Interview with Karina Machado

By Teuila Krause

Karina Machado is the Sydney-based bestselling author of three paranormal non-fiction novels – Spirit Sisters, Where Spirits Dwell and Love Never Dies. She currently works for Who magazine as a senior editor. Teuila Krause spoke to her recently about her experiences with the paranormal, her time working for magazines and plans for her next book.

TK: Was it always your dream to be a writer or did you have other aspirations originally?

KM: No, I think you’re quite right – it was always my dream to be a writer! I was one of those children who loved reading from a very early age. My parents were immigrants, we emigrated from Uruguay in South America when I was two years old, so in a sense books, specifically Golden Books, took the place of the big extended family left behind and became my closest friends. My parents were still learning to speak the language, but thankfully from day one they realised how much I loved books as a toddler and they bought them for me. Somehow, I taught myself to read them and I think I started reading by about the age of four. Probably at the age of seven, I first thought, ‘I want to be a writer’ although I didn’t quite know in what capacity. As a little kid reading Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree series and The Wishing Chair series, I just loved her stuff. I kind of thought, ‘Well maybe I’ll write these kinds of stories one day’ and I began to try my hand at poetry. As I got older, I began to think in what capacity I could work as a writer and one of the first things that came to mind was as a magazine writer. When I actually began to work in magazines, I realised quite quickly that it wasn’t for me – it’s a massive job! I’m quite happy to let others take care of the admin and finance, which is essentially what being an editor for a magazine involves. So yes I did always want to be a writer. I loved it. It was my thing.

T: How did you come to be so fascinated by the supernatural?

KM: It had a lot to do with my Mum. Early on and probably at the same age that I decided I wanted to be a writer, my Mum shared a couple of stories with me that took place in Uruguay. They were stories to do with precognitions, having a premonition of the imminent death of a loved one and I just remember how they lit up my imagination back then. There was another story she told me about how when she was pregnant with me, her cousin was grieving the recent, sudden death of his Dad. He was playing with his Dad’s antique revolver and playfully pointed it at my Mum. He went to pull the trigger and my Dad, who was sitting next to my Mum, said, ‘Don’t be silly!’ and languidly moved the gun one centimetre to the left and bang – he pulled the trigger and blew a big hole in my Grandfather’s screen door. And I remember my Mum telling me that story and together with the other stories about premonitions, I just thought, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s something greater than us at work here.’ There are mysteries out there and to me, that was incredibly appealing because kids can be quite morbid. A lot of them, and I was certainly one, tend to begin thinking about death and what it means. It just seemed that this idea of another realm or of a spirit world was infinitely appealing because it meant that there was more than what we could just see, feel, hear, etcetera, with our senses. Another thing that fired up my imagination in that regard was to do with my parents and how as a social thing, and I’ve written about this in my book, would have séances with friends, other Uruguayan immigrants. As the kids all ran around playing, we’d suddenly stop and realise, ‘Ooh, what are the adults doing?’ and we’d peek through a door and there they were with a Ouija board. And that just seemed so intriguing to us all. For the adults, now looking back I realise that was a way for them to maintain a connection with their homeland in a way, as well as maintaining a connection with each other. So yeah, all of those things fired up my imagination for mysteries.

TK: Is superstition a big part of the Uruguayan culture?

KM: I don’t know if it’s a big part, but it is a part. I think it’s more accepted. I remember as a kid, even though I was already here in Australia, some of these traditions were maintained. There was an understanding that sometimes if there were things wrong with your baby, it wasn’t a GP that could help you, it was a particular kind of lady in the neighbourhood who you’d take your child to and she would do some mysterious things. I remember we took my sister to one once, one of these sorts of magical ladies, and she somehow put oil and water together! She combined them somehow. They do other things, you know, like pinching a fold of skin on the baby’s back, and I guess these things were accepted because my mum would say to me that in Uruguay, if your child had certain problems and you’d take them to the doctor, the doctor would say, ‘Actually, you’re better off going to one of those ladies.’ So I guess in that sense it is more a part of life.

TK: Out of your three published titles, Spirit Sisters, Where Spirits Dwell and Love Never Dies, which would you consider to be the most challenging to write and why?

KM: I think the most challenging one to write was Where Spirits Dwell, the middle child. When I look back on how Spirit Sisters came to be published, how I wrote it and what a surprise success it was, that process was all very smooth and easy, even though at the heart of the writing there were difficult times. I was the mother of two very small children and I worked as well at Who Magazine. My husband just sort of did this thing where for a whole year, he took over absolutely every other aspect of family life so that I could write. So in that sense it was tricky, but it flowed beautifully. It flowed easily and it was such a success. And I remember how unexpected it was, it really was like that book was meant to be. Whereas with Where Spirits Dwell, I think it wasn’t born from a place of natural readiness to write it. I think the publishers were keen, and that’s completely understandable, to capitalise on the success of Spirit Sisters and commissioned it quite quickly afterward when perhaps me taking more of a break would’ve been a more prudent move. But you know, we were excited I guess to keep that momentum going. I’m terribly proud of that book. There are some stories in there that I think are actually my best work, but it was the book that was the least popular of the three so sadly, not as many people got to read those great stories. But yes, I do think there was an element of feeling like it was homework at times when I was writing it because it did come so quickly on the back of the other one.

TK: Do you have any otherworldly experiences of your own that stand out?

KM: I guess there was one in particular that was instrumental in my writing of Spirit Sisters. I always describe Spirit Sisters as having come from a place where many paths converged and one of these paths was the fact that my husband had begun to meditate. I discovered later that sometimes as a side effect of meditation, he began to see full apparitions in our house. I didn’t see them but I can certainly attest to the way the atmosphere in the house changed. Toys would come to life in the middle of the night, items would be falling down of their own accord, things clattering and banging at odd hours. That was a very unsettling and weird time. I’m grateful for it though in the sense that it galvanised me to write Spirit Sisters and I’m so happy about that. That’s a book I’m so proud of, but yes that was probably one of the biggest experiences for me. When I was little I thought I saw a ghost which I think is the first line in Spirit Sisters, but looking back now, I don’t know what it was that I saw. I think it was possibly a dream, possibly it was a ghost! Possibly it was the manifestation of my supreme interest in the paranormal as a little kid.

TK: You’re also a senior editor for Who magazine?

KM: Yes, Who is a great place. I started there 21 years ago as a fact checker. Back then, Who belonged to Time Inc. which is an American company, famous for having within its stable of magazines Time magazine, Life magazine, Sports Illustrated – so you know, it was a prestigious company. I was very, very honoured to get the job there as a fact checker, which in the American system, is the first rung of the journalistic ladder, sort of like an apprenticeship without being one. As a fact checker, and there was a team of us at that time, you’d get a big file after the writer has finished with their story and this was back in the days, pre-internet. The file had the story in there and all the details and research that belonged to the writer, and so my job was to go through and meticulously check each fact within the story. So if there was an age, wherever possible, you’d get the talent on the phone. If that was not possible, we had encyclopaedias and all sorts of other research tools and physical research tools in our library that we’d use. I left Who in between – I had two children within 18 months and they were offering redundancies at one point, so I left. But I went back and it was my ten years long service leave this year, and I’ve been an editor there ever since.

TK: What would you say is the best part of your job at Who?

KM: The best part of working at Who would be the variety of stories I get to work on and the variety of jobs that I get to do. As a senior editor – there used to be more of us but things are downsizing – I work closely with the news editor and together we will often edit each other’s work. I still write and I often write cover stories or features on news and human interest as well as celebrity stuff, but my main job is editing my colleagues’ work. We’ve got an entertainment editor, a features editor and we’ve got writer reporters who write as well, so whatever stories they write, I edit them to make sure that they are in Who’s style. I’ll edit them for style, flow and all of those things while trying to maintain the writer’s stamp as well. I don’t like to edit out every little thing. It’s quite a tricky business doing that, though I think the writers are happy with the jobs that I do on their work. So there’s that. There’s the editing and the writing – it could a be a story about the Kardashian sisters on the cover one week, another week it could be a feature on a family that’s undergone some extraordinary challenge and has come through the other end. ‘Ordinary people doing extraordinary things’ is our catchline. I’m also the books editor which means that I look after any book extract or any book related feature that we do and I publish a book review page once a month. I might receive 20 books in the mail from publishers which I then have to file away by month and will come to them when I’m preparing my book review page. I’m also the out and about editor, so again once a month I’ll put together a page on what cultural things are going on around the country. So there’s a lot! There’s plenty of variety there which is what I like the most.

TK: And the toughest part?

KM: I guess the hardest thing is that the hours can be very long. I work a four day week but it really is like five days in four. The Mondays and Tuesdays, which are our deadline days, can be very, very long days and can clock over 11 hours on those days. It’s tiring, and as the years go on, I feel that even more!

TK: What would you say has been the most memorable moment in your career so far?

KM: Oh look I think that has to be the success of Spirit Sisters. I guess firstly just the publication of it. As a little kid I knew I wanted to write a book, and I got to write it and then I got to write two more and now I’m going to write more of them as well! So I absolutely love that. Also I tip my hat in gratitude to Who and to the absolutely wonderful grounding and training that it has been. It’s been a schoolroom in terms of me learning the craft of a writer and an editor and I’m very grateful for that. But yes, I would say the publication of Spirit Sisters. Absolute highlight.

TK: Oh fantastic. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?

KM: At the moment, my interest in the paranormal has progressed and evolved. I am more interested in spirituality, which I guess my interest in the paranormal is a manifestation of without me knowing it. It has progressed to this natural place where I’m now fascinated in spirituality, the human mind and human potential. The idea that our thoughts create our reality, that we are more responsible for our lives than we could ever believe. It just takes for us to shift our perception inward and begin to realise this enormous power we have. I’m so fascinated in this at the moment, so my next work will embrace these ideas.

TK: I love that – what you just said.

KM: Oh great! Does that interest you as well?

TK: Yeah, yeah, just how we kind of… I guess, have a bit more power over our lives than we realise.

KM: Yeah we do! And I’m delving into so many of the spirit and wisdom traditions over the millennia and I love it. The Mystics and the Sufi poets… and Rumi! I love Rumi. I just think we’ve had clues like scattered crumbs throughout thousands and thousands of years but still, we don’t get it. There’s people waking up and realising, and that’s great, but I guess I want to contribute to that and write about it. I want to talk to people and help them realise that if there’s something in your life that’s not working for you, you can turn that around.

TK: So what advice would you give to aspiring writers?

KM: I would say read a lot. That was something that was my first love. In my late teens and early twenties, I read a lot of literary fiction which I think also gave me a wonderful grounding. I still love fiction but I mix it up with a lot of non-fiction these days as well. So read a lot, read a lot, read a lot! And practice a lot too! Write and read it out to yourself aloud – that’s really important. What was very interesting was just recently, I was in Melbourne recording my three novels as audio books. That was an exciting development because it’s a new lease of life for my work. They’ll be published as audio books in the UK and the US, which is thrilling, but it was such an interesting exercise to read them out loud and realise where I was repeating a word way too often throughout the three books. It’d be unusual for a reader of mine to read them all one after the other, but if they did, they would see the words I’m most fond of! I’ve always known the value of reading out loud but I can see now that I hadn’t really put that to use enough. So I would say read your work out loud to yourself and read a lot and also know why you want to be a writer. If it all is because you think you may find fame and fortune, then I would suggest delving deeper into your motivation and seeing if you find something else!

TK: Absolutely! And just lastly, what is one of your favourite books?

KM: During my childhood, I loved Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree series because it was like a can opener for the imagination as a kid, you know. It just shows you what’s possible in terms of fiction, of books, this beautiful escapism for a child reading it. You’re just suddenly transported to this amazing terrain of England’s rolling hills and this fabulous picnic and this tree that grew up into the sky. I just thought, ‘That’s a genius series.’ So there’s that. There is also Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I don’t re-read books very often but I have re-read that one, that’s one of the few. It’s a stunning, stunning achievement and it’s not an easy book to read but it’s got it all. I’m a huge fan of the Brontës. The other one that I love in terms of non-fiction is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. It’s a brilliant book that I think is his masterpiece. And if you’re an aspiring journalist as well, I guess it was the first book to really meld the genre of fiction and journalism, though journalism is not a genre… but non-fiction reading like a novel – amazing.

You can learned more about Karina Machado here.

Image care of Karina Machado.


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