Gothic Goddess

She might write horrifying tales of the supernatural, but there’s nothing spooky about author Kim Wilkins.

Looking for author Kim Wilkins’ home, a black cat and a balloon on a small veranda indicate we’re in the right place. They symbolise two of her passions – the supernatural and her 21-month-old son Luka.

Inside, the Brisbane writer dubbed “the new queen of the dark side” smiles a rather sunny smile. The flat is orderly – Luka has been despatched to his bedroom for a lunchtime nap – and Kim curls up on the couch with a cuppa and chats about her new book, Giants of the Frost, which is, typically, about mythology, magic and romance. Previously, her writing has been more, well, let’s say Gothic.

And with book titles like The Infernal, Grimoire, Bloodlace, Angel of Ruin and The Resurrectionists, you can understand why she has attracted the attention of those who like stygian storytelling.

“When my first book, The Infernal, came out people must have thought I was a witch or something spooky,” Kim laughs. “Sometimes I think maybe I should have taken a ridiculous pseudonym like Charlotte Ravensbridge and done the full Goth thing.”

She did her bit, though, posing at Toowong Cemetery in 1997 as a publicity stunt for the debut novel.

“My publisher rang and told me they were sending a photographer and a stylist and I got quite excited,” she recalls. “They put me in a cape and corset and I had this long black hair at the time which all helped. I was a bit more naive back then. Nowadays my readers are probably alarmed by my ordinariness.”

The “ordinariness” is a yardstick of domestic bliss with partner Mirko Ruckels, a teacher and musician, and beloved Luka, who now forces her to write and do interviews during naptimes.

Kim, 34, now one of Brisbane’s best-known literary exports along with Nick Earls, was born in London. From the age of four she was raised on the Redcliff Peninsula, where she developed an interest in reading and writing, penning juvenile fantasies – possibly in a bid to escape her father’s slow descent into alcoholism, something she talks about candidly. The drinking meant home life was difficult.

“I always wanted to write as a career but I’d been told I was stupid and I always thought I would grow up poor and stupid,” Kim recalls. To make matters worse, at Clontarf High she fell in with a group of “naughty punks” and failed school.

Her father died when she was 20, an event that still bears its scars. But putting past failures behind her she did senior school again, and went on to get a literature degree with first-class honours at the University of Queensland, also winning a University Medal. An MA in creative writing followed and she is now working on a PhD, in between churning out novels and parenting.

Her books – generally regarded as fantasy or speculative fiction – are now published widely in Europe and now the United States, where she has recently signed with Warner Books. They have won her four Aurealis Awards for fantasy and horror fiction. The first immediately won fans abroad who loved her tale of witchcraft and reincarnation in the Brisbane underground music scene. (She and Mirko met playing together in the rock band The Vampigs.)

Since then she has abandoned the parochial settings and gone global.

Giants of the Frost is set in Norway – at a remote weather station on an island off the coast and in the parallel world of Asgard, populated by Norse gods like Odin and his son Vidar. The protagonist, Victoria Scott, who shares some of Kim’s traits (insomnia among them), is the reincarnation of a former love of Vidar’s, Vintage Wilkins.

To research for the book and the other two titles in her “Europa” suite (the first in the series was The Autumn Castle and the next is The Snow Witch), she and Mirko visited Scandinavia.

“To get the feel of the North Sea we took a ferry from Newcastle in England to Bergen,” she says. “We were as sick as dogs on the way over. I am attracted to cold, bleak climates and I like writing about them but not living in them,” she says.

As for her subject matter – magic, mythology and the supernatural – well, it’s all just for effect, she claims.

“I’m agnostic,” she insists. “I don’t believe or disbelieve in anything. I’m endlessly fascinated by the subject matter but I’m not a witch or a clairvoyant or anything like that.” Which is a bit disappointing really.

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Learning Curve (sidebar)

Having a second chance in life by doing high school again put Kim Wilkins on the path to success.

“I failed high school but went back and did senior externally at Hendra Secondary College in 1994,” she explains. “That was a real learning experience to find out that I wasn’t stupid at all, even though I thought I was when I was at Clontarf High.

“The fact that I did so well, though, was the first inkling that maybe I was smarter than I thought. My old English teacher from high school was also my English teacher at Hendra, by a strange coincidence, and she was very encouraging. She said ‘You were always a clever girl at school’. But I always thought I was dumb.”

That experience encouraged Kim to go on to university and to embark on a career as a writer. She cites her agent, Selwa Anthony, as the person who encouraged her further.

“She has been a fantastic mentor for me,” says Kim. “I hooked up with her in 1996 and she has run my career since then and is so positive and encouraging.

“She believed in me so much.” And now, happily, Kim believes in herself.