Liane Moriarty was overjoyed when her younger sister Jaclyn published her first book in 2000.
She was also filled with rage and envy.
With the publication of Feeling Sorry for Celia, Jaclyn had fulfilled her half of the sisters' shared childhood dream to become writers.
"The rage was really directed at myself because I … hadn't even given it a shot," Moriarty told ABC RN's The Book Show.
It was just the jolt Moriarty needed to finally start writing again, something she'd loved to do as a child but had let slip as an adult.
Her first attempt, an Olympics-inspired children's book, was "enthusiastically rejected by every publisher in Australia".
She then enrolled in a master's program and wrote what would become her first book, Three Wishes, published in 2003.
"You had to complete 30,000 words to complete the degree, and I wrote 100,000," she says.
Her breakthrough came 10 years later with her fifth novel, The Husband's Secret. The story of three women connected by a devastating secret, the book became a bestseller in the United States.
In 2014 came Big Little Lies, which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list, a first for an Australian author.
To date, Moriarty has published nine novels and three children's books which have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, and two of her novels have been adapted for the screen.
The adaptation of Big Little Lies – an HBO TV series created by Hollywood heavyweight David E. Kelley (The Practice; Ally McBeal) and starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Zoë Kravitz – was about as high profile as they come, winning five Primetime Emmy Awards in 2017.
In 2021, Kidman also starred in Nine Perfect Strangers, Hulu's limited series based on Moriarty's 2018 novel, alongside Melissa McCarthy and Michael Shannon.
Today, the Moriarty sisters – Liane, Jaclyn and Nicola, also a writer – send each other their finished manuscripts at the same time as they hit send to their respective editors.
But they are not looking for either honest feedback or constructive criticism: "As sisters, your one job is to read it really fast and to send a text very quickly saying, 'This is a masterpiece,'" Moriarty says.
A loss of confidence
Moriarty was born in 1966 and grew up on the North Shore in Sydney, the city where she still resides and where much of her fiction is set.
Her father Bernie, who died in 2020, commissioned her and Jaclyn to write stories for him when they were little: "He gave us our first publishing deals – he paid a dollar for an exercise book filled with words," she says.
By the time Moriarty was a teen, however, she'd lost the writing bug.
"As I grew up, I wrote less and less … I lost that crazy self-confidence that I had as a child," she says.
She considered journalism but instead pursued a career in advertising, which she says shaped her writing.
"Nobody wants to read advertising copy, so every sentence has to work. You almost have to trick people into reading it, so [you need to write] short, punchy sentences," she told ABC TV's One Plus One in 2018.
Stories of everyday trauma
Moriarty populates her books with ordinary people dealing with issues such as death, divorce and domestic violence.
Dr Michelle Aung Thin, a novelist and senior lecturer at RMIT's School of Media and Communication, says Moriarty's readers are "really interested in what she has to say about everyday trauma … People feel seen by her writing".
Many of Moriarty's characters struggle with infertility.
"I had my children very late, so I was desperate to have children myself, and I had a difficult time having them," says Moriarty, who has two children — George, 14, and Anna, 12 — with her husband Adam, a former farmer from Tasmania.
This experience surfaces in her fiction in the form of "characters who are childless and desperate to have babies," she says. In 2009's What Alice Forgot, Alice's sister Elisabeth struggles to fall pregnant, as does Erika in Moriarty's 2016 novel Truly Madly Guilty.
More often than not, she bestows these characters with the children they so desire.
"I always think, if I'm in charge of this world and this woman is desperate for a baby, I'm going to give her a baby," she says.
Newcastle Writers Festival director Rosemarie Milsom, who interviewed the author on stage at Canberra Writers Festival in August, says family is pivotal to Moriarty's fiction: "Not just the family you're born into, but the family you choose – which can be very close friends."
The problem with 'chick lit'
Moriarty's success is unprecedented in a publishing industry as small as Australia's.
"Her writing is incredibly successful, and it hits the market where the market is. Those are impressive skills," says Aung Thin.
"She's accessible as a writer … and understands that visuals and gestures are important – she makes it easy for people to see what she's doing in their mind's eye."
However, her focus on her characters' domestic lives has led her writing to be described as 'women's fiction', or, more problematically, 'chick lit' – a tag that Aung Thin describes as demeaning.
"Most people who read are women … It's one of those terms that belittles her work and diminishes the contribution women make as readers."
When Hollywood comes calling
In 2014, Nicole Kidman reached out to Moriarty – "her people called my people," the author laughs – to buy the rights to Big Little Lies.
Moriarty declined the offer to write the screenplay, saying she was happy to take a step back from the project.
"For me, part of the pleasure in writing is finding out what's going to happen in the story, and … I knew what was going to happen. It makes me want to cry with boredom, the thought of adapting my own book. I can think of nothing I want to do less," she says.
Instead, she says, "I was a very interested bystander getting to visit the set and enjoying seeing what they did with it."
She was surprised at the cast's commitment to the show. "I thought these actors would be quite jaded and not care as much as they cared, but I found it quite inspirational how much passion they put into the job," she says.
While her seven remaining novels have been optioned for film or television, Moriarty insists she doesn't write with the adaptation in mind. "I never have and never will," she says.
Proof, she says, is the fact that "a lot of the time my characters are thinking one thing and saying something completely different. I have a lot of internal monologues in my books. Even with Nine Perfect Strangers, I had pages and pages at the retreat where they were doing something called the Noble Silence, so there was no dialogue for pages on end".
Nor does she cast as she writes – except in the case of the novella that would become the second season of Big Little Lies. Her sister Jaclyn suggested she "have fun with it" and write a role for her favourite actor.
Emboldened, Moriarty took her advice and created a character with the inimitable Meryl Streep in mind.
"I can always remember saying to the producers, not quite believing my audacity, 'I have a role for Meryl Streep,' and they were laughing at me saying, 'Oh Liane, you've become so Hollywood, getting on the phone and saying, Get me Meryl!' – but then one day I got an email saying, 'We got you Meryl'."
Later, she tried the same tactic for Oprah Winfrey: "I was quite serious. I wanted Oprah, but I didn't get Oprah."
Australia vs the United States
Unusually for an Australian author, Moriarty found success in the US before Australia. At one point in 2015, she had three books on the NYT bestseller list, a rare achievement.
Newcastle Writers Festival director Rosemarie Milsom says part of the appeal of Moriarty's books to US readers is their Australian setting.
"I know that with our cultural cringe, we might find that a bit hard to believe, but she does not change her books to suit an American audience – she keeps the Australian settings, she keeps the Australian vernacular."
While Moriarty says she will always set her books in Australia, the Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers adaptations were set in California.
She says that unlike a Jane Harper novel, in which the Australian landscape is central to the narrative, her books "could happen anywhere".
Still, she hopes to see an adaptation of one of her novels retain its Australian setting. At this stage, The Last Anniversary – set in the Hawkesbury River region, north of Sydney – is the likeliest candidate.
"Bruna Papandrea, who's an Australian producer who was involved with both the last two productions, has promised me if we can get this one going, it has to be set in Australia … I would love to see [more] Australians play my characters," says Moriarty.
A Year of Joy
After a whirlwind few years of book tours, meetings with Hollywood producers and a memorable trip to the Emmys, Moriarty decided to take a 12-month break in 2019.
"The idea was that I would only do things that brought me joy," she says.
Rather than start a new novel, she thought she'd write some short stories to flex her writing muscles, and asked her sister Jaclyn to send her some writing prompts.
"She texted me a few lines describing a bike lying on the grass with a few apples lying next to it, and instead of writing a short story, that became the opening chapter of Apples Never Fall. It turns out that writing does bring me joy."
In honour of her supposed sabbatical, Moriarty named her Apples Never Fall protagonist — a 60-something mother-of-four who goes missing — Joy.
Joy Delaney and her husband, Stan, have sold their business – a tennis academy – and are unhappily retired. Joy is desperate for grandchildren, a secret longing she would never reveal to her dog, Steffi (Graf), let alone her now-adult offspring.
"[Joy] is at a difficult stage of her life … She's been so busy all her life … [and] everything has suddenly come to a stop. She and Stan are just not the sort of people who had plans for retirement," says Moriarty.
Drawing on real-life in fiction
Like Moriarty, Joy has recently discovered the world of podcasts, which she listens to using "fancy new wireless headphones" her son gave her for her birthday.
In Apples Never Fall, Joy listens to The Migraine Guy and This Dementia Life. Moriarty, on the other hand, got hooked on true crime podcasts, which in turn inspired the novel.
"Sadly, there are a lot of cases where a woman goes missing, and the main person of interest is her husband, and invariably, he is described as a loving father. And each time I would listen to that … I would think of the children," says Moriarty.
She wondered what would happen if that familiar true crime trope – the wife missing, the husband the suspect – played out when their children were adults. How would the parents' 40-year marriage look through the eyes of grown-up children?
"It's hard enough to think of your parents as just ordinary people, let alone to consider the possibility that one of them might be a murderer," says Moriarty.
As she began writing what would become Apples Never Fall, she had the premise – Joy's disappearance – and her sister's prompt, but no clear idea about plot.
"I did not know where Joy was, and I did not know if Stan was innocent or guilty," she reveals.
The dramatic appearance in chapter two of a stranger, who arrives unexpectedly on the Delaney doorstep, bleeding from a cut on her face, was similarly unmapped.
"It was an interesting device to have someone who turns up and knocks on the door, [but] I had no idea who she was or how she would be involved with Joy's disappearance," says Moriarty.
Instead, character and plot developed through the process of writing — which Moriarty says is typical for her.
"About two-thirds of the way through is when I know how it's going to end," Moriarty says.
"I can always remember the intersection where I was when I worked out how my three different plot lines for The Husband's Secret would come together. It's a glorious relief when I finally think, 'Yes, this works, this isn't going to change.' And then the novel has momentum."
Exhilaration, then terror
Despite her millions of book sales, each new writing project fills Moriarty with anxiety. "Every time I sit down to write a new book, I'm flailing about – I'm thinking I can't do it," she says.
As the book progresses, she begins to feel more at ease: "Once a story takes hold of me, that's what I'm always looking for – that pleasure of losing your sense of self."
When the writing is done and the manuscript submitted, she begins to worry again.
"First of all, there's the exhilaration [of completing a book]; there is the feeling of relief, and then it goes. A week or so later, that's when the terror begins, and the anxiety," Moriarty told One Plus One after the publication of Nine Perfect Strangers.
After so many books, she "hoped that would have got better by now … but it seems to be part of the process".
