PHOTO: Nell Gavin, literary fiction author and former software product manager, writes with quiet power and profound emotional insight.
Literary Fiction Rooted In Life Experience And Deep Reflection
Nell Gavin blends reincarnation, satire, and personal insight to craft emotionally resonant fiction, drawing from a rich background in technical writing, software, and a life shaped by change and introspection.
Nell Gavin’s life reads like a masterclass in reinvention. From the factory floor to the pressure chambers of software product management, her trajectory defies convention—rich in experience, marked by curiosity, and driven by a quiet, persistent urge to make sense of it all. Though she didn’t set out to become a writer, it seems inevitable in retrospect: her past lives—real and imagined—now ripple through her fiction with depth, resonance, and remarkable clarity.
Her acclaimed novel Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn is more than historical fantasy; it is a study in emotional reckoning and karmic continuity, written with the restraint of a technical writer and the introspection of a philosopher. Hang On and The Historian Project further reveal Gavin’s ability to transform trauma into narrative and observation into satire, all while honouring the complexity of being human.
There is healing in her work—deliberate, unflinching, and quietly radical. Whether reconstructing Tudor tragedy or reflecting on a post-pandemic world through speculative eyes, Gavin engages the personal with intellectual precision and emotional honesty. Her voice is unadorned but potent, refined through discipline and unafraid of vulnerability.
Even in solitude, Nell Gavin finds connection—with her characters, her readers, and the selves she has been. Her stories may span centuries and worlds, but their true terrain is the inner life, examined courageously and shared with grace.
What first inspired you to blend reincarnation and historical fiction in Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn?
I wanted to step outside of myself and view the emotional complexities of a personal situation as a story I could view dispassionately, from a distance. Reincarnation was the plot device I used, along with personal metaphors: “this really means that,” even if they didn’t appear to be related to what I described. I placed the characters in multiple situations and studied them from multiple angles, explored the cause-and-effect of their motivations and actions and resulting karma, learned a lot, and made personal adjustments in my attitude and behaviour based on my examinations and conclusions, and voila. Problem solved.
How did your background in technical writing and software product management shape your approach to writing fiction?
Technical writers must use the least number of words in the clearest possible way. That is my approach to writing fiction as well, so my style leans toward “sparse.” I try to choose words that have power, rather than multiple words that say the same thing but with less impact.
Software product management requires a lot of mental effort. Your mind is always running at its highest speed, and you are constantly monitoring a million parts in a set of gears that cannot fail. Team members leave or miss deadlines, so you step in to complete their tasks in addition to your own. You regularly face unexpected catastrophes you must resolve by the end of day. The stress is sometimes overwhelming, and when you leave your desk, your mind does not shut off. I churned prose in my head while the gears were still spinning.
I couldn’t have written a novel with the complexity of Threads otherwise. There was a lot to keep track of in terms of narrative, story development, changing dialects, historical accuracy, the development and evolution of the various characters over lifetimes, their karma, and even the flow and rhythm of my word choices. I was still “managing a software product.”
The process was a lot, but I was stuck in traffic, so it was fine. I simply switched gears at the same high speed, and I wrote Threads in my head as I drove to and from work during rush hour. Then I typed it out after I put my kids to bed. I had a photographic memory of the manuscript, which I replayed in my head as I drove every day. I even found typos that way!
What drew you to satire for The Historian Project, and how did writing it differ from your earlier, more trauma-focused work?
Satire fit. I wrote about a future civilisation that time travels back to 2021 and then comments on the problems in our world, which they have largely solved in their own time, making us look very backward by comparison. It’s an anti-war novel, and I truly hope its message is powerful, and that it resonates.
It was fun to write because it was more playful than the other two books. However, it was still “trauma.” The Pandemic was traumatic. In fact, that’s probably why I came out of hiding to write another book: the trauma of the Pandemic. I needed a little therapy.
Can you describe the emotional process of writing a novel as a form of healing, particularly with Threads and Hang On?
I superimpose myself onto the characters as I write. They act out exactly what I feel whenever I imagine myself in the situation I’m developing, not what I think a character should feel in that situation. I act them out in my head, using myself as a reference. My characters are puppets, and they talk through my problems for me in different voices.
Everyone is complex enough to represent multiple characters in a story. There’s a part of you in all the characters you create anyway, so use them to explore yourself and the many facets of your personality and character. Draw from the separate parts of you that are most like each character, then examine yourself from that angle. Voila. Therapy. Just be open and honest and pay close attention to what you learn as you write.
With translations into multiple languages, how do you feel your stories resonate differently with international audiences?
There is no way to know, except to read the reviews. The messages in the stories seem to translate, I think. There’s nothing significantly different in the reviews from different countries, in fact they are more similar than I expected.
The most extraordinary thing to me was touching readers who were literally on the other side of the world. It was humbling and mind-boggling. For instance, I remember reading a review translated from Chinese, where a reader confessed to crying at the end of the story, then commented that the book had helped her understand herself better. It was a lesson in the magic of “human connectedness.”
What advice would you offer other authors facing setbacks, whether emotional, creative, or related to the business side of writing?
Keep a journal, especially if you experience any kind of trauma. Write yourself out of trauma, because it works. Password-protect your journal file, show it to no one and keep it safe from prying eyes. Then write about whatever you like, talk about people behind their backs, judge everyone harshly in a nasty tone, be bitter, hurl objects and write rap lyrics if you like. Insert images of cats. Whatever. It’s cathartic, and nobody will know. But always be honest with yourself about everything that makes you what you are – no cheating – even when it hurts. In fact, the process is most effective when it hurts. You can’t know yourself if you don’t explore yourself, and journaling helps. Once you know yourself, setbacks and problems are easier to address, because you’re operating on firmer and sturdier ground.
