Kate Evans

ABC Listen.

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Hello.

Lovely to be here.

Me too.

Well, it started with a song I wrote in 2009 called Songwriters on the Run.

And normally with songs, when you write them, you know, they're three or four verses, and you never really revisit what you wrote, you know, in the lyric.

And it just intrigued me that I wrote this three-verse song called Songwriters on the Run, and I just started to wonder why.

why they were in jail, why were they on the run, where were they running to.

And it just sort of consumed me over the next seven years.

I was just, it was like a mind puzzle.

And I was just sort of unpacking the song, which I've never done with one of my other songs.

And then in 2016, I wanted to try and write a novel.

And I tried a couple of ideas and then they all failed.

And then I, you know, 1,000 words and I just stopped.

And then I was about to give up.

And then I remembered the song.

I had a story in my head and I started to write the book and it just took off.

I wrote, you know, like 60,000 words fairly quickly.

That was the plot in my head that I got from the song.