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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:  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. 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. |
The latest in Katherine's news, plus what she's been reading.
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