When I decided to write the Bunyip Jones books, I wanted an international cast.
Originally, it was simply because if I wanted the creatures they encountered to come from all over the world, I figured they should, too.
And it felt a bit sexier than a bunch of Australians knocking about the globe, going “Crikey? Whadda ya reckon that is, Bruce?” 😂
Which is fine in theory.
But when it came to actually writing it… well, then the fiddly little specifics of that choice kicked in.
Suddenly, I was thinking things like “If Pia is Scottish, how do I make her sound Scottish?” or “How do I make Kevin sound like he’s from Nigeria?”
I could have gone with a phonetic accent.
But… ew, frankly.
I hate that. Unless it’s funny. And being funny is the point. But — here it definitely was not.
I needed something else. Something… better.
The answer came with Catch.
He’s American. I know Americans. I know how they speak. But I’ve also read their literature, and they never spell out their accents phonetically.
Their written dialogue is regular English, but if someone has a strong accent or a specific dialect, they add a word here or there for “flavour”.
And you very quickly get the idea that Person A is from New York, but Person B is from Alabama.
Applying that to Catch was easy.
His “look” came from the way I saw people — men especially — presenting themselves when I was in Portland.
He says “miles” instead of “kilometres”, and measures in feet and inches. When he talks about his mother, he calls her “Mom.” He says “ass”, not “arse”, like Yip does.
And I applied the same principle to every character — including Yip herself.
You know she’s Australian because the way she expresses herself says that she is. She says “crikey” and “yeah, nah”.
When Catch talks about his “Mom”, she says “Your Mum.”
Which then leads us back to Pia and Kevin.
For Kevin, I deliberately avoided anything resembling an accent. He speaks a few words in Central Kanuri, just as a reminder, but otherwise his Nigerian background isn't something I try to perform through his dialogue
Pia was more complicated because the more emotional she becomes, the more Scottish she gets.
A simple example:
If Pia was calm and someone showed her a baby, she might say “Aw, look. A wee baby. Adorable.”
But if she was emotional, it would be more like, “Aye, and ye brought a wee bairn? Eejit!”
Or she might just break into Scottish Gaelic. 🤷♀️
I had to choose when to dial it up and dial it back, the whole time feeling like I was walking some kind of tightrope between “good characterisation” and “gone too far, this is becoming a farce now”.
Either way, she kept me on my toes, because I spent far too much time looking at Scottish dialect sites for what Scottish people do say, and, more importantly, what they don’t say.
I have several Scottish friends, too. If I got it wrong… well. You’ve heard the legends about fiery Scottish tempers. Whether they were true or not, I never wanted to find out 😂
Oddly enough, it was one of my Scottish friends who inspired how Catch’s Irish side worked.
I have a friend who was raised in Scotland, but lived in Australia for long enough that I didn’t notice any accent when I first met her.
We used to work together.
And first, I only ever saw her at work. I thought she was Australian.
Eventually, we became friends and, one day, she invited me to her house for… something. I don’t remember what.
But what I do remember was sitting in the passenger seat of her 1970s VW Beetle, eyeing the fire extinguisher fastened to the console beside me and fastening my seatbelt with great care when my friend announced, “And off we go!” in the thickest Scottish brogue ever!
😳
I did a double-take.
I thought I’d misheard.
Then, she said something else. I don’t even remember what — but I do remember what I said in reply.
Like an idiot, I blurted, “When did you become Scottish!?”
When she finished laughing at me, she explained her history.
And that’s how I learned she could drop in and out of her accent at will — but it was always there when she was relaxed.
And if you’ve read my books, you might have noticed that Catch does the same thing with his Irish accent. Not in Book 1, but by the end of Blood on the Ferns and everything after, he’s pure American most of the time— especially when he’s working — and then, when it’s quiet, or when it’s just him and Yip, the Irish sneaks out.
And Irish was even harder to wrangle than Scottish.
There are a lot of specifics about how and when certain words could be used, and I didn’t always get it right, but I’ve done everything I can to be as authentic as possible.
But I’ve avoided anyone Irish ever uttering the word “Begorrah”. No self-respecting Irish person would ever use that word.
So neither do my Irish characters.
Even the English characters, like Sabrina, took a little work.
Every culture has its own dialect, its own rhythms, and its own words that are unique to them.
And what I’ve tried to do to make my characters feel as authentic as I can is weave those cadences and words into their speech when it feels appropriate.
No more, no less.
Any more, and the character might start to feel like a caricature, and that was something I was stalwartly avoiding. I wanted to be respectful to the cultures these characters were based in, not turn them into some kind of bad joke.
And that took some work.
I listened to hours of YouTube videos from creators who came from the areas in question to try and get an ‘ear’ for the cadence.
It’s a really hard thing to put into words, but if you listen to an accent for long enough, you sort of get a sense of its rhythm.
And I think, by the time it went to print, it was pretty solid. I haven’t had any readers come to me and say, “We’d never say that!”
Not yet, at least. 🫠
I live in fear.