Interviewed by Bec Stafford

1. Kathryn, you do a lot of research for your reality fiction, particularly in the field of forensic medicine. What are the most exciting elements of research, for you; and, what other sorts of hobbies and interests do you get into in your down time?

 A. I love to research by reading textbooks, the latest medical journals, but I really love interviewing experts because it gives me a real connection to their world. Some of the stories they tell are incredible and contain far more humanity than a text could ever reveal. A turn of phrase or comment can change the whole direction of a plot. The trick for me is, knowing when to stop researching and start writing. I’m definitely still working on that one.

B. I regularly do Pilates to minimise the back pain from sitting hunched at a computer. In my spare time I love to read, particularly biographies of complex people throughout history. I struggle to keep my harp strung and tuned well enough to play in winter, so have been learning the piano. Swing and Boogie Woogie are much easier on the piano!

2. If you could choose 3 characters from the world of crime fiction to have dinner with, who would you pick and why?

 1)     Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird (preferably in the form of Gregory Peck) to discuss the challenges of going against a crowd-mentality and thank him for being an inspiration to generations.

2)     Jeffery Deaver’s Kathryn Dance, to analyse the body language of, and stories behind everyone in the restaurant

3)      Hannibal Lecter, but only if he was in restraints and I’d use a false name! I’d love to know if he thinks evil exists, and whether it is born or bred.

3. I’ve read that you believe you’re able to reach and empower more people through your fiction than through your role as a general practitioner. 

Do you have any examples of this? What message, above all, do you hope your readers will take from your work?

It sounds idealistic and maybe even grandiose, but I do think fiction can empower people by raising awareness and showing another, often silent, point of view.

The main purpose of writing is to entertain, but if people have a new perspective after, that’s a bonus. I’ve had many people admit to me that they felt I had told their stories as victims, and now were able to admit they had been sexually abused.

I’ve also had a forensic physician tell me that she had changed the way sexual assault examinations were done in her unit after reading one of my books and seeing how much kinder examinations could be performed, as we do in NSW.

Women’s groups have said they wouldn’t hesitate to go along and be examined if they were assaulted, given the compassion Anya Crichton shows.

One woman in the UK said that she believed she had avoided being raped by following her instinct after reading Malicious Intent. In that book, a woman mistakenly trusts a man who is struggling with a baby capsule and helps him buckle the child into his car. This reader described how she was alone late one night when a man asked her where he could buy nappies for his newborn baby. She ordinarily would have shown him, she said, but trusted her instinct and hurried back to a main street. The next morning there was a report of a rape where he had approached her.  Who knows if it was a coincidence or she could have been the victim, but she was definitely more in tune with her instincts than she had previously been.

After Death Mask, I was contacted by major league football clubs about how I could help prevent concussions and help change the culture of treatment of women. I never expected to be interviewed for the sports pages, but it really did help raise awareness about head trauma in sports and has contributed to discussions about safety for players of all levels and ages. 

Hopefully, Cold Grave will raise awareness about personal safety on holidays and cruise ships. 

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Interview by Bec Stafford

1.   All My Enemies involves a brutal homicide that is mysteriously linked to a theatre group. Could you tell us more about how this particular story came to you?

In each of my novels there tends to be a theme around some aspect of life that intrigues me and which forms a focus for the characters and their preoccupations. In this case it’s the theatre, a very intense closed world in which passions, fears and rivalries are magnified. Having once been involved myself in such a theatre group, I thought it would make a great setting for a murder story.

2.  You’ve enjoyed a long career in academia, and have lectured in and written books about architecture and urban design. How has academia influenced your writing career, and do you miss the university environment?

When I left the university to write full time I did miss very much the daily contact with colleagues and students, and it took me some time to adjust to the isolation of the writer’s life. But I see what I’m doing now as quite similar to what I tried to do as a teacher – finding the ways to bring to life a great story that I’m engrossed by and that I want my audience to be thrilled by too.

3.  You were born in Scotland, grew up in London (where you later studied at Cambridge and Sheffield universities) and in 1984, moved to Australia, where you took up a professorship at the University of Newcastle for many years. How has the change of environment impacted your writing. How important is sense of place is to you and your work.

I’m very much interested in the sense of place. It was central to my discipline of architecture, and was also one of the things that drew me as a reader to crime fiction, where the atmospheric setting is so often an integral part of the story. When I first started thinking about writing a crime novel I hadn’t been living in Australia long enough to feel that I could really capture it, and at the same time I didn’t have contacts here who could help me with the authentic details of criminal investigations that I needed. But I did have those contacts in London, where a niece of mine was working for the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratories and had access to the very latest developments in DNA and other fields. I also knew police officers there, and was able to get advice and go out on patrol with them. So I set that first book, The Marx Sisters, in London, not realizing that I was starting a series with the two central characters, Brock and Kolla. Now I enjoy returning to London as an outsider, looking for new places to set the stories and new characters to inhabit them. Having said that, I found it tremendously refreshing to write a novel, Bright Air, with Australian settings and characters, that at last I felt confident of doing justice to.

4.   Crime fiction continues to be an incredibly popular genre, representing a third of last year’s long listed Booker Prize titles. To what do you attribute our increasing appetite for crime fiction; and, who are your favourite characters from the world of crime?

Good crime fiction has a pretty irresistible combination of literary qualities – dramatic stories, pace, characters under intense pressure, contemporary relevance, atmospheric settings, gritty detail and a sense of resolution. There are so many great crime fiction characters – Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole, Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen, Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie, James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux… But I have a particular sentimental attachment to Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret, who inspired me at an early age with the idea that crimes were solved by understanding the lives of the people involved.

5.   When you read for pleasure, do you find yourself being drawn predominantly to fiction or non-fiction, and what’s on your reading pile at the moment?

Both fiction and non-fiction. On my bedside pile at the moment is James Lee Burke’s new one, Creole Belle, Claire Tomalin’s biography of Dickens, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child, and Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer.

BSM 30 July 2012

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by Amanda Wrangles

Book reviewers and bloggers get to do some pretty awesome stuff. We get sent free books to read and then write about them (tough gig, huh?) If we’re lucky, we occasionally get to meet, or chat online to our favourite authors. Most of us have a pretty good collection of personally signed books.

And then sometimes… the awesome outdoes itself. This week, I got to meet one of my writing heroes: the creator of the Aurora Teagarden, Lily Bard and Harper Connelly series, as well as countless short stories and, of course – Sookie Stackhouse – the inspiration behind HBO’s blockbuster TV show, ‘True Blood’… the amazing Charlaine Harris.

Some time ago, a whisper went around town (in my case, Melbourne) that Charlaine would soon be travelling Down Under to promote her latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Deadlocked.

Her schedule was insane with only six days to spend in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide to attend the Hub Production’s Tru Blood: A Second Bite fan convention as well as various commitments such as in-store book signings, radio and television interviews through her Australian publisher, Hachette.

Luckily for me, the fabulous gals at Hachette (*waves to Jaki and Kate*) organised with Marianne for me to be able to attend an exclusive, invite only breakfast with Charlaine herself. At 7.45 on a Monday morning.

Now, I took the easy way out. I stayed the night before at the very swish venue where the breakfast wasbeing held. Not so Charlaine Harris. By the time she arrived, she’d already left her hotel, braved Melbourne’s utterly freezing mid-winter weather, done a radio interview and was all bright and breezy and full of charm to meet with a cosy room of around twenty-five booksellers (and two bloggers). All this after a weekend of conventions, and prior to a day of signings and a cross-country flight.

As Charlaine worked the room – “Hello, I’m Charlaine…” and shook each and every hand and asked each of us where we were from, we also had breakfast (personally, I was too nervous to eat. But I did enjoy the pastries later) and chatted amongst ourselves. One of the strange things about this type of gig is that you might recognise faces or names, but rarely both. I caught up properly with Nalini Haynes from Dark Matter Fanzine and the girls from both Dymocks Bookstore Melbourne and Collins Moonee Ponds. We all had bundles of books ready for signing, as well as new copies of Deadlocked, courtesy of Hachette.

And then, we each had our moment with Charlaine. For those who’ve been asking: She’s super sweet. She’s tiny, and she looks like anyone’s favourite aunt or gran. She has that lovely Southern drawl that you’d expect from the creator of Sookie Stackhouse, and she’s oh, so polite. It was a little hard to imagine this cuddly-looking woman sitting at her computer, creating scenes such as the ones that go on between Sookie and Eric, Sookie and Bill, Sookie and Quinn, Sookie and… well, you get the picture. But she does. And she does it so very, very well.

So the great news for you guys is, not only did I get to have this amazing opportunity but there’s some awesome in it for you too. We have a copy of Deadlocked (the second last in the series) SIGNED by Charlaine to give away! The best comments on this blog will win. Sorry, Australian residents only.

You can read Mandy’s previous reviews of Charlaine’s work here and here. 

Oh, and some goss…

The final Sookie book is finished, and with Charlaine’s editor. Yay!

Unlike some other authors of vampire fiction, she enjoys reading about other vamps. One of her favourites is ‘Let the Right One In’ by John Ajvide Lindqvist. And I have to agree.

Finally – there will be life after Sookie. In fact, Charlaine has already sent off the proposal to her publishers for a new series…

Marianne here: special thanks to Mandy for organising her whole family around getting to this event. Mandy also MADE Charlaine this magnificent book on behalf of MDPWeb and BurnBright as a gift. Isn’t it amazing, bats and all!

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Author in Focus: Alan Baxter

Interview by: Kylie Fox

Alan Baxter is a British-born, Australian author, motorcycle enthusiast and martial arts instructor.

His dark fantasy duology RealmShift and MageSign are available from Gryphonwood Press. (See my review of RealmShift here.)

Alan is a prolific writer with short stories, novellas and novelettes appearing in many anthologies both in print and online. He also writes reviews and opinion pieces that are always informative and entertaining – you can find these on his blog The Word According to Me!
Alan’s expertise in martial arts ensures that he always writes the fight right – and he’s written an ebook with precisely that title to help other writers create believable fight scenes.

Alan has several stories due for release next year, you’ll find the details on his website.

Here’s a snippet of what’s happening in the world of Alan Baxter right now.
Kylie:  You have a short story making an appearance in “The One That Got Away”, a crime anthology to be released early next year. Can you tell us about that story and how you, who usually focuses more on horror and dark fantasy, came to be published in a crime anthology? (Alongside the likes of Lawrence Block and the boys from Crime Factory, no less!)
Alan: It’s very exciting this one – the ToC is awesome. Initially I thought I’d written a horror story, albeit a non-supernatural one. Two horror editors I submitted to both came back with, “This story is great, but it’s more a crime story than horror.” When I got that response the second time, I figured I should pay attention, so I sent it out to Dark Prints Press for their crime antho, the theme of which was perfect for the story. And that was that. I’ve always wanted to write more crime, and noirish tropes sneak into a lot of my work, so I guess it’s not that much of a leap.

Kylie: As I’ve said, most of your work falls more into the category of dark fantasy, but I’d argue that there is still very much a crime basis for most of your work. How do you think crime fits in with other genres?

Alan: I have trouble with genres in general. I usually tell people that I write dark speculative fiction, and that in itself crosses many genres. But I’ve always loved noir crime stories and mysteries and a lot of my speculative fiction is based around crime or mystery tropes. I think the ideas covered by crime fiction make wonderful fodder for stories of all kinds. And there is often a crime or mystery element in pretty much any story you can imagine.

Kylie: Do you think that too much emphasis is put on classifying books into genres given that so many blur the lines between one and another?

Alan: I really do. I understand that genres are necessary, and help people to understand what they might be in for, but I think they’re restrictive too. So many people say, “Oh, I don’t like science fiction” but they love Star Wars or Doctor Who. There are all kinds of SF, all kinds of fantasy and so on. In many ways it’s a carry over from brick and mortar book stores, who always need to shelve like books with like. With the advent of online shopping, categorising books by genre is becoming far less relevant.

Kylie: You write across several genres, including horror, dark fantasy, crime and science fiction – some even crossing several genres in the space of one story! For example, “Ghost of the Black: A ‘verse Full of Scum”, which is a very noir crimey sci fi novella.
What is it that characterises an “Alan Baxter” book, regardless of the genre?

Alan: That’s actually a really hard question to answer. I’m not sure I know! I always try to tell a fast-paced exciting story that delves into the human condition in one way or another. Most, thought not all, of my stories have some kind of supernatural, magical or science-fictional angle. Many have a crime or mystery premise, though certainly not all. All my fiction does tend to be dark, often verging on horrific. But I’ve written some lighter stuff and even the occasional happy ending. Although most of my happy endings, few though they are, are quite bittersweet. I hope that an Alan Baxter book is recognisable more by my voice and style than by any common theme. And in the end, I don’t really mind if people recognise an Alan Baxter story as being that or not – I just hope they enjoy and are entertained by my work. The work itself, and people’s enjoyment of it, is more important to me than my recognition as the author.

Kylie: You have a novelette being serialised in four parts starting in January. The idea of serialising, though not a new idea (thank you, Mr Dickens!) is making a resurgence in popularity. Do you see this as one of the possible “new waves” of the future of publishing given the state of “traditional” publishing at the moment?

Alan: Most definitely. I originally serialised Ghost Of The Black on my website, posting a new episode every Monday for 34 weeks during 2008, though it’s available complete as an ebook now. Ebooks and online magazines are giving new life to two classic forms of writing – the serial and the novella, both of which I love. And both of which are notoriously hard to sell. I’m really pleased with the serial coming out in January. It’s about 18,000 words, so long novelette/short novella length, but I think that’s a perfect length for this sort of story. It’s being published by a great online magazine called The Red Penny Papers, who publish regular e-issues of short fiction, interspersed with serialised longer work.

This story, The Darkest Shade Of Grey, is one of the best things I’ve written to date (if I may say so myself) so I’m really excited to see it published. It’s another dark urban fantasy that uses some crime tropes as its base – a rather broken, alcoholic reporter, with some supernatural power of his own, stumbles across what could be the story of his career. But it’s a mystery that he starts to unravel at his peril.

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of these kinds of publications now that online and ebook publishing is gaining such momentum, and I think that’s great for authors, emerging and established alike. Apart from anything else, readers can get a feel for an author’s work with a smaller commitment of time and money by reading novella-length or serialised work, which may then tempt them to go and buy that author’s novel-length work.
Kylie: On the same note, how do you see trends in publication and the consumption of books changing in the near future?

Alan: I think ebooks will quickly become our primary consumption medium for stories. Print books will never go away completely, but they’ll become more artefacts, in limited editions, or available print-on-demand rather than offset print runs. I see this as a good thing – our bookshelves will only hold our most treasured physical artefacts, yet we’ll have access to thousands of great stories at a reduced cost, on a single device, saving trees and space. And hopefully, given the greater ease of access to ebooks in the developed world, we’ll see authors selling more stories, and readers trying out more authors too.

Print books will still be essential, especially to get stories and knowledge out to places without ebook technology, or even power to charge devices, but print-on-demand makes that a very viable prospect. It wouldn’t surprise me if, not long from now, pretty much all releases are mainly ebooks, with POD options available.
Kylie: Purely a question for my own benefit, are we going to see a third book featuring the fabulous Isiah (RealmShift & MageSign) any time soon?

Alan: I’ve been asked this question a fair bit. RealmShift and MageSign are a duology, and complete in that sense. There are two Isiah short stories out there – Stand Off, published by Wily Writers, and Running Wild With The Hunt, published by Seven Realms in their anthology, The Game.

I do love the Isiah character and would love to write more with him, but I would need a really good idea. Through the course of RealmShift and MageSign he become very powerful and I think I covered a lot of what he was about, so I don’t want to just churn out more for the sake of it and devalue him as a character. So, nothing in the schedule, but never say never.
Kylie: What’s next for Alan Baxter?

Alan: I’m currently working on a new series, most likely a trilogy. It’s set in the same “universe” developed in RealmShift and MageSign, but with all new characters. There is a very brief Isiah cameo in the first book, and some secondary characters from MageSign crop up as well. The first book is written and out looking for a publisher right now and I’m getting close to halfway on the second. The third in that series is just a small collection of notes and ideas at the moment.

Otherwise I’m always working on short fiction. As well as The Darkest Shade of Grey at Red Penny Papers and In The Name Of The Father in The One That Got Away, I have a sci-fi/horror story coming out in Midnight Echo 6, which should be available any time now, and a sci-fi/horror yarn in Anywhere But Earth, a fantastic anthology from Coeur De Lion, which has just been published and is available now. There are a couple of other short stories slated for publication next year, and hopefully more all the time.

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Tara interviewed by Cels Jansink

Not only are you the author of two bestselling series and the host of both “Tough Nuts” and “Tara Moss in Conversation” you’re also a new mum. Do you have any particular techniques when it comes to time management you can share?

I’ve always been very self-motivated, and where there is motivation there is a way. As it happens, I’ve had a wonderfully busy time the past two years with the addition of my new fiction series and TV shows, and having Sapphira hasn’t slowed things down. Having my writer husband Berndt as such a hands-on father has made all the difference to making that possible. We have travelled together as a family for all the work I have done since Sapphira was born, and I’ve been able to continue feeding her, which has been wonderful. She already has a passport. The photo is pretty hilarious.

Crime is obviously one of your biggest passions. You even earned your Certificate III in Private Investigation at the Australian Security Academy; did you ever dream of entering a career in law enforcement as a child?

Interestingly, I did not give a lot of thought to law enforcement until I began researching my first novel, Fetish. To my memory, I had not even met a police officer before then. But the past 12 years have seen me spend a lot of time in squad cars and at police academies and crime scenes. It has been a fascinating journey.

You have spent time in courtrooms, morgues and toured with both the FBI and LAPD and have even been set on fire and choked unconscious all in the name of research. Are there any other adventures you have planned for future research?

I am always on the look out for new research ideas. Each book brings new research requirements, and now that I am writing Assassin, the sixth Mak Vanderwall novel, I wonder what the next adventure holds. What could top being choked out and set on fire?

You’ve created one formidable crime fighting heroine with Mak Vanderwall and even incorporated an insider view into the modelling industryalongside catching nefarious crims. Is there a little bit of “Tara” hiding in Mak?

It could be said that there is more than a little bit of me in Mak, but although I relate to her, I am careful not to write her as me. She is more like a fictional sister of sorts – someone I understand intimately, and who comes from a similar background. Over the 12 years I have written her, however, she has grown and changed with her circumstances, and in Assassin, which I am writing at the moment, she is a very different person than the one I began writing. The characters I write become their own people.

I must admit “Fetish” in particular had me checking under the bed at night. Have you ever put a character in a situation that has left you with your heart thumping long after the fact?

I always find myself sucked into the scenes I am writing, but some scenes have been much more disturbing in that respect than others. I found it very hard to write the opening sequence of Split, as it was written from the perspective of the victim, and the crimes were based loosely on those of American serial killer Robert Hansen. What he did was truly terrifying. I also found the ending of Siren quite moving to write. Those extreme events are both tragic and strangely liberating for Mak.

You were the first author inducted onto the Australian Walk of Fame for Services to Literature. When you receive an award like this do you get a sense of finally having “made it”?

Life to me is primarily about looking forward, so whilst I am honoured by awards like these, I don’t think there is any such thing as having ‘made it’. Not until I die, anyway. Every day brings new challenges, and that is exactly as it should be.

After bringing us Mak’s heart racing adventures for 12 years; you introduced us to Pandora English and her paranormal life in Spektor.  Was this a genre you always wanted to add your voice to?

Absolutely. I first fell in love with the novels of Stephen King when I was just 10 and since then I have been fascinated by stories of horror and the paranormal. I love the writings of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Charlaine Harris, Neil Gaiman, HP Lovecraft and Anne Rice, and I felt with Pandora that I could add something fresh and at times humorous to the genre.

Pandora not only finds herself finding her way in the big bad city and dealing with obsessive compulsive vamps, but solving a crime or two along the way as well. Could we see Pandora become the new go-to girl when it comes to stranger than normal happenings in Spektor?

Pandora’s unique family heritage has put her right in the thick of it. Whether she wants it or not, she has become a key player in paranormal world – ironic considering she is so hugely underestimated in the ‘normal’ world. I know that if I were faced with the happenings in Spektor I’d want Pandora on my side, and her wise Great Aunt Celia as well.

“Tough Nuts” brings us the true stories of some of our most hardened criminals, has there been one story that has stood out to you personally more than the rest?

I have been moved by many of the stories on Tough Nuts, perhaps none more than the story of John Regan, ‘The Magician’ – a truly reprehensible psychopath we profile in an upcoming episode. He was called ‘The Magician’ because he made people disappear, including a four year old child.

I find Tilly Devine fascinating. As a female crime boss, and our first female ‘Tough Nut’, she was a unique woman who was exploited as an underage prostitute in London and went on to exploit other women in precisely the same way in her brothels, hooking them on cocaine to keep them coming back. The real Tilly wasn’t as pretty and soft as she is often portrayed, and in our profile of her we show her mix of ground breaking business acumen and violent brutality as it was. You don’t get to be Sydney’s ‘queen of vice’ by being nice.

You have interviewed some of the best-known names in crime fiction (including our very own Marianne). Is there a particular author you’re dyingto interview?

It’s been an honour to interview Lynda La Plante, Val McDermid, Ken Follett and Michael Connelly in recent months, and my wish list for future interviews is long and diverse. Stephen King is the author who made me start writing as a child and I would love the opportunity to meet and interview him one day. I’m also keen to interview Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse True Blood novels, and Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter series, both of whom I was very close to interviewing this year but couldn’t because of last minute timing issues. Faye Kellerman and Kathy Reichs are also high on my (very long) list.

Which authors dominate your own bookshelves? Who has inspired you in your own career?

I appreciate a variety of authors and genres, and while my crime novels have been influenced by Patricia Cornwell and Thomas Harris, and my Pandora English series influenced by the classic horror novels of Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and Mary Shelley, as well as the works of Anne Rice and Charlaine Harris, some of my other favourite authors include Ian McEwan, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Jeff Lindsay, Lynda La Plante, Roald Dahl, Anais Nin, and Margaret Atwood. I also enjoy Australian authors Leigh Redhead, Marianne Delacourt, and more. I could keep going, but I doubt you have the space.

And one just for fun. If you could spend the day with anyone fictional or otherwise; who would it be and why

I would like to spend a day with Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, eating cherry pie and drinking ‘damn fine’ black coffee. I trust he would keep me safe from the nefarious forces of the Black Lodge. Then I’d like to take to the night sky with Silas from Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book.

Thank you x Tara

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