Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot, Part V
The indefatigable Australian Crime Fiction Snapshot is back with interviews of James Phelan, Mark Abernethy, Michael Robotham, Angela Savage and Sandy Curtis.
One highlight is Robotham on his tendency to give minor characters in one book a larger role in another:
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
Technorati tags:
Australian crime fiction
One highlight is Robotham on his tendency to give minor characters in one book a larger role in another:
"When I was a ghostwriter, each time I took on a project I got to look at the world through a fresh set of eyes. That’s what I love about shuffling my main characters around and introducing new ones. I never write a character and think I’ll use them again in another book. I let the story idea decide who the narrator should be."Join me once again in a round of applause for Karen Chisholm of Aust Crime Fiction, Damien Gay of Crime Down Under and Perry Middlemiss of Matilda for conducting, assembling and presenting this fascinating group of interviews. If Al Gore can win a Nobel Prize for public relations, these three deserve at least the Order of Australia.
© Peter Rozovsky 2008
Technorati tags:
Australian crime fiction
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 12:25 AM
10 Comments:
Hear hear!
It's a wonderful way to introduce readers to new authors. And why not fling a hosannah or two to the authors who responded to the interview requests, including one Katherine Howell?
Yes - round of big applause for all the authors who came out to play.
Many of them were up to their elbows in new book releases, festival speaking engagements, edits, publicity, life. And not one of them told us to go away - or at least nobody said it to me anyway :) :)
Their generosity is what made the whole thing run so well.
And we'll be back - probably in June - with some more fabulous local authors.
Naturally the authors will want to promote their own work. But I also liked that you asked for their thoughts on how better to promote Australian crime fiction in general. I noted with interest that several said Australian crime writing seemed to do well abroad but needed some talking up at home.
It is a sad fact that most Australian bookstores will happily push / promote the "big name" overseas authors but they do little for the local crime fiction authors in particular.
Many now have a small "Australian Fiction" section but you're hard pressed to notice any specific promotion of the area, and certainly very little about the genres. It's as bad for Australian Science Fiction authors I'd suspect.
I suggested in one of my comments that the Snapshots project itself might be a way to better promote Australian crime fiction. I hope the project gets some notice there. If anyone needs testimony from overseas experts, though, you know where to find me.
The Snapshots team have done a wonderful job. An ideal next step would be to bring together all the writers in the flesh, so to speak, for a festival of Australian crime writing. Something else that would be interesting would be a popular election for The Missing Ned Kelly: the best Australian crime novel published in 1996, a year in which, for reasons mysterious, there were no Neds awarded.
Again, well done Snapshots.
Such a festival would be a wonderful thing, though a mammoth undertaking, I should imagine. I would love to be in Australia when it happens.
That missing 1996 is intriguing, too. What do you make of this, though, which seems to indicate there were awards that year?
Sorry, the Neds were missing in 1998 not 1996.
Which I could have figured out if I'd looked a little more carefully at that table. Thanks.
I wonder why there were no awards for 1998. A pullout by sponsors, perhaps?
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