The last time Christine Leunens joined Nine to Noon it was from LA, just hours ahead of the Oscars, where Taika Waititi would win Best Adapted Screenplay for JoJo Rabbit.
It was adapted, of course, from Christine's book Caging Skies.
In the two years since then, she's been busy researching a particularly tumultuous time in New Zealand's history - the 1980s and the impact the Springbok Tour, nuclear testing in the Pacific and bombing of the Rainbow Warrior had at the time.
The result is a new novel, In Amber's Wake, a love story set in Auckland, Cambridge and Antarctica, which is already destined for the silver screen, with help from Thelma and Louise producer Mimi Polk Gitlin.