We chat with co-authors Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld about The Mortons, which is an epic novel of alliances and power, loyalty and kinship, and the consequences of ruthless ambition.
Hi, Justine and Scott! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourselves?
Justine: I’m an Australian American novelist who adores the New York Liberty, Octavia Butler and vintage clothes.
Scott: I’m an American who writes science fiction for young adults and dark crime novels for adults while drinking disturbingly bitter cocktails.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Justine: I’ve pretty much always loved stories. As soon as I could talk I was telling them, and once I could write I was scribbling them down.
Scott: I come from a big family in Texas full of great storytellers and inveterate bullshit artists. Every family gathering came with lots of tall tales (and some true).
Your latest novel, The Mortons, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Scott: Dark academia, but family sized.
Justine: Late-stage capitalism is really bad.
What can readers expect?
Justine: Dark humour, beautiful clothes, family politics and broken hearts.
Scott: A look at family mythologies, how they create us and control us, and how we escape them to find ourselves.
Where did the inspiration for The Mortons come from?
Justine: The Mortons emerged from my research on psychopathy for my previous novel, My Sister Rosa. I wanted to explore how it might play out if an entire family going back generations was deliberately raising their children without empathy.
Scott: I went to a venerable east coast college in the US, and love dark academia. I thought Justine’s family needed a dark, forbidding college to send their evil kids to. Adding Helshire gave the novel a deeper backstory and connection to history.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Scott: The rituals of Helshire College, like the Primal Scream, are partly based on my own college experiences, but this gave me the chance to make them more intense.
Justine: Grandmother Elizabeth, the head of the Morton clan, was one of my favorite characters to write. She doesn’t say much, mostly just sits in the corner knitting, but she knows where the bodies are buried, because she gave the orders.
Can you share some insight into what your co-authoring process was like?
Justine: Our process was pretty unusual because The Mortons began life as a solo project. I wrote the first draft alone but I couldn’t get the rewrites to work so I dared Scott to finish it.
Scott: Justine hasn’t read much dark academia, so that became my part of the story. Justine was more focused on the Morton family dynamics. Having our own separate domains meant less arguing, and also more space to add layers and depth.
What’s next for you both?
Justine & Scott: A follow up Mortons book! This one is from the point of view of our favourite character in the first book. She has a very different perspective, so the world expands.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
Justine: I’m excited for Jaclyn Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners, which publishes soon. The most delightfully aslant meditation on death and mourning I’ve ever read. I still don’t understand how a book this gentle and funny made me sob my guts out.
I just inhaled Shirlene Obuobi’s Die For Me which is a smart, sexy, paranormal romance that undercuts many of the hoariest tropes of that genre. I’ll always be Team Living and Aging.
Scott: Loving Alix E Harrow’s The Everlasting, a great novel about how mythologies are created, and how they grind up the real people inside them. Not unrelated to The Mortons, though a different kind of mythology!
