Where authors talk directly about their life, their books and many more things.
Sara Foster At the beginning of my writing career I was most definitely a pantser, which is writing-speak for flying by the seat of one’s pants, rather than assiduously plotting out a novel. It took me four years to write Come Back to Me, and most of it was done in my spare time …
Sarah Bailey: When the premise of The Dark Lake first popped into my mind, I swiftly pushed it away. It was April 2015 and I was around 25,000 words into another manuscript, a story that I was really passionate about. 25,000 words was the closest I had gotten to a finished book and I was incredibly …
J.M. GREEN: In my previous life, before I became a writer, I was miserable. I had a good job, with a corner office in a high-rise tower in the city. Instead of feeling fulfilled, at the top of my professional game, I dragged myself through my days, not quite knowing what was wrong. I was …
FIONA CAPP: I first came to crime through listening to the Stan Freburg satires of hard boiled police investigations such as St George and the Dragon Net and Little Blue Riding Hood on an antique gramophone. Later I binged on Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler. But I never thought, I want to write a crime novel. …
FELICITY PULMAN: I’ve lived most of my life in Australia (although I was born in Zimbabwe) and yet at least half of my novels are set in medieval England where my heart and my dreaming seem to have taken root. This is somewhat unfortunate in terms of researching and writing historical crime (and historical fantasy.) ‘Unfortunate’ …
L. J.M. OWEN: As an emerging author, I’ve been asked a few times why I write historical crime fiction. The question caught me unawares the first time. I knew I had a fire burning deep in my belly, an obsessive need to write, but there had to be more to it than that. I knew …
ANNIE HAUXWELL: Is there anything more boring, but simultaneously distressing, than reading your own book? You know how it ends. You want to change everything. The villain bears an uncomfortable resemblance to your mother. A bit like life. Don’t get me wrong, publication is a blessing but when the ‘pages’ arrive from the typesetter, after …
PAM BURTON: I am a lawyer and a writer, primarily, of non-fiction. My first major work was an unauthorised biography of Australia’s first female High Court Justice, Mary Gaudron, From Moree to Mabo: the Mary Gaudron story. Next, drawing on my experience in medico-legal and mental health work, I wrote The Waterlow Killings: a portrait …
ANNE BUIST: My first venture into crime was a six-month stint at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre – a maximum security prison for women. As the prison psychiatrist, not an inmate. This would have been not long after it opened in 1996. A modern low rise sprawl of buildings behind security fences in a desolate …
LIZ PORTER: When people ask me what my first novel, Unnatural Order, is about, I say: It’s about an obsessive sexual relationship. That’s true, but it’s only part of the story. If I feel the questioner really wants to know, I venture the long answer and say that it’s about a journalist, Caroline, who goes …