Best-selling Australian noir author, Chris Hammer (Scrublands, Silver, Trust), joined the program to talk about his new standalone novel, ‘Treasure & Dirt’. 
Topics discussed include:
-	The story of creating Finnigans Gap, the setting of ‘Treasure & Dirt’, from visiting Lightning Ridge and learning about opal mining from real-life opal miners. How Chris uses real-life landscapes as a basis for creating fictional towns and settings – letting the needs of the story shape the geography of them accordingly. 
-	How Chris goes about creating his characters, be they major or minor – from their memorable names, to how they orbit the setting and interact with other characters, including discussing in detail the lead characters in Treasure & Dirt – Sydney homicide detective, Ivan Lucic and investigator Narelle ‘Nell’ Buchanan. 
-	The challenges faced and new experiences gained with writing from members of the police force – how different they were/are to Chris’s experience in writing journalist protagonist of his other three novels, Martin Scarsden. 
-	His writing process. Of the pantser persuasion, Chris talked about how his stories and novels evolve throughout their writing. How his process has changed, for the better and become smoother with repetition (including talking about re-writing the ending of Scrublands repeatedly). 
-	Chris’s journey to becoming one of Australia’s leading crime fiction/noir writers – from writing a novel when he was younger, to two creative non-fiction books – and his journalist years, how it all served to bring him to the point of penning Scrublands and beyond.
Thanks heaps to Chris for chatting with me on the show – you can pick up a copy of ‘Treasure & Dirt’ and all the instalments thus far in the Martin Scarsden novels, at Chris’s publisher, Allen & Unwin, here:
https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/Treasure-and-Dirt-Chris-Hammer-9781760877606

Chris Hammer On 'Treasure & Dirt'

A program founded and hosted by author and interviewer Samuel Elliott, that features a broad and disparate range of writer folk guests, ranging from international best-selling authors, to debut novelists or those as-yet unpublished writers. Regardless of what stage of their career they might be at, all of them are united by a love of writing, as well as having overcome some brutal challenges to get to where they are. This program will discuss not only each guest’s latest and greatest work or project, but also delve into what they’ve faced and conquered along their way to inevitable success.
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Chris Hammer On 'Treasure & Dirt'

The Write Way Podcast