ON THE ROAD

Author ML Rio went from literary outsider to one of BookTok's hottest stars thanks to her debut novel, If We Were Villains. Now she's back with Hot Wax, an incendiary tale of rock 'n' roll at its most gloriously unrestrained and authentic

- By Matt Nixson

NOVELIST ML Rio is reminiscing about one of the first gigs she went to as a 14-year-old US high school student. Sheffield's own Arctic Monkeys, as it happens. "None of my friends knew who they were so I went by myself. I actually stole my mother's car and drove like four states away because I wanted to see them," she chuckles.

It was driving home like a "bat out of hell" in the middle of the night - desperate to return the car before her parents discovered they were both missing - that she was pulled over for speeding by a Virginia state trooper.

"Which was tricky because I didn't have a driver's licence," she continues. "I only had a learner's permit, so I wasn't supposed to be in the car by myself. I wasn't supposed to be driving after 9pm. And I certainly wasn't supposed to be doing 20 miles over the speed limit. But this is the kind of thing that could only happen in America."

Her life "flashing before her eyes", the trooper swaggered over to her car, took a look at her permit and asked: "Are you religious, ma'am?' I was like, 'What is the right answer here?' Guessing by this man's accent I'm gonna go with 'Yes', so I was like, 'Yes sir, raised a Roman Catholic', and he says, 'Well I want you to say a prayer of thanks on your way home, because I'm going to let you off with a warning.'

It's an anecdote that reveals much about Rio's early love for music and determination to see bands live - even if it meant taking a few risks along the way. And it feeds into her breakneck new novel, Hot Wax, when 10-year-old Suzanne, daughter of Rio's messy late-Eighties wannabe rock star Gil - frontman of Gil and the Kills - crashes her mother's car coming home from an illicit gig.

"At least I didn't crash," the author notes dryly.