JP Pomare

Real deal famous

All this has come to pass in the six year time frame since his debut book Call Me Evie became hot publishing property.

The manuscript ignited a bidding war between seven international publishing houses.

In Profile’s compiler talked to the then newbie author on the cusp of its release. His name had yet to become common currency.

There’s been a partial name change since.

His Rotorua whanau and mates from way back still call him Josh, otherwise he’s now known as JP. 

J.P. Pomare is the name that appears on the cover of his books. His wife Paige calls him JP. So shall we.

It’s made him famous in the writing world.  

Famous .. . . an exaggeration? No way, he’s real deal famous, sharing festival billings across the globe with authors who not so long ago were his heroes. Think Scotland’s Ian Rankin and Val McDirmid, Aussie’s Michael Rowbotham   

JP met Rowbotham at New Zealand’s first Noir Writers Festival.It was held in Rotorua in January 2019.

They have become close. JP considers him his mentor.

 Home roots integral 

JP is neither too famous, nor has he become too arrogant (as some authors do), to shun his home town roots. They are integral to the writer in him. 

Several of his books have local settings, despite Melbourne being his home for well over a decade.

He’s back in his turangawaewae as often as possible.

For him it’s vital that his four-year-old daughter Blake has regular contact with her grandfather Bill Pomare, aunts, uncles and a pile of cousins. 

JP chatted to us while he and Blake were grabbing brief time out at Pomare Senior’s Kaharoa horse stud. With his wife Paige on a work trip to the Philippines he ‘created ’ a lull in what’s become a revolving door schedule of commitments.

Regardless of his publicist’s pleas to the contrary he deliberately kept his visit low key. 

 An event at local booksellers McLeods was his only New Zealand gig to promote his newly released book. It’s titled 17 Years Later. 

That 17 isn’t coincidental. It’s 17 years since JP left Aotearoa to travel and work on refining his then putative writing skills.

Places JP has known since childhood are integral to his New Zealand-based books.

Cambridge setting

17 Years Later has a New Zealand setting with Cambridge given star billing. Rotorua’s woven into the roller coaster plot the author takes readers on. It’s home to Bill Kareama, the convicted mass murderer it centres on.

Rotorua and Maketu are at the core of Call Me Evie.

 As the climax plays out in his 2021 release The Last Guests it’s Tarawera that provides the creepily atmospheric backdrop.

The scenario was inspired by a bottle of wine he and his wife had left for AirB&B guests. JP got to wondering why precisely only one glass had been taken from from it. (In our video clip he takes viewers on a deeper dive into his inventive plotting.)  

The reason Rotorua has been a regular focal point in his books is, he says, its inspirational magnetism.    

“It’s so rich in details. Every time I come back I see the beauty of the place. This town has such a distinctive setting. 

“I bring my daughter here and she asks ‘Why is there smoke coming out of the ground?’.

“I’m unsurprised when you look at the number of creatives who come out of this place. It’s just teeming with things to be inspired by.”  

English not first choice

JP hasn’t always had a love affair with the written word.

It wasn’t until his final year at Western Heights High that he  started to get to grips with it.

“I was really good at maths. I loved the logic of it. English was much more structured. I didn’t like that, but when I came to study it as an art form I took it more seriously. I think I topped my class in it.”   

No thinking about it. It’s on record that he won that year’s class English prize.  

However school and JP weren’t always a happy fit.  Being in the accelerant class in his first year at Boys’ High didn’t save him from being expelled. 

He was, by his own admission, “arsed out because I thought it would be a bit of fun to play the class clown”. 

Heights took him on.  He admits he was still a bit of a trouble maker.“But I was only kicked out of class a couple of times there.”

In his early writing days he won the then Waiariki Polytech’s (now Toi Ohomai)  Kingi McKinnon Scholarship for creative writers. It brought him back to Rotorua to study there.

There’ve been a slew of other awards and acknowledgements since. 

Fatherhood changes perspective

While his work remains as gripping as ever (reviewers are applauding 17 Years Later as his best book yet) there’s been a shift away from the once frenetic pace JP wrote at.

“I used to write in a hyper-manic-focused state, write all day every day for two to three weeks and produce a draft. I don’t now.

“I’ve reached the point where I have committed to a book every 18 months. 

“Perhaps I’ve slowed down now I have a toddler, essentially the world’s most effective alarm clock.  

“I’ve become a lot more disciplined. I appreciate sleep much more than I used to.”

He classifies himself as a writer who works “well-ish” to deadlines. 

Becoming a dad has brought another change.

It’s the way he writes about children, particularly those in crisis situations.

His second book, In The Clearing, which focuses on a young girl who disappears from an Australian cult commune would, he says,  be different if he were to re-write it.

“I now struggle to write things where children are the subject of abuse. 

“With In The Clearing there are certain scenes I would baulk at now I have a daughter ... perhaps I am getting soft.” 

To that we say “Hardly!”. 

A magician of mind play, his 17 Years Later storyline is even more darkly twisted and chocker with red herrings than its predecessors. 

Authenticity critical

On the spot research is an essential building block on which he bases each book. He’s not one to flip through travel brochures so he can take a stab at describing a place. He goes to them to gauge how they function and absorb their atmosphere.

With 17 Years Later he’s glad he did. Cambridge had radically changed since his last visit in 2007.

“Dad’s a horse trainer so I spent a lot of time in Cambridge.

“The Cambridge I knew then has virtually doubled in size. There are sprawling suburbs where paddocks used to be.”

“When you move away home is just not a place, it’s a time, if you know what I mean. 

“Whenever I think of Rotorua, Cambridge or the Waikato it’s almost this perfect kind of thing, it’s almost a time capsule.” 

He set 17 Years Later in Cambridge because its “Englishness” worked perfectly for his plot. 

So too did its dense midwinter fogs. One of the story’s most gripping scenes is engulfed by one.

It’s the direct by-product of its author stumbling through a Waikato pea souper during the book’s fact finding phase.

Plot in précis

In précis, the plot is centred on a disgraced UK politician who seeks refuge in New Zealand’s Cambridge. The family are murdered en masse. Kareama, their live-in Maori chef, is charged with the killings, found guilty and jailed for life.

An Australian true-crime podcaster fights to have him cleared.

It’s a story line ripe for festering class and racial tensions to develop.

“There are these upper middle class, almost landed gentry British people, there are working class people who feature.

“This book has some deep colonial themes. A Maori man is accused of murdering a British man who owns a whole chunk of land. That’s one of the metaphors in it.”

J.P. Pomare is an author who makes skilful use of metaphors, inserting them into storylines with sleight-of-hand subtly. 

Names, too, carry colonial undertones. Two cops are called Cook and Marsden.

However, JP admits this was not intended for the printed book.

“When I write drafts I use names I will remember then change them. I didn’t this time and it makes me seem more clever than I actually am.”  

The name game is one that amuses him.

“Yes, I use real people’s names but I’ve found people only recognise themselves when the characters are good not mean and horrible.” 

Reception “remarkable”

The reception 17 Years Later has received has, JP says, “Been of the most remarkable kind.

“You never know what is going to resonate.  Moral questions appeal to certain readers. I never thought with this book it would be so universal.”

Not knowing what resonates prompted the question whether he’s  written a book he’s dissatisfied with?

It brings the admission there are some he’d now write differently.

“I wish I’d had more time with The Last Guests.

“Funnily, that’s often people’s favourite but I think I could have done a lot more with it.”

On the topic of crime writing he claims it is the vector for working class writers.

“If you are a good writer and don’t have the time or money to sit around selling 500 copies of your poetry collection, if you want to make a fist of it and it to be your career, then I think crime writing is the vector to achieve that.

“There’s no muse, genius to achieve that. It’s just luck, timing and hard work.”

Have his successful past six years changed him?

“I think I have grown much more conscious of art in general. 

“I have a growing appreciation of luck contributing to one’s success. 

“I probably ascribe to certain ideals and the sacrifices creatives make.

“I’m playing golf more these days. I play board games, drink a bit less, but I’ve not changed in any unique way.

“I am aware I am still a young author. These days authors are still young in their fifties.”