Take an Auckland lesbian builder named Jinx with a penchant for breaking the rules, introduce her to a Central Otago town where the local women are over lobbying their council and have decided to build a much-needed public toilet themselves ... and you have the ingredients of a great story. Those ingredients have been cooked up into delicious-sounding novel The Open Accounts of an Honesty Box by first-timer Julie Helean, a psychologist and health planner with an intriguing life experience which includes truck driving, building and protesting. The novel's setting is a place close to Helean's heart. While she lives in Auckland now, she was born in Dunedin and her family had a crib in the tiny town of Naseby, which lies below Mt Ida. "So I'm very familiar with that Central Otago landscape. And I really miss it. When you move from the South Island to the North Island, there are wonderful things in the north, but I think if you've had a childhood in tussock and high altitude, even a good beach on a sunny day can't compensate for that. I do get very homesick for the High Country." The Open Accounts of an Honesty Box is set in an incredibly idyllic-sounding fictitious town named Easy and Helean says she had fun writing her debut novel and it's in turn light-reading, comparing it to the style of the scribe who encapsulated gay San Francisco, Armistead Maupin. "I really like how he played with the stereotypes of communities, but in such an affirming kind of way. You can kind of have a bit of a laugh at yourself." While it's light, Helean says the book also has a few serious contemporary themes underneath it, such as women in non-traditional work and how communities adjust to change. The book will of course appeal to lesbians, but the author has already had good feedback from straight women too and is interested in what the wider community will think of her story. "It shouldn't be that unusual to read a book with one lesbian character in it." Julie Helean Living in New Zealand's biggest city and writing rather dreary-sounding DHB planning reports by day, Helean has ability many writers dream of; she can turn her words from facts and figures to frivolity and fiction at the click of a keyboard. "I can just jump into it so quickly," she says. "I think because it feels really nice. Report writing is so dry. It's absolutely soulless and passionless and you can't use an adjective or an adverb or a pronoun, or anything that might be in any way kind of wanting to connect with the readership," she giggles. "It's actually hard to write like that really, because it's not how humans operate in the world. Creative writing just completely opens the door on all that lovely heart and soul stuff and you can just be in that place where you're completely exposed, undefendable and unguarded. It's kinda really nice." Helean's been taking creative writing courses for about ten years. In 2008 completed the Masters in Creative Writing course run by the University of Auckland, under the esteemed mentorship of Professor Witi Ihimaera. It seems she has a natural talent – one of her first short stories was published in the country's foremost literary journal Landfall. "It was a complete surprise to me," Helean recalls. "But it was a bit of a problem because when you do something for the first time you think 'well that was kinda easy getting a story published'. You're really naive. And then I realised when I started entering competitions that actually it's really, really, really hard to your get your work in anybody's face really." She therefore has plenty of praise for her publisher, the Paekakariki-based Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, which she says has been really great in supporting a gay book. The Women's Bookshop in Auckland has also been a big supporter and is hosting the launch of The Open Accounts of an Honesty Box on Tuesday, as well as offering the novel for sale online for those who can't make it to its Ponsonby store. In the meantime, Helean already has another book underway, which will likely have new fans lining up in wait after they sink their teeth into her delicious-sounding debut. The Open Accounts of an Honesty Box by Julie Helean will be launched: • Tuesday 12 April 6pm at the Women's Bookshop in Ponsonby Road • Thursday 14th April 5.30pm at Tuatara Gallery, Bank Street, Whangarei • Sunday 22 May (time TBC) at Paekakariki Jacqui Stanford - 10th April 2011