Corporate lawyer turned author Rachel Paris, who has had her debut novel See How They Fall picked up by publishers here and in the US. Photo / Jason Dorday
Corporate lawyer turned author Rachel Paris, who has had her debut novel See How They Fall picked up by publishers here and in the US. Photo / Jason Dorday
Aucklander Rachel Paris has had the response every author would hope for with the release of her debut novel See How They Fall.
It’s won her prizes, secured future book deals, and even been courting interest from Hollywood.
From the outside, Paris’ impressive transition from high-powered, Harvard-educated corporate lawyer tohit international author has been an astonishing overnight success story.
But in an interview on Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night, Paris revealed writing has actually been the true ambition for most of her life – and she has already faced the heartbreak of seeing an earlier writing project fall flat nearly 20 years ago.
“ I definitely did have aspirations, certainly as a younger kid. When I was at primary school, I was always writing, and if you’d asked me then, I would‘ve said, ‘yes, of course I’m gonna be a writer’,” Paris told Cowan.
“In high school, I was a bit more realistic and I didn’t really know people that did that sort of a thing for a proper job.
“My parents definitely gave me the direction that you need to go and be financially independent… and so I channelled my energies more towards getting into law school.
“But I have always written – I just didn’t show anyone until a few years ago. So it’s been a secret kind of guilty pleasure.”
There is a sense that Paris would have flourished in whatever career she would have chosen.
During her two decades in law, she earned a Masters from Harvard, before working in London, becoming a partner at Bell Gully, and launching a fintech consultancy. But a desire to shift into writing was always lingering not far under the surface.
Even as a university student, she wrote a column for the National Business Review called Campus Comment.
“I was actually quite right-wing back in those days; I think I’d taken some economics papers and was a bit unsophisticated in my thinking,” Paris told Real Life.
“I’m much more centrist [now] because as you grow up and see how the world really operates, you temper your ideals with what’s going on in the world.”
In the midst of her thriving law career, the dream of making a living from writing was never far off – and in the noughties, when Paris took a year-long maternity leave after the birth of her son Sam, she and her sister started co-writing a screenplay together.
While Paris says Sam is now a “gorgeous 18-year-old”, it’s clear he had little concern for his mother’s literary aspirations as a newborn.
“It’s fair to say I didn’t know many babies. I thought a baby would just sit there cutely in the corner while I wrote this beautiful screenplay,” she said.
“As a baby, he had reflux and colic and did not sleep. I had no idea what I was doing, and was a complete fool. I mean, motherhood is hard, right? Especially that first year.
“And so it definitely was a rude awakening, but I got to grips with it, and my sister and I co-wrote a screenplay. I think I saw it as like, ‘if I don’t do it now, it’s never gonna happen’.”
The screenplay, about the Middlemarch Singles Ball, was optioned by South Pacific Pictures. But following three leadership changes at the screen company in three years, the sisters reluctantly accepted it wouldn’t come to pass.
“At the time it was frustrating… it was definitely a process of getting your hopes up and then someone comes in and they’re like, ‘you should change this and you should change that’, and your hopes go down,” Paris recalled to Cowan.
“Meanwhile, both my sister and I are running big jobs, having kids, and after about three years it hadn’t gone anywhere. We shelved it and it’s fair to say I was devastated and for a long time I saw that as a massive failure.”
Now, she sees it differently.
“I look back now and with the benefit of almost 20 years of hindsight, I think, thank goodness it didn’t come to pass, because I just was not ready.”
In the aftermath of that project, Paris settled into her law career, achieving massive success and largely leaving writing behind her.
But when her sister received a shock breast cancer diagnosis in 2020, her perspective shifted; she was ready to give it another crack.
“We went through a hideous two-year treatment process. [My sister] came out the other end, she’s cancer-free, has been for three years now. [But] that made me sit up and think ‘these opportunities are not gonna land in my lap. I have to do something.’
“So I Googled writing classes near me, and the university course up at Auckland came up in my search and that prompted me to apply, and that was the first step in what ended up being quite a long process to write a book and get it published.”
What came out of following the course was See How They Fall, a twisty crime thriller about an Australian family with a dark secret.
The novel has been met with acclaim – earning comparisons to The White Lotus and Succession, winning Auckland University’s Phoenix Prize, and securing a two-book deal with publishers in New Zealand and Australia.
The screen rights have also since been optioned by a Hollywood production company.
See How They Fall by Rachel Paris. Photo / Supplied
Paris is pleased her writing career has now taken off in the way she hoped. But she says while writing has better hours and more time at home than law and fintech ever provided, “you are putting your soul on the line to be judged”.
Paris says literature has a way of addressing home truths and shining a light on certain behaviours to try and find a way forward. But writing See How They Fall, she says none of that was front of mind.
“When I wrote the story, I literally sat down and wrote a story. I didn’t have a list of issues or concerns or themes or anything like that,” she told Real Life.
“It wasn’t until the editing process where I looked back on what I’d written, and reflected and thought, you know, there is a reason I wrote the story I wrote, and some of the things that are important to me in my personal life definitely came out in that book.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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