Yesterday was the 5th of May, which means it's five years since the launch of my first book. I remember that night so clearly! I booked out a cafe in Tweed Heads, where I lived at the time, and invited everyone I knew (and some I didn't). The place was packed on the night with most of the local paramedic and nurse population, the champagne flowed, and I felt the most tremendous thrill at signing books (with great concentration, as you can see below) and getting up to thank my friends for their support over the years--friends who include (L to R in the photo) fellow authors Kate Morton, Leigh Readhead (who also launched the book for me - thanks Leigh!) and Louise Cusack.
I've been fortunate enough to have four books published since then, while the next - Web Of Deceit - is coming out early next year, and I have two more contracted. I hear regularly from readers who tell me they love the books and can't wait to see what happens next to Ella, and I get to talk at festivals and libraries and to events about two of my favourite things: writing and reading. It hasn't been a fast road-- I wrote seriously for seventeen years before that I reached that launch day - but I feel so thankful that I am where I am. They say that if you choose a job you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life, and that's how it feels, even on days like today, when after I post this I have to go back into some tough scenes in my edit and try to make them better. In fact, I was talking to my partner this morning, and she said, 'If money was no object, and you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?'. It felt great to answer, 'I'd be doing exactly this'.

Until next time!
cheers,
Katherine.


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I've gone from the thrilling busyness of touring to the head-down hard slog of editing the new book. It's always something of a struggle - for one thing, you've been used to the polished state of the newly released work, and now you're facing something that's not quite up to scratch and wondering how to get it there. Ah, the writer's life! But, as good friend and wonderful author Kim Wilkins once told me, 'the only way out is through', and I recite that to myself that each day as I sit down to wrestle this draft into the next and better one.
But we do have a title! It's called WEB OF DECEIT and will probably be out in February next year. As for the story, all I can say is ... poor Ella .....

There are a few more events coming up - a lively discussion on all things crime fiction in Brisbane on May 2nd, a lovely gourmet dinner in Brisbane on May 3rd, and the wonderful Literati dinner and day of author sessions on May 25th and 26th. This event holds a special place in my heart, as it was at the first ever Literati dinner back in 2008 that I met my partner. (She's now the official Literati bookseller, too.) Who knows who you might meet when you come along?? Check out my events page for more details on all of these (and more) and links to buy tickets.

Living with a bookseller means I get to read advanced copies of books that won't be on the shelves for months, and for you Michael Robotham fans I can tell you that his new one is an absolute cracker! I am fortunate to be able to say that Michael's a great friend, but OH BOY his books fill me with writerly envy - the way he builds his characters, tells his stories, and twists his plots turn me spinach green. This one's called 'Say You're Sorry' and will be available in August. Another bestseller for sure.

Okay, time to get back to the edit.
Happy reading!
Katherine.









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What an incredible month! I spent most of it away from home promoting Silent Fear -- first in Sydney and Melbourne, then in various parts of WA and SA. I was frightened half to death about the TV interview I talked about in my last post, but it went fine! The hosts were lovely and made me feel relaxed and welcome. I had a fantastic time getting about with different publicists (hello Caitlin, Ali, and Bethany!) but best of all I got to meet some amazing people in the audiences who came to hear me talk about the books and my time as a paramedic. Whether they told me about the effect the books had on them ("I read books to go to sleep at night and with your books I haven't been getting much sleep because I can't put them down!" and "I know I'm reading a good book when I miss my bus stop" were just a couple of the comments) or about the books they're writing themselves, or about other authors whose work they love (I'm always looking for recommendations so I can add to my TBR pile) or whether we just said hi and shook hands, I enjoyed every second. My most heartfelt thanks to my publishers Pan Macmillan, to the federal Get Reading! programme,  and to all the wonderful booksellers who came along to the events to provide the books.

And now I'm home, with just a couple of events to go. On Wednesday the 7th I'm heading up to the Sunshine Coast to speak at Annie's Books on Peregian and stay with a dear friend from my ambulance days, on Thursday the 8th I'll be at Black Cat Books in Paddington in Brisbane, then on Tuesday the 20th I'll be at Victoria Point Library. Click through to the Events page for details and how to book in.

I was going to say that once all these things are done I'll be diving back into the books! but I'm actually doing that already.  I talked to my publisher while in Sydney and she LOVES the new manuscript I sent in (book 6, as yet untitled) and I'm looking forward to getting the edits back on that, and I've started playing with ideas and notes for book 7. I also have work to do for my PhD, where I'm writing a novel and a thesis (looking at women doctors in crime fiction) and loving every minute of it. Sometimes a break like the tour can refresh and inspire, and talking to people about the wonder of books and reading always makes me feel enthusiastic! 
To wrap up with, here are a few links to great articles about writing, whether you're published yet or not, and a beautiful clip that I found on my friend Amber's blog about storytelling. Enjoy!
cheers,
Katherine.

The Unpublished Writer's Seven Deadly Sins

The Published Writer's Seven Deadly Sins

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It's Sunday afternoon and in two days I'm off to Sydney to start the promo tour for Silent Fear. Well, not "start", really - I've been doing radio and print interviews on and off since December, and more so in the last fortnight. But it's from this week that I get to do one of my favourite parts of this job: meet readers! I often say in my talks that as most of my days are spent alone in my home office with only the voices in my head for company, I relish getting out and interacting with real live people  :)  But also I love to find out what they think of the books, and hear in their voices how they feel about Ella and the paramedic characters and how these imaginary people seem as real to them as they are to me. Reading is such an amazing thing. We sit down and stare at marks on a page and we're suddenly gone from the physical world and in another place entirely, living the story with and through the characters, feeling what they feel, breathless with suspense or fear or love just as they are. Amazing. To me there's nothing like being lost in a book, and I'm so fortunate and so thrilled that readers find they get lost in my work and tell me so. 

But back to the tour! The full list of events is here but the very first one is actually on TV - I'll be on Channel Nine's Mornings on Wednesday 15th Feb at 10 am for a live chat with Sonia Kruger and David Campbell. I'm delighted and petrified all at once! Then it's off to Erina for my first library talk. One event I'm particularly looking forward to is at Hornsby Library, as I grew up in Normanhurst and went to Hornsby Girls High School. I believe some of my old school pals are coming along so it will be almost like a reunion!

On the writing front, book 6 is finished and with the publisher so I'm looking forward to hearing her thoughts in the next couple of weeks. After that the edits will begin, as will the draft of book 7. I'm stirring around some interesting plot ideas and wondering what Ella's going to get up to this time!

Okay, that's it from me. Hope to see you at one of the events, make sure you come up and say hi!
Happy reading,
cheers,
Katherine.


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It's the 1st of February and that can only mean two things: 1 - the year is flying by already, and 2 - Silent Fear is now officially released! Some readers managed to find it last week and raced through it then wrote to tell me how much they enjoyed it  :)  thank you so much, you lovely people! It means a lot to hear that.

The promo for the book has begun; this article appeared in various weekend papers around the country, and there's more to come. And new events are being added to the tour every day - check them out here to see if I'm going to be somewhere near you - I'd love to meet you! Latest ones include Hornsby where I grew up, Erina on the NSW Central Coast, QLD's Gold Coast where I now live, and the Sunshine Coast with delightful bookshop Annie's Books on Peregian Beach. Brisbane is still to be confirmed.

As for book 6, I'm thrilled to be able to say it's finished! This week I'm doing some final tweaks then will send it off to my agent and publisher. I can't wait to hear what they think,  so I better get back to it!

Happy reading,
cheers,
Katherine.




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Happy new year! 07/01/2012
 
It's Saturday morning one week into 2012, rain is falling gently outside, and I've just signed up to attend Thrillerfest in New York in July. Woohoo! I've been to Europe a few times before but never to the US, and to be going to New York particularly just thrills me. Thrillerfest is a fabulous annual festival featuring some of the biggest names in crime and thriller writing: stars this year include Karin Slaughter, James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark and the one and only Lee Child. It's run by the International Thriller Writers, an organisation of which I'm a member, and goes for four days. The first two days are allotted to Craftfest, a series of workshops and talks in which some of the world's bestselling authors share their writing secrets, and Agentfest, a session where aspiring authors pitch their work to agents. I'm going along to Craftfest, because you should always grab the chance to learn from others, and the panel days, and can't wait! I can tell it's going to be a long six months.

The other great US news is that all my work will soon be available there as ebooks! They'll be up on Amazon first, and should be there any day now. I'll post again when I hear for sure, or if you are in the US and download one, I'd be grateful if you could let me know please  :)  

My author copies of Silent Fear arrived the other day. What a moment that is, opening a box of your new books for the first time! That was the fifth such time for me but it never gets old and I don't mind admitting that I cried. It's such a thrill to hold it at last, and think of all the work that went into it, not only by me but by my wonderful editor Bri and publisher Cate, cover designer Deborah Parry who always does an incredible job, and everyone in Pan Macmillan who helps along the way. I can't wait to see it on the shelves on Feb 1st, and am delighted that Bolinda Audio are releasing it as an audiobook the same day. I have a few tour dates posted now, but there are more to come, including all the events in WA and SA. I'll put them up as soon as I get them. I also post on Facebook, so if you 'like' my page you can find out there if you prefer.

I'm looking forward to the start of my next Year Of The Edit class on January 21st. The previous class concluded mid-December and one student said to me, 'forget about a learning curve, this was a straight line upwards!' If you live in or around Brisbane and have a manuscript you'd like some help with editing, I really recommend this class; it teaches skills that help you handle what is often a big unwieldy mass of story and understand what works and what doesn't and why. I certainly wish it had been available back when I was struggling with editing my early novels. More info is here.

And now it's back to work for me. I'm charging towards the end of book 6 andhave left our Ella at a particularly precarious moment ... ah the joy of writing fiction!

Cheers,
Katherine.

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Hello everyone!

Well, here we are, a week and a half out from Christmas, two weeks off the end of the year, and six from the release of my new book Silent Fear. Exciting times! I've already done a couple of interviews, and Pan Macmillan publicist Caitlin is madly organising speaking events. Once I get the list I'll post it on the Events page so you can see where I'm going. And I have great news -- Get Reading! has selected it as one of their Guaranteed Good Reads which means the cover will have the gorgeous silver sticker telling you that and our tour which was originally covering only the east coast is now extended to WA and SA as well, so it's even more likely that I might turn up somewhere near you!

In other news, I recently had a post appear on fellow author and friend Ian Irvine's blog. Ian blogs regularly on writing and is a hugely prolific fantasy author too. If you're an aspiring author I highly recommend his 'One-Page Guide to Storytelling' and his series of posts on the 'Truth about Publishing'.

Did you know that 2012 is the National Year of Reading? I'm joining the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge to celebrate it. This is a brilliant idea by Elizabeth Lhuede who is challenging people to sign up and not only read more but write reviews. I'm signing up as a 'dabbler' (reading and reviewing more than one genre) and aiming for Stella level (reading at least three and reviewing at least two books). I'd like to aim higher and with any luck over the course of the year I'll make it, but with books to edit and write myself it's best not to get too excited! As I said I think this is a brilliant idea and I invite you all to have a look at the site and think about taking part. The reviews don't have to be long and it's fine if you didn't like the book as well. As Elizabeth says, this is about having fun!

Are you on Goodreads? Today I got myself organised and finished setting up my author page there. There are a number of reviews of my books, and as I get into writing my own reviews they'll be posted as well.

This weekend sees the last workshop of my 2011 Year of the Edit class. It's been a fantastic five months for me - I hope the group feels the same way!  Funny how teaching always gives you insight into your own work too.  It starts all over again in January with a brand-new group, and if you live in or near Brisbane and have a novel manuscript you're not sure how to edit, why don't you come and join us? Check out the Learn with Katherine page for more info.

Time to wrap all this up. This is probably my final post for 2011, so I want to wish you all a very happy Christmas, a fun-filled new year's, and a wonderful 2012.

cheers,
Katherine.







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Hi all,
my apologies for not having posted for so long. The closer we come to the end of the year, the faster time flies! But apart from that I've been flat-out writing a journal article for uni, working on book 6, and also reading the final pages of Silent Fear. That's the last step in what can be a six to twelve month-long process of editing - this year it took ten months. It sounds like a long time but it's not when you (a) consider that this book is just one of possibly hundreds that the publisher and editor work on during that time and (b) break the steps of that process down.
            First the editor and publisher read the manuscript I send in, talk it over and write their structural edit report. This focuses on (obviously) the structural problems: whether the clues add up, whether there are timing issues in the plotline, whether there are gaping holes in the story, whether the characters and plot are believable - all those big picture-type things. That takes around four to six weeks, and I get about the same to go over the report and digest the ideas and suggestions, then work over the manuscript, fixing the issues one by one. It can be a big and daunting job, so it's very satisfying to be able to cross each point off the report as I go. Then I send it back in again, the publisher and editor read it once more, and assuming those big problems are fixed they begin their line edit. This looks more closely at the actual writing, hunting down clunky phrasing and awkward sentences, and tightening wherever possible. A third person comes in to help here, a freelance copy-editor, and I'm fortunate to have worked with the same one for a number of books (hi Nicola!). Then the marked-up manuscript comes back to me again, maybe a couple of months later. This year we used track changes and emailed the 460 page document back and forth, which was a little different, as with each previous book it's been done on paper. Apart from the obvious benefit of saving trees, and not having to worry about losing the one and only copy with all our comments on it in the post, I don't know that one way is better than the other: I think whichever method you use, you soon get used to it.
            So I go over this next lot of comments and agree or disagree and make my own changes too. By this point the manuscript is so familiar to me I'm sure it's deadly dull and boring, but I know I go through that stage with every book and I just have to keep working. Then back it goes to the publisher again, the changes are made to the text, then it's typeset onto A4 pages. Now we can see what the pages will look like in the book! These are called final pages, and we all read them again, looking now for things that slipped past everyone's eyes: typos, lay-out issues, and so on. From this point it starts to get expensive to change too much, so unless there are major issues (which there shouldn't be, considering all the work everyone's put in) the changes are limited to tweaks and fixing mistakes. Once these little things are done, the manuscript goes to the printer, and that's where Silent Fear went yesterday.
            You can see where that time goes - a couple of months here, a couple of months there. But now it's just over two months until the book is on the shelves, and I can tell you that's always a highly anticipated moment for any author! There are plans for a bit of a tour along the East Coast, and when I have details of events I'll be sure to post them here.
            But of course between then and now stands book 6! It's coming along really well, and I'm looking forward to the day when I sent it in to my publisher, and the whole process begins once more.
cheers,
Katherine.

ps - Speaking of editing, I'm teaching Year of the Edit again next year at the QLD Writers Centre. If you're interested, hop on over to my 'Learn with Katherine' page and find out more.




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Last post I talked about the wonderful SheKilda crime conference and the Davitt awards. This post I'm delighted to tell you that Cold Justice won the Davitt for best adult crime novel! I was extra thrilled to learn that I'm the first author to have won that category twice (the other time was for my debut novel Frantic). The entire conference was wonderful, and the awards night as fun and funny as ever. Here are a couple of pics:
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From left: Colleen Egan, winner of the best true crime award for her book Murderer No More; Penny Matthews who won the young adult section for A Girl Like Me; Leigh Redhead who won highly commended in the adult section for Thrill City (which I can promise you is an awesome read, as are the first three in the series); me with my award; and guest presenter Shamini Flint, who was completely delightful and hilarious. Missing from this pic is PM Newton who won the readers' choice category with The Old School.
Here's Leigh Redhead and me with our friend Deb who won the 'have a character named after you in the winner's next book' raffle, so look out for 'Deb' in book 6 of the Ella Marconi series!

As I said, the conference was wonderful. My interview with Margie Orford went well, and she was so interesting to talk to. My other panels were great too. I sat in on a few others as well: one talking about writing for TV, another on balancing crime-writing and motherhood (not that I have any plans, nosirree), a third featuring forensic specialists talking about how they'd go about processing a crime scene and analysing evidence. But perhaps the best aspect of any event like this is catching up with old friends and making new ones, and I'd like to say thanks and hi to all those people  :)

In other news, the page proofs of Silent Fear are finally done and on their way back to the publisher (which is why it's taken me a week to write about the Davitts!) and I'm working hard on book 6. And I'd better get back to it! But before I go, if you're an aspiring writer check out my friend Ian Irvine's blog, where he's discussing the truth about publishing and sharing his top tips on storytelling too.

Cheers!
Katherine.

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October news. 02/10/2011
 
Well, here we are, in October already. Things are hotting up at my other half's bookshop as their new releases for Christmas start to roll in, and all is busy here in the home office too.

The page proofs of Silent Fear have arrived, which means one more read-through to make sure everything works and to hunt down any typos/printing issues/etc. It's interesting to see it at this point, because up till now it's always been laid out like a manuscript: on an A4 page with 3 cm margins all around. Now it's still on an A4 page but it's set out as the page will be in the book, so it has lines marking the corners of the book page, proper chapter headings, page numbers on the bottom and my name and the title on the tops of alternate pages. It's 404 pages but of course when it's a book it'll be printed on both sides of the pages so it won't look like the huge thick thing it is now. It's exciting to see it come together and I can't wait till its release in February!

The sixth book in the series is coming along well too. Can't tell you anything about title or content just yet  :)  but I can tell you that I'm loving writing it!

I'm loving reading too. I've just finished Lee Child's new Jack Reacher novel, The Affair. This is really a prequel, set before the first book in the series (The Killing Floor), and shows beautifully how Reacher comes to be the man we know so well from the series. It is (of course) as gripping and thrilling as the other books, so whether you're a fan or you've never read Child before, I really encourage you to get this one.

Other books I'm reading are crime novels from a range of fantastic Aussie writers: The Brotherhood by YA Erskine, The Old School by PM Newton, Border Watch (aka Wings of Fear) by Helene Young, and a re-look at Blood Born by Kathryn Fox. I'm interviewing this awesome bunch next Sunday at SheKilda, Australia's second-ever crime conference, in Melbourne. We're going to be talking about doing the jobs we write about - an excellent topic, don't you think, considering that Helene Young is a pilot in nth QLD and writes about that, Kathryn Fox was a doctor and writes about that, and YA and PM were cops and they write about that? What better insight could you hope for? I'm looking forward to putting all sorts of questions to them, and to hearing the audience's questions too. 
I'm also reading books by Margie Orford, one of SheKilda's international guests, who I'll be interviewing in a one-on-one on Saturday afternoon. I'm looking forward to finding out about the background behind her stories and how she works.
All these women write excellent books that you really can't put down! and it's going to be a marvellous weekend. Check out the programme for details of these and other sessions, and how to book. One feature of the conference is the Davitt Awards, an annual award for the best crime books by Australian women published in the previous year. in the categories of best adult novel, best children's/YA novel, best true crime, and reader's choice as voted for by the members of Sisters in Crime. This year I have two in the running - Cold Justice and Violent Exposure. You can attend the awards as part of the conference or buy tickets separately here.

In other news, we had a fantastic time on our holiday in Tasmania, and if you're heading that way I can recommend a stay at The Hideaway. It's a truly gorgeous place and we had the most relaxing couple of days there, sitting on the balcony reading and listening to the sea wash onto the rocks all of forty metres away.

Hope all's well in your world!
cheers,
Katherine.



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