me (Jane Bloomfield) about her latest novel - ‘In Amber’s Wake’, and what goes on behind the writing scenes in Hollywood, on Sunday 13th November @ 5pm.

The Queenstown Writers Festival takes place 11 -13 November, 2022.

For more information on the full programme: click me.

Anhedonia And The Crystal Healer - A Self-Help Story

 

Hey, Menopausal Lady-Friends if you’ve been flatlining lately over the things that used to make you dance! A walk on a windswept beach. Lunch with your girls. Fresh nails. Fresh kicks. Baking cakes. Arranging flowers. Online sale shopping …? You may be suffering from a little know syndrome called Anhedonia. 

I’d never heard of it either until the other day, when I uplifted an Australian Women’s Weekly from Koru, as you do. Towards the back of the mag in the health section, under the sadly titled - Menopause “Feeling Flat? This Could Be Why” there it was - Anhedonia, derived from Greek meaning - without pleasure. It appears that along with the many delights attached to oestrogen levels dropping you may/can also say goodbye to happy levels of the feel-good chemicals dopamine and serotonin, and hello to Anhedonia. 

I’ve certainly been flatlining since well before Covid raised its ugly head (and have been wondering why?) What could be the cause of this loss of enjoyment, and feeling generally numb? I’ve been on HRT for three years, a daily dose of synthetic oestrogen but still oestrogen. It certainly fixes a lot of menopausal things but the more I think about it - not my happy metre. Is it general mid-life boredom? Adult children leaving the nest? Failed children’s author syndrome (my last book came out in 2017.) Maybe I’m just a sad person. Naw. I certainly dance and sing when nobody’s watching. But I’d love to mine me some enthusiasm.

‘Sufferers report not being able to feel much of anything.’ Jeepers stir my arsenic tea. Cures include: Plan something fun! (Go to a theme park!) Share your feelings (I don’t have a life coach, who would listen!) Rediscover touch – walk on the lawn barefoot (it’s winter.) Give yourself a 15-minute facial massage every morning to boost oxytocin levels (personally I’d prefer to spend fifteen minutes doing something else personal.) Try HRT or eat phytoestrogens – nuts, seeds, soya products. I do.*

It’s not really ‘an inability to experience pleasure’ I have it’s just that like - hearts on an IG post – the joy is short-lived. I can certainly smell the frangipanis and I’ve been experiencing new things - Ayurvedic massage for one. And old things – riding a motorized two-wheeled vehicle (thankfully my trusty Lombok scooter was automatic, I have accomplished a wheel stand on a farm bike in first gear, aged 15.)

However, this flatness did lead me book in to Leah the crystal healer, for a second time. I’m new to self-help. I’ve never sought therapy, although I probably should have after my brother died and during bouts of post-natal depression. I’ve always hung on to the notion that – with time, it will pass. Now I’ve given in to the fact that people want to help, and similar to seeking acupuncture when you’re so racked with morning sickness you can barely stand – it’s a kind person you give money to who’s trained to listen. And help. (Plus I'm writing magic realism atm.)

As expected, while I told my writer friends I was going to my crystal healer on the Monday, after the kid lit conference, their eyes glazed over and such was/is the membrane thinness of my fear of failure soul, I was suddenly filled with doubt.

So when Leah brushed me off with an email on Monday morning saying she’d forgotten she was taking her son to the orthodontist and could I do Tuesday?

I thought beggar my chakras – it’s a sign.

There had been a lot of signs over the weekend, at the hui.

Whale sightings.

Spring rain in the park.

Evening light over one tree hill.

Early morning coppers knocking on the front and back doors.

Taxiing to the viaduct to find the restaurant was a kilometre away on Fort Street. I needed to get my steps up. 

I’m going home this afternoon, I cried.

Leah embraced me in a soft hug and started wafting my energy fields towards her with open palms, as I relaxed into her soft sofa.

I don’t know what my gift is, she said, but I see things

I unloaded. I’m not blocked. It’s not writer’s block it’s just …

Fear, she said

My pupils dilated.

I’m feeling your luck change late August, early September but it’s going to be different, not your normal publisher

A movie deal, I blurted out (in utter jest FYI) Disney Hyperion. I have two MG novels on submission. I’ve had 4 rejections.

I’m seeing number 9

I have a lucky number. It’s never been 9.

Her hands, warm on my temples. How can someone have such warm hands?

I’m on my back under the blankie, two heavy crystals in my hands, one on my heart chakra and a lighter crystal on my third-eye-chakra (forehead.) I’m breathing into my belly and breathing out into my root chakra, rooting myself into the earth of possibilities.

Every solid tree needs good rootage.

Now I’m above my head, my crown chakra, I’m trying with all my might to channel my guides.

Leah is calling all the unblocking guides she knows. Jesus and Mary are mentioned. We’ve never discussed religion.

I see Tapu my paternal grandfather. He’s always my first guide to appear. It’s a photo of him smiling, wearing his dog collar. He was a vicar. The Archdeacon of Hawke’s Bay, in fact.

I call my ancestors to guide me forward out of my funk, as per Leah’s instructions.

I’m in a church, stepping up and out through the arched stain glass window of saints above the altar. I float up through the sky, it’s dark now, an empty galaxy peppered with stars. 

Where is Jane-Star? I ask. I am universe! 

(I always thought this was the title of Vasanti’s book.)

I see Josephine, my paternal great grandmother. She’s dressed in Victorian high-necked black taffeta, standing outside her ivy encased house in England. She’s holding a smiling, black dog.

I see Robert, my dead brother. Always fleetingly.

My hand reaches out to them.

Leah moves to my feet, her hot hands are magical. I shift my meditation to the earth and plant my toes in peaty, damp soil.

I’d been in conversation over the weekend about the strange metaphor of humans as trees. Rooted in one place. Suddenly I’m not a tree I’m a thickening vine, an ivy. A strong trunk twists and pushes my body up towards the cosmos.

A strange unexpected shift follows:

I am now sitting on a wooden throne, my vine my pedestal.

Josephine hands me the little black dog, I hold her on my lap.

Tapu places the ecclesiastical seal into the palm of my hand, then he removes his purple stole and drapes it around my neck. My neck!

Holy crap! People are looking up to me and giving me rich gifts like some phat maharajah-ess.

I am holy. I am cool. I am not pond carp.

I think of the matau my friend Michael gave me for my 40^th birthday. Only wise old sages can wear them. It’s carved by a HB carver my home town (one of many) I feel too unworthy to wear it. Most of the time.

I’m encouraged to ask for more female guides. Curiously, I see my dead great aunt, a ringleted child in a white pinafore. Betty died tragically, aged 10. I’ve since discovered things about Betty I did not know via Papers Past – an utter Pandora’s box if you know where to look. 

---

Leah promised she would re-energize me! I saw myself on a pogo stick pogoing up Queen street. I handed over my hundy and skipped out. The Auckland day was grey but backlit with hope. It was not raining. I sat on a bench by the ferry terminal overlooking the harbour and the tall cityscape beyond. Red-eyed seagulls squawked. Strangers talked. 

An old dude with orange dyed white hair hanging under his ears stops beside me as I tap these fragments of memory into my laptop.

'Want a chat?’

‘No!’ I replied promptly (you really own yourself after a sesh with Leah.) ‘Try the next bench, I’m writing down my thoughts.’

‘Good luck with that!’ he grumbled. His plimsolls were a thin pale blue.

There was a log floating towards the driftwood hewn beach by the terminal. A mum wouldn’t let her two boys take their shoes off. They stomped away, complaining of her killjoy, keep clean attitude.

 She shouted after them, I saw a dinosaur.

I saw a crocodile.

A grey haired woman in Lululemon walked past, and commented. ‘Good plan.’

I’m not sure who she was talking to but I replied. ‘It’s going well.’

Leah said, be open. The more open you are the more you will receive.

Believe me, I’m open for anything. Anhedonia be gone.

*The AWW article, by Brit journalist Tanith Carey was first pubbed by the Daily Mail online, Sept 21. It’s led to her penning a self-help book titled, “Feeling ‘Blah’?” out April 23, with the helpful by-line “Why Anhedonia Has Left You Joyless and How to Recapture Life’s High". I won’t be buying the book but I have some plans lined up to save me from flatlining until I meet my pine box. 

My Bali High: Part Three - 'Forget Meditation, Wellness Seekers, You Need This Oil Slick of an Ayurvedic Massage'

 

One thing I had my heart set on doing while in Bali, aside from eating Gado Gado in a beach hut while gazing over pearl-white sand at the turquoise Indian Ocean beyond, was to experience some Ayurvedic treatments. I’d heard of a treatment where warm oil is poured continually onto your forehead while you are transported to places you’ve never been before! I was willing to put myself on some plastic sheeting to get me some of that good juju. It cures insomnia.

Ayurveda means – the science of life – in Sanskrit. It’s considered by its people to be the oldest healing science in the world and claims to ensure a long, healthy, happy life by working on the body’s imbalances. Ayurvedic massages combine these 5,000-year-old principles and pressure points. (They were doing this hot oily schizz 5,000 years ago!!) Balance my doshas.

After much research my gf and I found a wellness resort offering holistic ayurvedic treatments, in Ubud. An email exchange began with Amrta Siddhi, they quoted in USD and requested we prepay the full amount with a local bank account or PayPal. Their spare website didn’t have a comments section. We sent our cash hoping they were who they said they were. 

Their driveway gave nothing away.

I started with the river of warmed oil on the forehead.

Ketut, my gentle therapist announced that to get the best benefit from Shirodhara you have to have at least three treatments. Let me tell you plainly – once was certainly enough for this Ayurvedic adventure seeker.

After a firm face massage, with some intense action around my eye sockets and a good ear tweakage, a weighted eye pad was put in place. All my available senses heightened. Oil glug glugged from tin pot into copper urn and the contraption was slid into position. Without warning a filmy warmth spread over my third-eye-chakra. I started to write the ensuring sensations in my head but told myself to be present. Mindful. I lost count of how many times the oil pot was refilled. The oil varying in temperature was the only indication. My neck and the top of my shoulders were needled with deft knuckles but the main jam was the constant oil baptism. The oil had a pungent odour I couldn’t identify – an earthy, mustardy, catch under your fingernail’s lingering pong.

I willed the 45 minute process to hurry up. The oil was too hot at times and my forehead flamed, while my face flushed red. A thirst crawled in my throat and the back of my head tickled and twitched as oil pooled under my head. Ketut tied my longish hair up with a rubberband. I said nothing about the uncomfortable temperature because that's how I roll when I’m in the hands of an intimate stranger. I lie back and take it. 

The folder in reception claims Shirodhara is “an absolute must-try!” and “everybody should at least once experience this unique treatment”. The Kseerabala oil she used is made with a base of sesame oil and milk, a long list of herbs and various amounts of boiling and straining. It’s supposed to “remove mental stress, deeply relax your nervous system and nourish your hair and sense organs”. My hair was certainly nourished, it was an oil slick for days. I washed it afterwards as per Ketut’s instructions. ‘The bottle marked shampoo first before hot water, or it won’t come out’. I woke up the next morning, looking like Neil from the ‘Young Ones’.

Shirodhara was not the Ayurvedic game-changing sleeping pill this insomniac was after. But I achieved my research purposes. I want one of my fictional characters to pay too much for an over promising, painstaking treatment only to detest it to the point of panic attack. Mission accomplished! But I’d love to speak to someone who’s enjoyed it! Anyone?

However, this was a two-treatment day! I heard my gf giggle in the next room. Next up, we'd chosen Pizhychil – 'Relax and enjoy while warm, medicated oil is continuously poured onto your body and massaged into your skin with well-coordinated rhythmic strokes …’ Oh Pizhychil! I would travel the world and swim many pirate infested seas for you! I have never experienced anything so divinely innocent yet as satisfying sensorially as snoozing on a sunny Sunday afternoon (with a friend), in a massage.

With my brown cotton Tarzan thong tied low and tucked into place, I dropped my sarong … 

And so, began my exquisite anointment, on the soles of my feet! Squee. I’m face down on the sloping wooden table, which looks a bit like the rack in the tower of London without the tie up and stretch you bits. My head is wedged into the tissue lined, child-sized face pillow. The table has shallow grooves chiselled along its long, sloping edges, which allow the poured oil to drain down into a bowl beneath the end of table to be re-heated on the handy electric plate plugged into the wall nearby. At times when the oil felt rawther hot, I hoped they did a quick drip-on-the-wrist temperature check before they poured another bowlful over me. Lying on a wooden slab akin to a mortician’s table sounds uncomfortable but remarkably it was not. 

The rack, I mean slab

Ketut was using a different oil – Sahacharadi. It had a more pleasant scent but again, this Ayurvedic concoction has an impressively long ingredient list of herbs and spices with a base of sesame oil and cow’s milk. (Curious because there is no dairy industry here.) I doubt very much any vegans partaking in this delight know they are being treated with animal unguents.) I tried not to think how many times the oil had, or had not, been recycled. Strained.

After my feet are anointed, the long flap of my Tarzan-thong is drawn out and folded into a neat towel and placed over my, for want of a better word, crack. No doubt to act as a form of butt everything plug. It worked a treat. Next warm oil is swirled over my right buttock, down my thigh and calf and the super relaxing, divine rhythm of the oiliest massage known to womankind commenced proper. I willed it to never stop. Buttock, thigh, calf were followed by lower back. Shoulder. Arms. It’s like sloshing/swimming in the happiest of warm swimming pool/therapeutic oil slick baths imaginable, on the happiest of planets where the daily indulgence of prolonged tactile pleasure is encouraged. Necessary. Vital. Is always on the menu, and like the consumption of coffee and champagne the inhabitants of Planet O never tire of it. In fact, they are the most content mammals with two legs. It’s not til I’m instructed to roll over onto my back that I realised there were two masseuses in the room attending my full-body, Ayurvedic baptism.

I once had a massage in Austria with my Finnish friend Minna, back when I would rather pull my fingernails off than de-robe and have my body touched by a professional. If the masseuse was male that only added to my discomfort. My Austrian masseuse was a small man but still a man. When he instructed me to drop my towel, I felt he took too long checking out my naked back view before I was instructed to lie face down on the bed. In this instance, a rolled towel was placed over my crackola. He kept telling me I was tense and to relax, it was no good my glutes were tensed left and right for the duration of the event. I was convinced he was copping a look down into regions he shouldn’t and wished I could've evaporated.

So how I got to the point of two women massaging my oiled breasts I do not know. But I had. They did not mention they were going in but I wouldn’t have stopped them such were my off the scale relaxation levels. Oil was poured onto my stomach and soft hands worked in a circular motion over my digestive organs. I was thankful we’d not had lunch (they tell you not to eat or drink anything stimulating three hours prior.) Then zip those hands were circling my ladies, in a steady figure of eight. I might have smiled. I feared I might have also been doing some sort of mini Mexican wave a deux in appreciation. Next, oil was poured over my shoulders and collarbones and pooled in my clavicle. Oh my gracious, oil goddesses of goodness that was next level special! 

If anyone travelling to Bali wants to treat themselves to an out-of-this-world tactile experience, I strongly recommend a jaunt to Ubud, and Amrta Siddhi, you'll be smiling for days! We were.

My Bali High, Part Two: Walking in Kuta Lombok With Dogs (a retrospective)

 

After a few days of moving as fast as a tortoise from bed to beach sun lounger on Gili T, my inbuilt walk-o-meter was getting twitchy. Not just to lope along to limber up my limbs but to take a good gander at the new hood, Kuta Lombok. I’m a nosey parker, I like to look around, observe. But everyone in KL travels by scooter, even for short short trips. Quick and convenient, but for me my focus when charging about on my scooby was avoiding dying by-oncoming-white-line-straddling vehicle, not drinking in the surrounding visuals.

It’s a writer’s tic, observing place, people, animals, smells, sounds. I know I crave it. At the recent kid lit Hui, author Mandy Hager referenced ‘paying attention’ in her keynote. And interestingly as she stated, if you are paying attention on one particular thing, say whales or dogs, suddenly all you see are dogs. There are a lot of dogs on the streets and beaches of Lombok*.

One morning, I announced I was going to walk to the moneychanger, my host was aghast. It’s miles away! She exclaimed as she backed her scooter out of the corral. Scurity advised, it will take you seven minutes. I’d already coffeed at the local French Bakery where my Eat Pray Bali cleanse faltered somewhat as I breakfasted on Nutella croissants and full UHT milk flat whites, instead of acai bowels with fresh mango and coconut shavings, while I typed on my laptop like the cliched white middle-aged lady writer in a café typing on her laptop, that I was (and loving every minute of it.)

It was nine o clock, the sun already hot. I should have taken a hat. And a thick stick.

With eyes peeled, pearls on, I checked the time, clutched my handbag and set off. Deep pink Bougainvillea spilled over walls and bobbed hello but the narrow lane was empty of humans, except me. Disturbingly, the first mammal I spied was a dead blonde dog in a monsoon drain. I looked swiftly away and did not breath. It seemed a bad omen. Wild dogs roam the streets here in packs. They are probably good guard dogs and for the most part seem well fed from scavenging. Muslims are afraid of dogs. Curiously the population is largely Muslim.

One of the cool things about the Kuta Lombok township is the way the gated guest homes pop up in front and in between the local Sasak houses and farmyards. I saw a woman on her haunches chucking corn in the shade of a low wooden bungalow, its supports covered in coconuts like gold balloons might at a kitsch wedding. The adjacent field grazed plump chestnut cows and calves flicking at lazy flies. Smiling school aged kids chased chickens or ground their nuts to paste on bikes with ridiculously high seats around dirt yards. One of the uncool things is how leaves and fallen vegetations are swept daily into piles under splendid trees, then set alight. Only any old, single-use plastic packaging ends up on the pyre too and an acrid smoke and a fine ash rains down.

Seven minutes exactly later, I was the only customer at the money changer. He pointed to the rate on a board made with plastic numerals. It could have been last weeks for all I knew. I left with my cross body, Deadly Ponies stuffed with wads of Indo rupiah (approx. 1 million equals 100 NZD.) Funny red money, until it runs out.

Anyone game to describe this fine specimen please do so in the comments!

I saw:

+A crazy looking flower. A sort of white petunia on a red ginger plant

+An empty looking backpackers offering build-your-own breakfast plate. The photo of the banana fringed acai bowl on the vinyl hoarding tied to the wall looked healthy, tempting! But the fact the place looked like it had been bereft of customers since 2018 did not.

+I tried to photograph the intricate choreography of two crimson red butterflies but failed.

Soon after, three ash blond dogs strutted out to greet me. A bitch, a boy, a bitch. Short, curved tails in the air, puckered pink brown stars winking. The most threatening of sphincter cyclopes. My heart sunk into my toe sandal, I thought jaysus these dogs mean business. They were at least twice the size of your usual four legged Lombok local. Dogs are territorial, they do things to foreign invaders and walkers are pretty much foreign invaders in these parts. Fuck me I hope they don’t show me who’s head honcho here, and bite. I increased my pace. They increased theirs. I worried for rabies (humans die from rabies.) Errant ticks. The dog intent on sticking to my heels sniffed the tender backs of my knees and growled. I squirmed but kept my cool. I did not know fuck-off in Indonesian and they did not understand my politely feeble English, ‘shoo’. Your cool. I did not look them in the eye or break into a run. I’ve been bitten by a Rottweiler before, I know dog bites.

When a fourth, same-sized but ginger dog, shackles raised, appeared at the next alleyway, I thought shit a brick – dog fight. But my posse kept their calm! So I decided the best way to handle this intense canine situation was to treat my furry outriders as my boss as scurity trio. My heavies. We moved on, the ginge backed off. My trio were certainly in for the long haul, little buggers they can smell a bread-buying-woman a mile off. They followed me all the way to the French bakery turn-off, then they winked and bailed. It wasn’t their turf. They were just escorting me to buy a baguette all along. Sending it. I did not receive a tendon crushing bite around my ankles and need to go to hospital for a rabies shot (not actually available in Bali although rabies is.) 

I turned for home. 

I saw:

+Another kid on a bike (grinding his nuts into a butter)

+Two brothers eating lollies who said hello and didn’t ask for money

+Two fancy pants cocky-tailed roosters, one white, one green, and their lady hens

+A grey striped cat on a stone wall with the correct length tail, long

+Three durian high in a durian tree 

+A kid on a stoop with a black kitten

+A pink frangipani tree smelling so sweet

I was back at the Villa Caroline, sweaty but rabies free. Loaded with cash. Ready for a bready breakfast with nut butter, and a trip to the beach with my girl gang on my red scooter.

*There is an organisation working to improve the lives of Kuta Lombok dogs. They welcome donations for their Sterilisation Programme