Fans of speculative fiction may know her as Kim Wilkins, but author Kimberley Freeman is also making a name for herself in commercial women’s fiction. She spoke to Bookseller+Publisher reviewer Kate Cuthbert.

You started out in speculative fiction—what prompted the move to commercial women’s fiction? What is the appeal of this genre? And the challenges?

When I was little and imagined growing up to be an author, I never imagined that I would be limited to one genre. I wrote 10 books before I had anything published, and only a couple of them were spec fic. But then I began publishing in the dark fantasy genre and, the market operating as it does, I continued to publish in that genre. After Rosa and the Veil of Gold, I felt that I had exhausted what I wanted to say in spec fic (for a while, not forever). I was sitting on the couch at my agent’s house and we were talking about books we used to love in the 80s—like Lace and A Woman of Substance. And we both sort of looked at each other and went, hey that’s not a bad idea. Why don’t I write something like that? I had such enormous fun with it. I’ve always liked writing about strong women who are faced with difficult choices, and this gave me free rein to imagine big glamorous story ideas. The challenges were all about narrative interest. I’d been so used to thinking, ‘oh, the story’s getting boring, I’ll stick in a ghost’. I definitely learned a lot more about my craft when I became Kimberley Freeman.

How do you feel about the term ‘women’s fiction’? What are your thoughts on its usefulness as a descriptor or marketing tool?

While it seems a little broad, I think that it’s apt. My spec fic books, despite being about women, attract readers of both sexes. My Kimberley Freeman books have largely had a female audience. I think ‘women’s fiction’ just means fiction that privileges the female experience of the real world: fiction that gives women centre stage and allows them to be complex and conflicted and so on. My only misgiving would be if ‘women’s fiction’ became a term of derision. But I think the term is offered and accepted in good spirit as far as I can see.

There is a strong emphasis in Wildflower Hill on traditional ways of communication—letters, diaries, photos, paper records, body language, dance—even your modern-day heroine is uninterested in her mobile phone. Is this an ode, a lament, or merely a useful plot device?

I was recently up at the Fryer Library at University of Queensland, looking through old manuscript boxes full of notes and correspondence and so on and I was thinking about the incredible romance of traditional forms of communication. I’m particularly fascinated by old diaries. One of the most interesting that I read was a diary of an 11th century Japanese woman (in translation, of course). That she could touch me across so many years and across that East-West cultural divide was amazing and humbling. Even though I love the internet and I blog and you can’t keep me off Facebook, I do sometimes feel that we connect with each other too superficially (and perhaps too often). I can’t reconcile these two things about myself—my desire to be right in the thick of web 2.0 technology and my desire to receive letters written on parchment—but I do think that tension might have worked its way into the story unconsciously.

There is no good vs evil in this novel. However, some of the more problematic characters are united by a rigid faith that leads to betrayal, ridicule and isolation, while the characters with the least amount of traditional faith exercise the most morality. Can you expand on this?

I’m agnostic; I was actually raised an atheist. So I’ve always stood outside religion and it really is a very curious phenomenon from the outside. In its extreme forms, it actually seems to confound the moral compass. A lot of terrible things have been done within the certainty of absolute faith. I was so inspired by the natural beauty of Tasmania, especially around the Midlands and the Central Highlands. For me, great natural beauty always turns my mind to what might constitute a higher power if there is one. So I liked the idea that Beattie might have an almost pagan attitude to the landscape around her, and I wanted to contrast that with a more buttoned-down church-bound morality. Especially because she ends up in a mixed-race love affair, which is so pure and true. And all she finds around her is disapproval.

Avoiding spoilers, what do you think the letter-receiver does with the information presented to her at the end?

You know, I have laid awake at night thinking about that! I really don’t know. If it were me, I’d respond warmly and enthusiastically; but that character was not me and, had she wanted reconciliation, surely she could have set that in motion herself. But I can’t bear to think it would all be a sad ending, so let’s say that, after some time to adjust, everything would end happily.

Wildflower Hill is published by Hachette in September. This interview first appeared in the August issue of Bookseller+Pbulisher, which reached subscribers in early July.

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