crime fiction mystery literary agent

The Hazards of the Modern Writer-Postman. Episode 4.

I understand maintaining your garden can be time-consuming and not exactly high on one’s priority list of household chores. But lorks-a-lordy, spare a thought for your friendly neighbourhood Writer-Postman.

Somewhere in that green Cousin It look-a-like vegetative monstrosity is a letterbox!

Pass the machete please!

Can you see the letterbox? Just right of centre, low down. Yeah low down all right! A Writer-Postman runs the risk of poking out an eye – or poking something worse.

So come on people, think of the hardworking postmen and postwomen who bring you messages of joy and hope (and the occasional bill) and get those hedge clippers out. TODAY.

The Hazards of the Modern Writer-Postman. Episode 2.

Once again, as my mother would say “damned annoying”.

Did some more scribbling on the postie run today on my new novel. Still waiting for news from my agent about my crime novel The Highlands as it does the rounds of publishers here in Australia.

Literary Agent Secured

Yep. My wife and I returned from our Christmas in Europe to the news that Lyn Tranter at Australian Literary Management was willing to act as my literary agent. This is how the situation played out: the moment we got home from overseas, my wife and I combed through my manuscript looking for typos, spelling mistakes, poor formatting – and of course plot holes and character flaws. When we were happy with the manuscript, I emailed it to Lyn – and then waiting began . . . Every time my phone rang I would check caller ID, hoping it would be Lyn calling. I know this much about publishing – good news is rarely emailed to you. A ‘thanks but no thanks’ from potential publishers or agents usually drop in your inbox. But good news, such as ‘we want to publish your manuscript’ or ‘I’d like to take you on as a client’ are pretty much always a phone call. So, in mid February, that’s what I got. A phone call from Lyn requesting a meeting. ‘How about tomorrow?’ I said. We arranged a time in the afternoon and the next day I went into work early (4:00am) – remember I’m a postie? – delivered my mail at warp speed and drove to Balmain to meet with Lyn.

First off, we decided on a new title for the manuscript. Gone is Disputed Provenance and Murder is an Art. The new title of my first Liz Kolle crime novel is . . .

The Highlands

And now I’m faced with more waiting as Lyn shops the manuscript to potential publishers. I have my fingers and toes crossed that The Highlands will find a home soon. Mind you, crossed fingers make it hard to type – as I work on my next crime novel. It’s called Burned. I’ll tell you more about that one in future posts.

The Journey Begins

Welcome to my website.

Where to begin . . . Well, I’m an Australian children/YA author and I’ve published about thirty books here in Australia as well in Asia, New Zealand, U.S.A and U.K. Short stories, too.

Oh, and once upon a time, I wrote scripts for Australian television dramas such as Neighbours and Home and Away.

But now, my writing is focused on crime fiction for adults. A while ago – a long while ago – I started a crime novel. Started but didn’t finish. Until eighteen months ago when, after encouragement from my wife, Patricia, I finished, edited and polished the manuscript . . . and sent it out into the world of publishing.

My manuscript, now called The Highlands landed me a chat with literary agent, Lyn Tranter of Australian Literary Management. I’m now on the books of ALM and my second crime manuscript Corruption is making itself known to Australian publishers. As they say in the classics, fingers crossed . . .

I’ll be keeping you up-to-date with my writing life, my reading life, my movie-watching life, my television-watching life, my life life and anything else that’s interesting.

Please feel free to comment – agree, disagree, expand and even, ahem, praise (I won’t discourage that!). Okay, that’s it for the introduction. Let the adventure begin!

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That’s me. On a mountain. In Switzerland. It’s much colder than it looks (yeah, I’m tough). And see in the background, those mountains are the Swiss Alps. We don’t have mountains like them in Australia. Oh no. Compared to The Alps our mountains are hills.

Okay. That’s it for now. But I will share more holiday snaps with you. Seeing photos of holidays past encourages me to write, so I can (hopefully) sell a book to a publisher and travel some more. And hey, I’m not just having fun all of the time, I’m researching, too. Research is very important to a writer. Very important.