In recent years, Christchurch writer Rachael King has been free to immerse herself in (and write about) her favourite books from childhood.
In the new young adult novel The Grimmelings, she takes inspiration from Scottish folklore, South Island landscapes and the "wild magic" that enthralled her as a 12-year-old reader.
"It's been really wonderful getting back in touch with my younger self," she tells Kathryn Ryan.
Photo: supplied
The Grimmelings is Rachael King's fourth book and her first in 12 years.
Until 2021, she was the programme director of the WORD Christchurch Writers Festival, an "incredibly demanding but also creatively fulfilling" job that squeezed out time for writing.
After leaving that job, and thanks to "quite a generous" grant from Creative NZ, King found herself with time for reading, walking and writing.
"I allowed myself just to sink into the process of understanding stories and channelling them into writing my own."
The Grimmelings is about a 13-year-old girl living on a horse trekking farm in a fictional part of the Southern Lakes region, King says.
"I'm a North Islander, you see, so I still have not gotten over [South Island] landscapes when I drive through them. I didn't grow up being able to drive down the main street and look up and see snowy mountains, for instance."
In the book, she sought to create the sense of a huge but also psychologically rich landscape - "the psychic residue of the people who've lived on those landscapes, the magic that dwells under the landscapes or within them".
'Grimmeling' – although it sounds like a funny little creature who lives under bushes – is actually an old Scots word which refers to the first and last gleams of light in the day, she says.
"I found the word through [British writer] Robert Macfarlane's Twitter account where he used to tweet a word a day and they were all nature words. They come from all over the place, but a lot of them were Scottish."
King later discovered Macfarlane's amazing book Landmarks - a book about the language of landscapes - and many of the Scots words used in The Grimmelings come from this as well as the Scottish dictionary online.
"I just love the idea of incorporating all these these interesting, unusual unknown words into a New Zealand children's book."
Scottish poet Robin Robertson was also a huge influence on King's latest book.
"He writes invented Scots folk narratives, which really are folk horror in poetry form. They're just amazing, the uncanny and weird and dark, so dark. It just excites me on a visceral level, I don't know why."
Stories written for children often involve conflict and peril but usually offer hope, King says, even on the rare occasions that they don't have a happy ending.
Young readers have a special capacity to absorb fictional stories "into their whole beings", she says.
"Obviously [children's books] create empathy and understanding and they're just so important ... You dream about what your life's going to be like and reading books kind of fuels those dreams."
Before The Grimmelings, Rachael King published the adult fiction titles The Sound of Butterflies and Magpie Hall and a previous children's book Red Rocks (currently being developed for television).
While Red Rocks was intended for young people, The Grimmelings "just happens" to fall into that category, Kings says.
Thanks to the book's "small but nimble" UK publisher Guppy Books, it has already been sent out to school librarians in the UK who've given great feedback.
"I'm really hoping this New Zealand book is going to be all throughout UK schools."
Rachael King recommends this video:
