Jane back on TV

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

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Jane on Studio 10 (Channel 10)
Jane on The Daily Edition (Channel 7)

Jane Harper has credited her experience as a journalist and her determination to write the style of books she loves to read with helping her produce her international bestseller The Dry and its follow-up, Force of Nature.

With Force of Nature out in Australia this week and due for release in the US and UK in early 2018, Jane told the Ten Network’s Studio 10 that writing the highly anticipated novel had been a different experience to creating The Dry – albeit one she had risen to.

“I was a professional journalist for 13 years before I wrote The Dry so I’ve been writing for my whole career,” Jane said. “I’m quite used to writing to deadline and writing under pressure so I really drew quite heavily on that training and focused whenever I had an opportunity to write.”

Since its launch in Australia in June last year The Dry has won a multitude of awards, including Book of the Year at both the Indie Awards and the Australian Book Industry Awards. About 150,000 copies have been sold in Australia alone.

Film rights to The Dry have been optioned to Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea, who has confirmed plans are afoot to begin making the film next year.

“Big Little Lies was so successful and they did such a great job with it, to have a team like them working on The Dry is incredible,” Jane said. “I’m sure they’ll do an amazing job with it and they’re also keen to look at Force of Nature as well which is really exciting.”

Jane said she had not expected her debut novel to be such a success so quickly, but she was thrilled with the way The Dry had been received by booksellers and readers.

“I love hearing people say they passed it on and they recommended it to others because I just set out to write books that I personally would like to read,” she said. “To hear other people like them as well is ideal.”

“Whenever I wrote anything on both books I really thought ‘what would I like to have happen and what kind of books would I like to pick up’ and that’s really what I focus on when I’m writing.”

Force of Nature is Jane’s second book. The main character from The Dry, Aaron Falk, returns and the action is set in another distinct Australian setting – the Victorian bush in winter.

“So people who have read The Dry will see a few of the same characters and themes developed a bit further but for people who haven’t read The Dry, Force of Nature is a book you can pick up and enjoy as a standalone as well.”

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