Writers on the Rise

Kylie is currently working on her first novel which she plans to complete the final chapters of in the first few months of 2010.

Kataclysmic, as it is currently known, is a crime thriller based around butt-kicking, crime-fighting, government-sanctioned assassin, Kat Delaney, as she sets about taking down and tearing apart a child-pornography syndicate.
 

Leslie’s non-fiction book on finance, Women Talking Money, was published in 2003; but since then she has turned to a life of crime – writing.

She has stories in the true crime anthologies: Outside the Law 2 – ‘The Art of Theft’; and Outside the Law 3 – ‘Three simple Words’ and ‘Doing the Rounds’.

 Leslie is currently delving into the more criminal side of money by writing a crime novel set in Melbourne.
 

Jacqui completed a Graduate Diploma of Arts (Creative Writing) at the University of Melbourne in 1999 and has also completed short courses in editing and research for writing.  In 2003, Jacqui won a Scarlet Stiletto for her crime short story, “Slasher’s Return”, which is published in Scarlet Stiletto: the First Cut.  She has also been published in the Litmus Journal (Issue Minus Two), and Melbourne’s Child parenting magazine.  She’s written travel articles for the travel website, Vagablond, and in 2009, her true crime article, “Taskforce Zebra – Beating the Odds”, was published in Outside the Law volume 3.

Jacqui is currently having a ball as a convenor with Sisters in Crime Victoria and is writing a crime series for young adults.  She loves her crime fiction hardboiled and her poached eggs sunnyside up.
 

She is currently working on her first fantasy novel about the Raven Knights of Asmaydea and their struggle to keep control of the power that maintains their world.

Kerri is a member of the Sisters in Crime Australia, and has been lucky enough to have very supportive friends in the Bittern Writers group led by Lindy Cameron.
 

Emilie started out life as an actor and improviser, then quickly turned to writing when she cottoned on to how much more fun it was to make things up than say words that other people had made up.

She has worked extensively as a playwright, with over twelve plays produced on stage or radio over the last 10 years - by ABC Radio National, La Mama, The Victorian Arts Centre and St Martins among others. Award winning plays include Argonauta (Young Playwright’s Award 1997) and Promise (George Fairfax Award 2000).

Emilie has recently turned her pen to fiction and poetry. Her writing has appeared in Page Seventeen (Issue 7), Torpedo (Vol 5 & 6), Voiceworks, The Australian Book Review and Viewpoint.

Emilie teaches creative writing, has worked a lot as an artist in schools and is also a freelance copywriter. She lives in Melbourne’s west and is slowly working her way through all of the best dumpling, noodle and pho restaurants that Footscray has to offer.

  www.betweenthecracks.net

Evelyn sends all her post graduate creative writing class a warning about strong adult content when she submits a piece for work shopping. It's only fair – she's writing a werewolf crime novel, set in a future much like now, only with more full body waxing for those mutants who want to remain undercover and under the radar of Xenos-hit squads. There's plenty of action, in every sense of the word.

Her crime short story Xenos won the Dorothy Porter Innovation in Crime Writing Prize at the 2007 Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards. This morphed into the novel she is currently writing, Almost Human, and her investigation into what it means to be a post human character in science fiction writing. Both form the basis of her PhD in Creative Writing at RMIT University.

It was her academic work that started her on this path. Presenting a paper at a bioethics conference, Evelyn learned about xeno-transplantation and the black market trade in young women's eggs. All have found their way into Almost Human. So, what's that got to do with werewolves, you might ask? The desire to break free and defy social expectations runs deep. Robert Louis Stevenson explored this transformation in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Hyde is a metaphor for that dark and buried part of us that longs to stray from the path - much like a werewolf given permission to change by the full moon.
Time and time again her academic supervisors have told Evelyn to 'never stray from the path', but like her heroine Ariana Stephanopoulos – part werewolf and government agent – she can't seem to heed sound advice. Such forays off the path lead her to submit her first Sisters in Crime story with co-author Caroline van de Pol, Deadlines, which received a highly commended in the 2006 Scarlet Stiletto Awards.

They say once you have gone down the path of crime, it's hard to get back to the straight and narrow. Or is that crime writing? In 2007, when Dorothy Porter presented Evelyn with the Innovation award, she said; "next year – write something in verse."

Evelyn is no stranger to writing in verse; her children's operas Software and Bookworm, for which she wrote the libretti, were performed by Opera Australia and the Victoria State Opera in schools throughout Victoria, ACT and NSW, as well as New Zealand and the United Kingdom as part of the school's program.

And so Evelyn submitted the verse crime Undeceive to the 2008 Scarlet Stiletto Awards and won both the Dorothy Porter Prize for Innovation again and the famed Scarlet Stiletto itself. It is a story about grief and copyright theft, entirely in verse. Sadly Dorothy, such an inspiration, died shortly afterwards.

In 2009, Evelyn received a special commendation for her second verse crime story Breathless – inspired by her new role in a public art gallery. Breathless is a cautionary tale of deadly ambition - and a love triangle that crushes everything in its wake. It also celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit even when the body fails.

It is this theme of the body and its role in crime that Evelyn is explored in the novel she wrote for her Master of Arts in Creative Writing. The Isis Club is about a love that will not die – and organ donation. This crime and gothic horror delves into the darkness that is obsession.

Likewise, her non-fiction novel Handle With Care http://www.preciousfamilies.com, which she co-wrote with Caroline van de Pol deals with the body – and again, its resilience in less than perfect circumstances. Evelyn and Caroline worked together as journalists on the Herald Sun, where Evelyn spent 10 years before turning to fiction writing.

Handle With Care chronicles more than 25 experiences in high-risk pregnancy. Down to earth, inspiring and a great advice and guide book for the average reader and those in the medical profession alike, the book was literally a labor of love for the writers who both experienced high risk pregnancy in their quest to become mothers.

Undoubtedly, Evelyn will be diverted time and time again from her academic study and the path to the PhD to explore alternate literary worlds, and you can read about those forays here, at Clan Destine.

Read excerpts of Evelyn's Scarlet Stiletto stories:
Xenos
Deadlines
Undeceive
Breathless

Read her Clan Destine Blog

Read an extract from The Isis Club

Read Evelyn's Motherland Blog: http://evelyntsitasmotherland.blogspot.com/

Go to the Handle With Care website: http://www.preciousfamilies.com/

(We'll link to everything as they are published so please come back or follow the updates at http://www.clandestine-books.com.au/news)

Very left-brain ho-hum.

Karen now exercises her right brain, living out fantasies through her characters.

Some days, she’s Josh – Super Space Kid capturing space monsters and saving the Galaxy – in her kids Sci-Fi novel, Josh and the It. Creating Josh’s world has been one heck of an adventure.

Other days, Karen lives a life of crime though her fictional forensic student, Josie Roberts. Sayonara is Crime Faction – a novel that is part memoir, part imagination – in which Josie is investigating the disappearance of a Japanese girl called Yumi, from the suburbs of Brisbane. Will you be able discern the line between fact and fiction?

On the weekends, Karen heads a local Crime Writers Club and presents Writing Workshops to the Logan community in Brisbane.

Karen also wrote the tell-all account Me and Her: a Memoir of Madness. She plays herself in this mystifying struggle through mania and mayhem, which opens with the police pounding on the door of her covert hide-away.

All three books are under consideration by Publishers and/or a big name Australian agent. Karen is one very determined writer and is on a pro-active quest to get published.

She reads voraciously, anything from Young Adult fantasy to crime thrillers.   Her next project is creating a sibling sequel to Josh and the It.

Karen’s life is never dull. She’s also developing another Crime Faction story interweaving her dramatic experiences with her vivid imagination.
 

  http://www.karentyrrell.com