Aucklander Kate Langdon always enjoyed reading chick-lit but never expected to be writing it, says Nicky Pellegrino.

Kate Langdon's preparing to knuckle down and make writing her full-time career.

Kate Langdon's preparing to knuckle down and make writing her full-time career.

New Zealand writers have long had a reputation for producing serious, dark work but there's a new, lighter writing voice in town.

Rollicking good reads are their stock in trade; stories with no particular message, simply designed to entertain and hopefully raise a laugh or two.

That's just the kind of fiction Aucklander Kate Langdon enjoys.

She's just released her third novel, Making Lemonade (Harper Collins, $24.99), the lively story of three 30-something women whose lives aren't turning out quite how they imagined.

Jools is pregnant and not sure who the father is, Sally is saddled with a supremely vain TV evangelist husband and Kat's discovered her man is having an affair. The story is fast-paced, fun and ticks all the boxes for lovers of chick-lit.

Surprisingly, Langdon didn't set out to be a writer.

She never had a long-cherished ambition to be published and her first book, That Slippery Slope, happened pretty much by mistake.

"I sat down one night, had a few wines and started writing something," she says.

"The next night I was bored so went back and did a bit more. At first I thought it was a short story, then it got longer and I thought, oh, I might be writing a book.

"It was a very painless process. I sort of chipped away at it for a couple of years."

Langdon sent the manuscript to a few publishers to see what would happen, Harper Collins came back with a positive response, and the book went on to spend two weeks on the New Zealand bestseller list.

Langdon, who runs her own event management business, says she's always written.

"As a teenager I went through writing that deep, dark, introspective stuff that sounds so life changing at the time but is just embarrassing when you read it later."

To complete her second book, Famous, Langdon hid away in the Bay of Islands for three months.

"I went a bit bonkers writing solidly on my own every day. I had these stripey socks I'd pull on to get into writing mode and by midday I'd be drinking vodka.

"I see now how writers can lose all ability to socialise and go stark raving mad!"