Finding the creative trigger: Catherine Jinks
Multi published, multi award winning Catherine Jinks talks to Robyn Walton about writing, the creative trigger and how she wrote her current book.
Author Spotlight
Women crime writers are in the spotlight, being interviewed about their books, their lives and more.
Grief, Ghosts and Healing: Alicia Thompson
Playing with the whodunnit conventions, Ex from Alicia Thompson is a slow uncovering of the impacts of those close the the event. Alicia Thompson talks with Natalie Conyer about how she developed the story, the importance of notebooks (dated!) and where she found the starting point amongst all the story lines, themes and key plot points.
Antarctic Noir: Riley James
Antarctic Noir! This is certainly a twist on the ‘isolated community” + murder plot! They’re in Antarctica…how isolated is that? Riley James talks to Ruth Wykes about the writing of The Chilling. It’s s certainly a twist on the ‘isolated community” + murder plot! Riley James talks to Ruth Wykes about the writing of this page turner…
Girl Falling: Hayley Scrivenor
How do you follow up on a number one best seller that has won multiple awards? Hayley Scrivenor’s latest – Girl Falling – is an exploration of friendship .. and what happens when it turns bad. How did she come to write it? How did she get it down ‘on paper’?
The Last Trace
Best selling psychological thrillers are Petronella McGovern’s beat. She talks with Natalie Conyer about why and how she writes and her latest page turner, The Last Trace – a gripping thriller about siblings and secrets, and the traces we can never erase.
When things go wrong
New Zealander Charity Norman, author of Home Truths (Allen & Unwin, 2024) spoke to Sisters in Crime’s Robyn Walton about her latest novel, Home Truths. She chose to set it in North Yorkshire because she knows and loves it – and in the years 2019-2020 because the Covid pandemic triggered a perfect storm of isolation, anxiety and the explosion of online disinformation.
Author Spotlight: Writing a bold, wild woman
For the October Author Spotlight, New Zealand author Barbara Sumner spoke to Georgina Baron-Ross, about her debut novel, The Gallows Bird (Pantera Press). This novel whisks readers away to 19th-century London. Meet ‘Birdie,’ a young woman of lowly station with grand ambitions. Despite her humble beginnings, Birdie believes she is destined for finer things, driven by the legacy of her aristocratic mother. But then she becomes a convict bound for Botany Bay.
Author Spotlight – Finding a voice
For the September Author Spotlight, Narrelle M. Harris spoke to Netherlands-based author, Brooke Hardwick, about her debut novel, The Fog (Simon & Schuster). Brooke hails from North Queensland but it was her time in her twenties on Rathlin , a tiny island between Northern Ireland and Scotland, that inspired her novel. It’s often engulfed in fog!
1868 Melbourne, real and imagined: Jane Sullivan
For the August Author Spotlight, Narrelle M Harris spoke with author and literary journalist, Jane Sullivan about her debut crime novel, Murder in Punch Lane (Echo Publishing). It was inspired by the historical life and death of young actress, Marie St Denis, in Melbourne in 1868. She was drawn to write about Marie after reading her
obituary.
Undertaking an undertaker: Deborah Challinor
For this month’s Author Spotlight Deborah Challinor, a prolific author from across the ditch, spoke to Robyn Walton about her new historical novel, Black Silk & Sympathy (HarperCollins, 2024), set in Sydney in the 1860s – with a very unusual sleuth. She has had an interest in cemeteries and mourning and funeral traditions forever, she says. In 2018 she received a New Zealand Order of Merit award for services to literature and historical research.