Carmel Shute
When people ask me now about process, I say find one that works for you: for me, it includes walking, considering and feeling out landscape, writing and discarding, putting one paragraph down after another, and seeing if it works, if it flows. Once I realised that, writing became a joy again. I found out who the killer in Stone Town was, at 68,000 words. I really hope it’s less than that for the book I’m working on now.
Eleven-year-old Stefanie Hinrichs came to Australia looking for paradise –and found herself trapped in the marriage from hell. In The Messiah’s Bride (Viking/Penguin, 2023), investigative journalist Megan Norris unravels the story of Stefanie’s lost childhood, her courageous escape with the messiah’s child, and how she eventually brought the cult down. Megan outlined what happened to Robyn Walton for Sisters in Crime Australia.
Sisters in Crime is thrilled to announce the resumption of Murder Mondays after a five-month break. Our new presenter is Jacq Ellem, bibliophile, copywriter, occasional broadcaster, award-winning podcaster, and a member of the new Tasmanian chapter. This time round, our guest author is Nicki Greenberg who won Sisters in Crime’s 22nd Davitt Award for Best Children’s Novel for The Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel (Affirm Press).
Popular French police procedural. Captain Julia Scola (played by Claire Keim) is a proud police officer, like her father. She’s experienced and efficient and, at home, supported by her partner Daniel. At work, she’s in the bad books with some colleagues for reporting corruption and she has a new boss, Novak Lisica. He was a defence lawyer, is now a fast-tracked senior police officer, and he was her childhood friend and teenage boyfriend. She cannot work with him.
Sisters in Crime’s Chair of Communications, Sara Hood, is standing down to travel the world so we have taken the opportunity to re-think our structure and press gang (!) more people into our team. Please welcome: Ani Allbutt, who joins as the new Chair, Communications. and Gill Thomas, who joins in the new role of Administration and Membership Manager.
If you’re any kind of creative person sitting at your desk in your metaphorical attic, then your days are tinted by whatever colour you give to failure. . . like all creative people daring and failing to spin gold from straw I strive to find ways to tame that wolf of failure, and to go forward, as Richard Flanagan says – in terror, smiling!
Suzanne Frankham, author of Shadow Over Edmund Street (Journeys to Words Publishing), told Maggie Baron that the collision of the past and present pushes her story into the thriller genre and towards its ultimate climax. The story is set in Ponsonby, a Victorian-era neighbourhood, close to the city centre, and the harbour in Auckland, where Suzanne grew up.
Need a good book for the festive season? You can’t go past Scarlet Stiletto: The Fourteenth Cut, a collection of winning stories from this year’s competition, edited by Phyllis King.
Jacq Ellem, a member of the newly minted Tasmanian Chapter, will be hosting Murders Mondays in the New Year. Jacq is a bibliophile, copywriter, occasional broadcaster and award-winning podcaster, which sounds really wanky but is her only claim to fame.
It’s been a bumper year for women’s crime. And what better time to catch up than over the festive season. Sisters in Crime asked convenors, author members, Davitt Award judges, and winners to nominate their best holiday reads by women crime authors. We hope you enjoy the books they’ve nominated. Most are fairly recent but some are golden oldies.