Yesterday marked 15 years since the M7.3 earthquake here in Canterbury. I doubt there’s been a single day since then that I haven’t, at some point in the day, thought about earthquakes. I even sleep under a quilt inspired by the 2010 quake.

Earlier this year, I took a friend, who was visiting from overseas, to Quake City, the museum dedicated to our earthquakes in 2010-2011, which devastated Christchurch. I thought I would be okay visiting the museum, since the quakes were so long ago. But facing that exhibition, everything about those days, weeks, and months came rushing back. At one point, my friend turned to me and said, “You talk like this happened yesterday.”

It felt like it had happened yesterday.

The quakes changed me, changed everyone who was here at the time.

The quakes made me a New Zealander. In the aftermath, when communities were rallying together to help everyone, I realised that this was the place I wanted to be. When the world came crashing down, I wanted to be in a place where university students mobilised a massive volunteer force to dig liquefaction from people’s houses, where farmers airlifted food into the city, where ordinary people organised the collection and distribution of blankets and other homewares for people who had lost everything, where spaces left empty in the city by demolished buildings were turned into temporary parks and places of joy.

This week I got the beta reader comments back from my next book, Draconic Search and Rescue,  in which the Alpine Fault ruptures, so earthquakes have been on my mind a lot. None of my beta readers experienced the Canterbury quakes—most of them hadn’t even been born yet. Writing the book, I worried that I would frighten my readers (8-13 year-olds are my target market) with a book about the Alpine Fault rupture. When it happens (and it will), the consequences for the whole country will be huge, and some towns are likely to be entirely destroyed. Researching for this book kept me awake at night, inspired me to be even more particular about my own earthquake preparedness, and reminded me that I’m not entirely crazy to ensure that, wherever I go, I’m prepared to walk home (hi vis vest and water bottle in the car, check, comfortable shoes, check, jersey, check).

But my beta readers wanted more danger, more fear. For them, it isn’t real. The rumble of a large truck doesn’t have them pausing to listen, make sure it’s just a truck. They don’t look for the emergency exits every time they enter a room. They don’t mentally assess the construction date of every building and consider whether it will collapse in the next quake.

So this week, I’m ratcheting up the danger in my book. Shoving my characters closer the destruction, maybe breaking a limb or two. And if I’m a bit jumpy for the next week or so, you’ll know why.