What happened to 2014?

It is with some sense of bewilderment that I note the date in the bottom right hand corner of my computer. I must confess that 2014 sped by so fast that I had barely come to realise it was no longer 2013!  The final months of the year in particular left me spinning.

A Murder Unmentioned was released on 1 November.  Michael (my husband) and I were in Sydney.  He was recovering from a cornea transplant and I was leading him about.  I did manage to lead him to dinner with the divinely talented but wonderfully human Malla Nunn and P.M. Newton.  We ate cornbread and okra in this literally brilliant company... see what I did there?... ;) 

I made it back home in time to drive up to Thredbo for the Snowy Readers and Writers' Festival which I have been a part of since its inaugral event.  My boys came with me.   One of the best things about this crazy profession of mine is that Edmund and Atticus have the opportunity to meet some extraordinary people.  Poets like Omar Musa and Victoria McGrath, writers like Anna George, Karen Viggers, Biff Ward, David Leser, Chris Uhlmann and Steve Lewis.  I think (hope) it compensates for all the time their own mother is distracted by imaginary people.

I returned to the peaks again at the end of that month for the official launch of A Murder Unmentioned at a magnificent event at Crackenback Lake Resort hosted by the Snowprint Bookshop.  Despite having nine books to my name, I am at a loss to describe how special that night was.  The band was brilliant, the singers superb, the venue perfect, the company delightful and to top the night off with superlatives, the drama students of Snow Mountains Grammar School performed a chapter from A Murder Unmentioned so well that I swear they had been inside my head!  It was an evening so extraordinary that I wish I could bottle it somehow to share with the world, because something that wonderful shouldn't belong to just me.  But of course I haven't quite worked out how to contain the essence of a experience so photos will have to suffice!

 

  

But that's not all!  I also managed to squeeze in a trip to Melbourne for the Crime and Justice Festival hosted by Reader's Feast Bookstore.  This is a truly unique event which discusses not only crime in literature but also addresses questions of social justice and reform.  I appeared on two panels... the first with my dear friends and admired colleagues, Angela Savage and Robert Gott, and later with my Pantera stablemates Melanie Casey and Josh Donellan.  We discussed all manner of things, shared experiences, ideas and  laughter with wonderful audiences of readers. 

And then there was Christmas... which I spent away from home this year with my Dad and sister.  Dad had surgery just before Christmas and Devini and I headed up to Brisbane to keep an eye on him and do what we could.  In the flurry I neglected to update this site and wish you all the very best of the Season and a happy and healthy New Year, but the wish is now given and no less sincere for being so late!

 

A month....

The last month has been eclectic to say the least - filled with festivals and edits, covers and the obssessive mania of a new novel.

I spent my birthday back in Melbourne filming a segment for the Melbourne Writers' Festival.  Then it was back to Sydney to deliver a workshop on writing historical fiction for the Sydney Writers' Festival. 

Finally I headed to Bellingen for the Bellingen Readers and Writers Festival where I spoke on panels about crime and historical fiction. 

        With Claire Scobie, Irin Dunn, Omar Musso and Melanie Casey at BRWF.   

When I wasn't gadding about, I was finishing the final edit on A Murder Unmentioned (Rowland Sinclair #6). 

Early in May, Pantera Press did release an unproofed-unedited version for booksellers, before the text was edited at all.  I have a copy but I haven't opened it.  Now that the book has been edited, I'm a little afraid of what I'll find leafing through what was essentially a printed manuscript.  Much less anxiety-making was the bottle of wine Pantera released in honour of the book!

Whilst in Sydney, the charming Scott Whitmont of the Lindfield Bookshop presented me with a magnificent montage of the real people who have inhabited Rowland Sinclair's world from time to time.  It was a delightful, thoughtful gift... but then Scott is a delightful and thoughtful person.

   

I also attended my very first Sydney Writers' Festival launch party with Pantera Press and caught up with Ashley Hay (fresh from Premier's Literary Award People's Choice glory) P.M. Newton (whose latest book Beams Falling is being acclaimed in every corner) and Kate Forsyth, (who I panelled with last year).  My very favourite thing about writers' festivals is the opportunity to catch with old friends and like minds.

The new novels I'm working on are absorbing every other moment one way or another.   Neither is a Rowland Sinclair novel.  I don't need to start working on next year's Rowland Sinclair release till about December really.  So I'm taking a chance by stepping out of my usual genres.  When I first started writing, I didn't ever think of myself as either a crime writer or a historical fiction writer... I just wrote what I wanted to write, told the stories I wanted to tell.  It just so happened that at the time they were crime and historical novels.  I'm going back to that "write anything potential" in the few months I have up my sleeve, and just seeing what comes out of it.  It may work, it may not but it'll be interesting finding out!