Elizabeth Knox is one of the country’s most esteemed authors, known best for her novels ‘Vintner’s Luck’ and ‘The Absolute Book’.

She’s also a dab hand at essay collections and young adult stories, though it had been over a decade since she last wrote for a younger audience.

That changed with the release of ‘Kings of this World’, a young adult novel focused on the sole survivor of a cult massacre.

The book is a long time coming, Knox having written it over the span of several years.

“I had the bad habit of writing several books at the same time,” she told Newstalk ZB’s Jack Tame.

“I developed the strategy when I had a lot of distractions in my life, and I decided to distract myself, so I had some power over that.”

“And then I came out of it and thought I'd solved the problem and could always keep doing that, but no,” she told Tame.

“Bad habit.”

Writing young adult fiction is not dissimilar to writing for adults, but there is one central principle Knox abides by when writing for younger audiences.

“You can’t deprive the readers of hope,” she explained.

“With that in mind, I was able to write a, you know, pretty scary thriller, and I don’t think that young readers need to be defended from suspense and fear and things like that.”

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