by Gabriella Vukman
Mark said he was rejected by publishers at least 500 times but not 500 times too many.
Yarra Valley resident and father Mark Muposta-Russel’s debut novel ‘A Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’ has just been released and is making headway.
With the Hills starring as one of the novel’s prominent settings, this thriller delves into the life of the housewife and ex-killer Olivia Hodges in the midst of subverting gender roles and exploring themes of karmic tallies and redemption.
“I hadn’t seen the Hills be such a substantial feature in other works before, and I wanted to be a part of bringing that into a novel,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
Prior to moving to the Yarra Valley 12 months ago, Mr Muposta-Russel was a Hills resident and his time spent in the area heavily influenced his writing.
“As someone who has had some experience in the hills, you know it is a unique place, there is a real vibe to it, and it’s beautiful,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“You’re surrounded by these beautiful trees and these winding roads and these rain forest smells. It’s even got its own wizard and there’s quirky stuff all over the place.”
Toying with the progressive political atmosphere that is a prevalent feature in the Hills, Mr Muposta-Russel said that on top of this ‘knee-jerk lefty vibe’, he found the redolent and expressive nature of the place to be an excellent setting for his novel.
“The Hills are also just a really evocative place of mood in general. There are so many tiny roads that disappear up into the Hills themselves, into the rocks, into the moss that when it gets foggy around there, it feels like a Batman movie,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“There’s so much to the place itself and the wildlife that if you can capture 10% of that in a novel, it just adds a real layer that really helps with something like crime fiction or thrillers or the noir-ish idea of there being what you see and then what is actually happening.”
From conception to publication, the idea for ‘the Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’ has had many iterations.
“There was a pretty major shift, just because the idea itself is 20 years old. I came up with it fresh out of university and at the time it was very pretentious,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“I was basically doing this story about this ex hit man. At the time it was a male who felt that all of the murders he’d committed were straining on his soul and he needed to be absolved of all of his sins,”
“I never felt smart enough to write this story because it felt really deep and philosophical and I thought I’d have to read all these big books on satire, philosophy and religion.”
It wasn’t until after 20 years that the less philosophical and more dark and comedic version of Mark’s novel was born.
“Finally, 20 years down the track just as I was having my son, I realised that I’m never going to read those philosophical books, I’m never going to be smart enough to write this stuff and that book wouldn’t actually be read now so why bother writing it,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“Instead, I wanted to do something fun and with a bit more of an interesting thriller element so I changed the protagonist to a female and developed the storyline which is of the ex-hit woman wanting revenge on these violent criminals but being unable to murder them directly,”
“She kind of manipulates them into getting themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed.”
Mr Muposta-Russel said he didn’t know at the time that redirecting his novel would make things a lot easier.
“The thing that surprised me was that after all of those years of tortured brooding and pretentious douchiness, when I decided to make the novel fun, it just came out really quickly,” he said.
“I wrote a large portion of the first draft with my son strapped to me in a baby carrier while bouncing a football and trying to keep him napping.”
“The voice of Olivia is a bit bitter and self-deprecating with a dark and comedic tone. That was really fun to apply to this very grounded world that I had created.”
Armed with an idea, Mark’s journey to becoming a published author has been, like roads in the Hills, long and windy.
“I started off wanting to be a screenwriter and got lots of arts development grants and had representation but could never quite make it. Later when it turned out that one of my screenplays was getting a little bit of attention but not quite enough, I decided to try making it into a novel,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“I spent, I don’t know how many years, sending it out around the world to various agents and I’d get to the second round of edits with all these different editors and they’d all say lovely things but my work was never quite ready,”
“At the end of the day, they were absolutely right to reject it.”
Constantly being shortlisted for prizes, Mark knew his idea for a novel was a good one and that it was just a matter of redrafting until he got a ‘yes.’
Mark said people liked the concept.
“Each time I’d almost get there and I would have to make little tweaks to this and that,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“I’m a better writer now. I have worked hard and I have revised and revised and revised,”
“I also stopped caring about trying to shape something to what other people would like. It’s common advice but it took me a very long time to take it and just write something that I enjoy.”
Inspired by creators such as Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann, Mark wanted to create a new type of thriller, disparate from stereotypes.
Mark said he has always loved the idea of contract killers.
“There have been so many in the history of TV and cinema and books and they’re often these super professional, zen monk kind of identities,” he said.
“I don’t think people are really like that in real life. You think of anyone who’s in any job and they have their up days, their down days and a lot of the time they are just faking it until they make it so I wanted to play with that,”
When it comes to keeping the reader hooked, Mark makes an effort to allot agency to each of his characters.
“I think to keep people’s attention you have to keep things fresh and a little bit off kilter but over the entirety of the novel, the most important thing to keep people’s attention is to have the characters be real people with real agency,” Mr Muposta-Russel said.
“It is not just Olivia being this complex character, but every single character in a scene needs to have agency and be asserting their will on it,”
“If you believe that the villain isn’t just there to be beaten up by Olivia but is actually trying to do something and sometimes he is going to win, that generates uncertainty and that kind of uncertainty and tension creates that readability where you just need to see what the next twist is going to be.”
‘The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’ will hit shelves on 27 August.
