Emerging Writers Series: Mark Mupotsa-Russell
“If you treat people well, they’ll usually show up for you. If you’re a horrible person, you may get the things you want, but these victories will feel empty/lonely, or you’ll become paranoid that they’ll be taken away at any moment. I’m also cynical, though, so part of me thinks the idea that horrible people get their comeuppance is a fiction sold to us by corporations and big tech to keep us from rising up in revolution against our exploitative super-rich overlords … or something.”
One of the best things about writers' festivals isn’t necessarily hearing from the authors you know and love - it’s getting to hear from and meet new authors whose books you might not have on your radar.
This is definitely what I learned from attending the Tamar Valley Writers Festival recently, where I got to meet Mark Mupotsa-Russell and discover his debut, ‘The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’. It’s a fun, pacey rollercoaster of a read and the perfect summer book for anyone on the lookout.
Mark also kindly agreed to an interview, and it was a pleasure to chat with him about the (long) road to publishing his debut, lessons learned, why your book pitch is a vital but underrated skill, and what he really thinks about karmic debt.
Welcome, Mark! To kick us off, tell us about your background and what inspired you to write a novel.
I studied professional writing at university and then spent the next 20 years collecting rejections! I’ve always been a movie nerd, and I tried my hand at screenwriting at first. I did okay in some competitions, got a Screen Australia development grant, and had a couple of screenplays optioned, but I never got further than that.
I decided to adapt one of my scripts into a middle-grade novel. After a dozen terrible drafts, that manuscript got shortlisted for a few awards and got to second-round edits with a bunch of publishers – but I still never got past that almost stage. I kept writing books, and three novels and 500-odd rejections later, I wrote The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt.
Your debut novel, ‘The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’, is such a thrilling mix of emotional narrative and crime/thriller narrative. It hooked me in from the first chapter. What’s the inspiration behind the story?
That’s so lovely to hear – thank you! It was originally a screenplay idea 20 years ago. The core concept was similar: a contract killer is so broken by their own violence that they quit, and then when bad things happen to them years later, they believe it’s karmic retribution for their murderous past. But it was a male protagonist who didn’t get revenge on the people who wronged him; instead, he lurked outside windows having deep thoughts about guilt, existentialism and masculinity. It was exactly the kind of pretentious drivel you’d expect from a twenty-something dude fresh out of uni. I was just self-aware enough to realise I didn’t know anything about those big subjects yet, so I put the idea aside until I’d read hefty books on philosophy and religion and felt ‘smart enough’ to write it.
Two decades later, when my son was about to be born, I thought, ‘If not now, when?’ By then, I knew I’d never read those hefty books, which was fine because I had zero interest in writing that pretentious story. Instead, I turned it into something fun and funny, with a dark and raunchy sense of humour, morally ambiguous characters, and a female protagonist – Olivia – who could poke fun at her self-important brooding. The moment I had Olivia’s voice, the story flowed easily.
And what came first for you: the narrative or the characters?
In the original version, the narrative definitely came first, which is probably why it didn’t work. Back then, I treated stories like maths problems: conflict + stakes = drama! I’d spent so long as a (bad) screenwriter that I had an unhealthy reliance on structure, where I’d throw plot elements at a character to force them down a pre-planned track.
I had to fail for a long time to realise that the stories I love could only happen to the characters in them because their unique backgrounds, personalities, and reactions create the plot. I’m still glad I have an understanding of story structure, but I actively try to forget it when I write something new. I’ll start with a concept and maybe a few big moments, then I imagine sitting down with the characters over coffee or booze, and they’re telling me about this incredible thing that happened to them. It’s made the stories much more organic.
I love how you’ve subverted key gender stereotypes, giving us a complex female hitwoman in Oliva and an emotionally intelligent husband/father figure in Jai. I really enjoyed reading the authentic dynamic between them. What motivated you to create a female protagonist?
A lot of it was a reaction to genre tropes. The loner male with a dark side, brooding about his masculinity, is incredibly overdone in thrillers and noir fiction. It was much more interesting to have a female protagonist because she could recognise and react to the misogynistic world she’s in.
There are some fantastic hitwomen in books and on screen, but they’re rare and outnumbered by one-dimensional superwomen, high-kicking in a catsuit and honey-potting the Russian ambassador. The thing that interested me, though, is that female contract killers do exist. They probably work everywhere that male contract killers work, but they’re definitely documented in the large organised crime outfits of Europe, Asia and Central and South America. And most of them don’t have these amazing Jason Bourne-level skills. Instead, their main qualification is being willing to kill anyone at any time.
I was interested in how that job would affect a real person – a woman I might know or meet. It added fun plot complications, too, because Olivia can’t brute force her way through this world of roided-up violent men, which means she has to think her way through, and it also means those men underestimate her.
You shared that the journey from inception to publication for ‘The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt’ was a lengthy one. What were some of your key takeaways while refining your manuscript and finding the right publisher?
It was a long time brewing – 20 years – but once I found Olivia’s voice and decided I wanted to make the book fun, I was surprised how easily it came. The tone, characters and structure have stayed basically the same, though the final version is tighter and incorporates great notes from my editors.
My main takeaway is that so much of getting published is about finding the right publisher. Even though the earlier manuscript was quite similar to this final version—the same book that readers and reviewers are giving me wonderful feedback on—it was still rejected by multiple agents in Australia and overseas, as well as a few publishers. And they were right to reject it.
Bookselling is hard, and it only works when the people doing the selling are passionate about that story. Affirm Press has been so great, and they just got the book straight away. It’s also reinforced for me how much luck is involved. In an even wilder stroke of luck, some scouts saw the announcement that Affirm had acquired it, and suddenly, a bunch of international development companies were bidding for the screen rights. An amazing team grabbed them up, which is full-circle, dream-come-true stuff!
When we caught up at the festival, you mentioned that defining your ‘elevator pitch' was one of the challenges you didn’t anticipate when getting your manuscript out there. This is an underrated (often under-discussed) aspect of writing and publishing. What are your key tips for other emerging writers on this?
A great trick for crafting your pitch is to make someone else do it for you. Have someone bookish – another writer is great, but sometimes a keen bookworm is even better – read the manuscript and then ask them to describe it as if they’re telling a friend about a book they loved. They’ll strip it down to its bare essentials much more easily than you.
With our own work, we often get caught up explaining the themes, extraneous plot stuff, or just cool elements we’re proud of, but if someone asked you to give a two-sentence pitch of any great book in your genre, you’d immediately identify the specific plot, story, character or tonal elements that make it stand out.
I asked my agent, editors and publicist how each of them would pitch my book, then combined their thoughts with my original pitches and came up with: ‘The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt is about a suburban mum with a dark past, who sets out to take revenge on a group of violent criminals who’ve wronged her. She can’t kill them directly because she believes that will bring karmic retribution on her family, so she manipulates the men into getting themselves killed through their anger, ego and greed.’
I’m always keen to hear about what inspires others. Do you have any creative philosophies or ideas (or cliches!) you lean on when writing?
Whenever possible, I remind myself to be brutally honest – at every stage of the process. With my characters, be honest about how they would react to a situation, no matter how much it stuffs up my plan for where the plot needs to go.
In editing, ask things like: “Is this section the best it can be, or am I trying to skate by letting it be ‘functional’” or “Is this plot point working, or am I just polishing the dialogue and prose trying to hide the fundamental problem?” Ultimately, I want to be most honest before sending the manuscript off: “Is this ready, or am I just burned out/sick of looking at it/desperate to get it published already?”
It’s a fine line between brutal honesty and beating yourself up, but one thing you can guarantee is that an agent or publisher will answer the question, “Is this ready?” extremely honestly.
What’s next for you? Are you working on anything new you could tell us a little about? Are there any events we can catch up with you at?
An upside of being rejected so many times is that I was afraid to pin all my hopes on one project, so by the time Affirm Press picked up the Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt, I’d almost finished the first draft of my next book. I kept working on it during breaks in the editorial process, and Affirm has picked that one up, too. We’re currently editing it, and it’s planned to come out in late August/early September 2025. It’s a road-trip thriller about a mother and child on the run, fleeing up the east coast of Australia to escape powerful people – and it’s all told from the perspective of a six-year-old boy.
I’ll be taking a bit of a break over the holidays before doing a bunch of library events in the new year. They’ll all be up on my website markmupotsarussell.com, or my Instagram @markwillrussell
And last question: What are your thoughts on karmic debt?!
I think I have a similar sense of superstition to Olivia. Intellectually, I don’t believe in anything religious or supernatural, but it’s also very easy to convince me I’ve accidentally cursed myself or some innocuous action will cause me bad luck.
On that intellectual level, I think karmic debt is more about the fact that past interactions with other people come back to haunt you.
If you treat people well, they’ll usually show up for you. If you’re a horrible person, you may get the things you want, but these victories will feel empty/lonely, or you’ll become paranoid that they’ll be taken away at any moment. I’m also cynical, though, so part of me thinks the idea that horrible people get their comeuppance is a fiction sold to us by corporations and big tech to keep us from rising up in revolution against our exploitative super-rich overlords … or something.
Read Elaine’s review of A Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt here.
Mark Mupotsa-Russell is a writer living on Wurundjeri Country in the Yarra Ranges. His debut novel, The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt, won the 2023 Affirm Press Mentorship Award. Before writing novels he was a screenwriter, film reviewer, cocktail columnist, PR consultant and communications adviser in the suicide prevention sector. He lives among the trees with his art therapist superstar wife, hilarious son and a moodle majestically named 'Mufasa'.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
