Killer Queens Invade Castlemaine

I had the great pleasure of being a Killer Queen on Thursday 5 March 2015. Did your eyebrows just lift or pucker? Let me explain. The Killer Queens are a quartet of Australian female contemporary crime writers: Ellie Marney (who just launched the third book in her Every series, Every Word), Kathryn Ledson (Rough Diamond and Monkey Business), Sue Williams (Murder with the Lot) and me, Sandi Wallace (Tell Me Why, with the sequel Black Saturday to be released in spring 2015). We write thrillers and rural crime novels that range across gritty, romantic, young adult and comedy-crime, all with a distinct Australian style. And we appeared at Castlemaine Library last Thursday evening before a fantastic audience!

The capacity-crowd filled the entire foyer of the library and appeared to thoroughly enjoy the conversation that flowed easily and thoughtfully among our panel of four. After our panel talk, we opened to the floor for audience questions and a flurry of hands went up. I can speak for us all in saying that we loved answering the audience questions, sharing some of our insights into the writing and publishing world.

Ellie Marney did a lovely job as our participating chair. Her questions allowed the four of us to delve into some stimulating topics. Kathryn and Sue are warm, funny, interesting women too and we could have easily chatted for another hour!

We started with considering a comment made by Margie Orford, a South African journalist, film director and author of crime fiction, children’s fiction, non-fiction and school text books when she was a guest speaker at SheKilda Again – the Australian Women’s Crime Writers’ Convention held by Sisters in Crime Australia in 2011.

Ellie reminded us that during her speech at SheKilda Again, Margie said that South Africa only boasted two female crime writers, yet Australia has a fantastic array of talented female crime writers. In fact, in the 2014 Davitt Awards a record 76 books by Australian female crime writers were in contention (including adult fiction, young adult fiction, children’s and true crime books). That’s an astounding number of books and authors for a country with a relatively low murder rate – by comparison to South Africa.

Naturally, that led us to discuss the appeal of crime fiction – for writers and readers, particularly women – and why each of us was drawn to the genre and the sub-genres of crime that we write in.

We chatted about highlights in research, including the funny, morbid, and fascinating encounters we’ve had so far.

We explored the attraction to strong female protagonists and what that term means to us. We each feature strong lead women in our books but they are remarkably different, three-dimensional and vary in age from teenaged to middle-aged. Our females have flaws and strengths, making them interesting and believable, and sometimes their flaws are also assets, like my Georgie’s tenacious Taurean attitude which gets her both in and out of trouble during her investigations.

What’s next for each of us Killer Queens is very exciting.

Ellie has just launched the final instalment in her Every series, which is Every Word. (I have just started reading it and am already hooked.) Ellie is currently writing a new book.

Sue’s second book Dead Men Don’t Order Flake will continue the capers of the wonderful Cass and Rusty Bore co who we met in her highly entertaining crime caper Murder with the Lot. This will hopefully be launched early 2016. I’m looking forward to it and more from Sue.

The antics of urban queen Erica will continue in Grand Slam, which Kathryn has just delivered to her publisher and is due out next January. Grand Slam is Kathryn’s third book in her romantic crime caper series and thankfully, there’s more to follow.

And next for me, is the second book in my Rural Crime Files Series, Black Saturday. Georgie, Franklin and most of the crew you met in Tell Me Why will return in the sequel, which will be released this spring (September/October 2015). I have written the third book in the series (just making some tweaks to it now) and started the fourth, with no plans to stop while readers enjoy the series.

So that’s the wrap-up of Killer Queens. And no, we didn’t kill each other with anything apart from killer smiles and flowers! It was a fantastic evening in Castlemaine, which topped off a great afternoon.

I was thrilled to take a crime writing workshop for Castlemaine Word Mine before the library gig. The workshop booked out weeks in advance and was loads of fun to conduct. I received brilliant feedback from the organiser and all participants and hope to be invited back.

Thanks for having us, Castlemaine! Huge thanks to Ellie Marney, Kathryn Ledson and Sue Williams for being great Killer Queens. Also to Jess Saunders at Castlemaine Library and Cath James at Castlemaine Word Mine for hosting the events.

Cheers,
Sandi