Sandstorms and loneliness helped Louise Moulin become a novelist, writes Nicky Pellegrino.
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Louise Moulin made the decision to be a writer when she was an 8-year-old growing up in Gore. It's been a driving force in her life that has stopped her settling for a conventional career and has meant she's learned to live on the smell of an oily rag.
"When I was a child my grandma wrote out my stories longhand and my dad sent them away to inappropriate places like the New Zealand Woman's Weekly," Moulin says. "They wrote back saying: 'Your daughter has talent and should continue writing'. I've still got those letters - they were hugely encouraging."
At 11 she wrote her first novel. "I had one of those big beige pads and wrote with a yellow pencil because that's what I thought a writer would use. The story was sort of Catherine Cookson mixed with the Famous Five. But the problem was the pencil faded so by the end I couldn't read what I'd written in the beginning."
In her 20s Moulin became discouraged and decided to give up. Then a singer friend asked her to work on some material and she started to enjoy writing again.
"I realised I didn't have to be really good right now. I just had to practise."
Moulin, a trained actor, earned a living doing odd jobs - working for the Shotover Jet in Queenstown, driving a truck on the Lord of the Rings movie set, a bit of freelance journalism, but wanting to be a writer was always her main thrust. "I've never done the whole career thing," she says. "I've got a bit of rebel in me. You can't possibly pay me a high enough wage for it to be worth my time."
It wasn't until Moulin found a rented cottage behind the sand dunes in Aramoana that she isolated herself and began to write in earnest.#"I've got some great friends here now but when I first arrived I didn't speak to anyone," she says. "If I saw someone on the beach I'd turn and walk the other way. I just really needed to focus on the book."
She winged it financially, surviving on food parcels from family and friends and any money she could make from casual work.
"I didn't realise it was going to be such a struggle," she says. "But the harder it became the more determined I was. I'd put so much into it I had to continue."
For Moulin the sacrifices were worth it. At 37 she's had her first novel, Saltskin (Random House, $27.99), published and is "stoked" that her dream has come true.
Saltskin is an original tale that moves from late 18th-century London to modern New Zealand, weaving in myths and fantasy along the way.
It's the story of oddball Angelo, a weaver of tapestries, who becomes obsessed with finding his perfect mermaid woman, and of his descendant, Gilda, who is tormented by strange dreams and unrequited love. An occasionally messy collision of ideas, obsessions and in-depth research, Saltskin isn't the perfect first novel by any means but it's a thoughtful and compelling story about memorable characters.
The book started life as a short story. "I'd had an experience of unrequited love and the madness that invokes," Moulin says. "I was sitting in a cafe in Queenstown and started writing this story. It never came to an end and all of a sudden I realised it was a novel."
As she researched her story Moulin became interested in the whole concept of love. "I explored the difference between romantic love, family love and long-lasting love.
"It was a huge growth spurt for me. I felt like a whole lot of people are getting it wrong. Like the boss who runs away with his secretary - they're making a shambles of it because they mistake what love is. And I wanted to write a book about making the wrong people important and the ridiculousness of unrequited love - the concept that people pursue perfection."
One of the other thrusts in her story is the idea of genetic memory, the psyche of your ancestors. Then there was the mermaid myth that Moulin became fascinated with. As she sheltered from Aramoana's sandstorms she wove the diverse strands into her story.
The day a finished copy of Saltskin arrived Moulin couldn't find anyone to show it to.
"I'd forgotten there was a big picnic on in Aramoana that day. It was two hours before I found anyone to share it with."
Now she has become what she has always dreamed she would be, a novelist, Moulin is working on her next book. "If I can just get three uninterrupted months with some money," she says. "I've been spoiled in that the first book was written with total focus, so I want to write the second the same way."
She is nervous about how Saltskin will be received. "I guess you don't know how much of your inner psyche you've put in until other people read it," she says. "But you can't please everyone all the time. It's my first book. I just want to keep going."
And so she should, because - just as those New Zealand Woman's Weekly editors pointed out all those years ago - she has talent.
