Where authors talk directly about their life, their books and many more things.
Karen M. Davis: If I had been asked ten years ago if I would ever write a book, I would have laughed and said that I didn’t have the inclination or the know-how. However, I’ve learned that real life is unpredictable and truly stranger than fiction. I started writing as therapy and unexpectedly found an …
Emma Viskic: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet – Shakespeare I once named a character Jack XXX. Not because he was a porn star with the right, ahem, equipment for the job, but because I couldn’t decide what to call him. To stop …
Carolyn Morwood: Dig Two Graves (Hybrid Publishers) is my sixth published novel and in learning how to write a novel, I’ve tried various approaches, from strict planning to improvising and everywhere in-between. While both ends of the planning-improvising spectrum have their strengths, neither are foolproof. With planning, I was too boxed in. With improvising, I …
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 …