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After a virus decimated the oyster industry in 2010, Snells Beach resident Hailey Roussin-Guillemot found the inspiration to write her first book, Ballet for Men in Gumboots.
Hailey and her husband Gwendal sold their house in Waiheke and purchased an oyster farm in Mahurangi just as the virus began to take hold.
“All we had was a lot of mud and sticks,” she say. “No oysters.”
But the conspiracy theories put-forward for the cause of the disease captured Hailey’s imagination and the lack of work provided ample time for writing.
“The origin of the virus is the mystery which drives the story. There was an undercurrent of suspicion over who was responsible for introducing the virus to our waters. The answer is still unknown.”
The book is set in a fictional small rural NZ town, with a variety of colourful characters, including “the dodgy caretaker, the horny chef and the alcoholic barber”.
“Local readers will recognise some of the elements of the town, but I wanted a wide readership to identify with the place, so didn’t want to tie it down by setting it in a Mahurangi town.”
But she describes the book as being Kiwi humour, in the vein of Barry Crump.
She wrote the book in seven weeks, but it took 11 months to produce.
“You just have to have the first kernel of inspiration. Once I started writing, the plot started to open up as I went.”
The book is self-published and is available at Warkworth Paper Plus, Mahurangi East Library in Snells Beach and at Amazon.com.
