By George Bellinger
At just14 years of age, Tamborine Mountain local Kaia Kingston, has achieved something that many aspiring writers dream of – releasing their first novel.
Whispers through the Wire, which Kaia wrote and illustrated over the past year, is a historical detective novel set in Manchester in the year 1900, and it follows the cities only female detective, Cecily Slate, as she investigates a series of threatening phone calls.
Kaia explained that the idea was sparked from an English essay at school.
“We were asked to create a plot starting from one sentence and to work backwards around that sentence,” she said.
“So I had to make this whole plot around it, and it was meant to be a short creative story, but it ended up turning into a whole novel.”
Kaia was born in England, which inspired the novel’s setting.
“I feel like I have quite a few connections with my heritage in England, which obviously inspired that theme of being in Manchester,” she said.
The genre was inspired by her love of murder-mystery classics.
“I also grew up reading a lot of classic novels and watching a lot of murder mysteries like Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes, that kind of thing,” she said.
Kaia explained that she enjoyed the creative process of writing Whispers Through the Wire, along with taking on the challenge of drafting, editing and illustrating the project herself.
“I finished my first draft in two months and that was an easy bit, like the actual creative bit I really enjoyed,” she said.
“I’d say that the hardest bit was actually just finding the motivation to keep on editing and improving it because it gets quite tedious after a while, but honestly, it’s definitely worth it.”
She has had a lifelong passion for writing, which has culminated in her achievement of completing her first novel.
“I feel like I’ve always been writing my whole life, I’ve always loved it,” she said.
“It was such an amazing privilege to get to complete it.”
Whispers through the Wire is available for purchase now on from Amazon.
