My special guest for February, Anne Buist, is currently in Europe touring with the other part of “Australia’s hottest literary couple”, Graeme Simsion. Anne is a Professor of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne and works in perinatal psychiatry, including forensics, which inspires and informs her psychological thrillers. While published widely in her field of perinatal psychiatry, Anne is also the author of two psychological thrillers, Medea’s Curse and Dangerous to Know (with a third out soon), along with a cache of work published under a pseudonym.
Sandi: Please tell us about your first published book.
Anne: After getting several rejection slips for my first submitted book, Kathe and Cathie, I thought maybe I could get the writing bug out of my system my writing non-fiction. I had already had a number of journal articles published, so I turned my MD thesis literature review into a book, published by McGraw-Hill in 1996 and is now out of print. It had the catchy title of: Psychiatric Disorders Associated with Childbirth: A Guide to Management.
Sandi: How many books and years ago was that?
Anne: The non-fiction didn’t stop me wanting to write fiction, though for a few years it got in the way! Between 2011 and 20I4 I had three erotic-romance-suspense novels and seven novellas, as well as a
few short stories, published under a pseudonym before Medea’s Curse was published in 2015 and Dangerous to Know in 2016 (both with Text Publishing). Here’s a little about them…
Medea’s Curse: A troubled forensic psychiatrist is pulled into a missing child case through insider knowledge and her attraction to the married prosecutor.
Dangerous to Know: Natalie King’s supervisor needs her help – but is it to grieve the death of his first wife, or plan the murder of his second?
Sandi: Was it the first novel you’d written?
Anne: Technically, a handwritten one when I was fifteen – truly awful! The first “real” one was Kate and Cathie, finished in 1992, which got some good reviews from professional organisations but I couldn’t find a publisher. It was a psychological drama, and I’ve taken some of the ideas in it, and improved on them, in the book I am currently writing.
The first published one, Embedded, is about a journalist who goes undercover as a housekeeper in a house in Sydney’s Point Piper (based heavily on a house we rented for a year in 1992), to uncover a drug ring. Naturally she falls for the supposed drug lord and finds things are exactly as she had thought… It was a very “newbie” story with lots of flaws but I still have some fondness for it. Unfortunately, the heroine started off as British and I had to do a last-minute change to turn her into an American. I am currently writing a book from a first person American POV and I realise now how a bad a job I did of it then! To say nothing of the fact that I have her going from New York to Sydney via Singapore.
Sandi: What are you currently reading?
Anne: Just finished the 21st Jack Reacher book Night School by Lee Child because…well I just have to read them when they come out! I had already started Anne Holt’s Beyond the Truth, which I am reviewing for Sisters in Crime, so then sat down and finished that! Halfway through Hannah Kent’s The Good People which I can now go back to!
Sandi: Do you write in the same genre as your first book today? And what is your latest project?
Anne: I still write journal articles as I still work as a psychiatrist one day a week. But I spend more time writing fiction and see myself as a psychological thriller writer. I am on the final edits now, before submitting to my publisher, of the third in the Natalie King series, This I Would Kill For. I hope for it to be out maybe August-September 2017 and here’s a grab:
Abuse claims have forensic psychiatrist, Natalie King, battling to be fair to both parents as she seeks the best outcome for children whose family will stop at nothing to gain custody.
But! I am also writing a romantic comedy—working title Left Right—with my husband, Graeme Simsion, with alternating male-female chapters, set on the Camino de Santiago. (Anne’s featured image with this interview was taken in Camino.) We walked this twice, starting in central France and going by the coast the first time to Santiago in Spain (2038km) and via the Camino Frances the second time (1850km). The first time convinced me to go back and try writing fiction again.
My character is a 45-year-old Californian, a recent widower who has never before left the States, my husband’s is a 50-year-old bitter British divorcee. Needless to say, they hate each other at first, there’s a lot of cultural and language problems and preconceptions turned upside down, as well as a quest for them both, learning to live and love again. This should be out in October 2017.
(I expect 2017 to be busy!)
Sandi: What are your top tips for aspiring writers?
Anne: Write. Then write some more. Good writing is rewriting and you get better at both first drafts and the re-writing by practicing. It took 18 years of study and practice to be a Professor of Psychiatry…why should good writing take any less time and effort?
Sandi: What was a standout experience or moment in your early days as a published author?
Anne: Taking the phone call from Michael Hayward, CEO at Text publishing to say they were accepting Medea’s Curse. I was driving and had to pull over. I thought I would have an accident. But when I started to sniffle it wasn’t because I’d pranged the car! The article in Good Weekend that described Graeme and I as Australia’s hottest literary couple was right up there as a great moment too!
Sandi: Who is your writing heroine/hero and why?
Anne: Too hard – too many! Hero also implies that it’s not just that I like their books (of which Tana French for the tight writing, well developed characters and compelling plots, is right up there).
So, hero? Okay, first off, Lee Child. He is the quintessential professional genre writer. He reliably produces a book that keeps you reading despite little (if any) character development that you enjoy and probably forget, but as a beach or plane read, you know exactly what you are getting. The writing and stories are solid and while Reacher doesn’t do relationships, really, Child can write them (and sex) perfectly well when it suits him (as opposed to Dan Brown). And hero – he just keeps doing what he does well and hasn’t been seduced into turning the brand into a money maker or wild plots because he’s bored or become so arrogant he won’t get edited (or he just is a very clean writer). You could argue he is so profitable he doesn’t have to – but that’s the point, he hasn’t sold out. He gives us what we want.
And honestly? At the risk of being sentimental, I have to say my husband. Who else, midlife, having never written a word of fiction, throws in his job, studies screenwriting, gets told no one will ever make his screenplay unless it’s a best-selling book, enrols in a fiction writing course and does just that. Oh, and then sells his screenplay to Hollywood?
Thanks so much for finding time to share some of your journey, Anne – and it sure sounds like this will be a huge, wonderful year for you. I thoroughly enjoyed Medea’s Curse and look forward to reading more in your series.
Cheers,
Sandi
For more information about Anne Buist and her books, please visit her website or connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.
