Douglas Pearce
I am an emeritus professor of tourism management at Victoria University of Wellington. I grew up in Temuka and studied at the University of Canterbury and the Universite d’Aix-Marseille II. My teaching, research and consulting projects have taken me to Europe, Asia, South America and the Pacific. I have written five traditionally published books on tourism research and the geography of tourism. My books have been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Japanese. ‘Lepan’s Shadow’ is my debut novel.
Do you try more to be original, or to deliver to readers what they want?
I try to be original and to write what I would like to read.
What is it about your chosen genre that you love?
The escapism, the challenge of working out whodunnit.
How do you select the names of your characters?
My debut novel, Lepan’s Shadow, has a lot of Latin American and European characters. For some, I mixed the names of friends from those regions to fit some characters. For others, I Googled the names in each country that were popular in a given year and selected those part way down the list. To balance the exoticness of the international names (Maria Paz, Esperanza, Ximena, Montse, Vinicius…), I kept the New Zealand ones short and solid: Cliff, Rod, Bill, Tony, Wendy…
Have you Googled yourself? Did you find out anything interesting?
I have. I was surprised to find some old papers of mine were still alive and well on the Internet.
Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym? Why?
I thought about using a pseudonym when I started writing fiction to make a clear distinction between my novel and my earlier academic books. I decided not to because the expertise shown with the latter provides some credentials for writing about the themes and characters in the novel.
How did publishing your first book change your writing process?
Publishing my first academic book did not change my writing process; it gave me the confidence to write the subsequent ones. What impact my debut novel has on writing fiction remains to be seen.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
No books but the few short stories I have written have never made it into print.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters of the opposite sex?
Describing what they are wearing. I don’t pay much attention to dress. It doesn’t add much to characters or plot. That’s the case with male characters too.
Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
I read my reviews. You can learn from both good and bad ones.