Sunday
Mar112018

Vale Bernadette Bean

Coming up for air again after the craziness of three back to back launches (Crossing the Lines, Rejacket of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, and A Dangerous Language in August, September and October respectively), then the Holidays and writing a new book.  Suddenly it's March... 2018!

I do have a lot with which I need to update you, but I'll do that in later posts.  In this post I'd like to talk about the prolific and dedicated Australian reviewer, Bernadette Bean, of Reactions to Reading and Fair Dinkum Crime, who passed away suddenly a couple of weeks ago.

Bernadette was one of the first reviewers to ever pick up a Rowly book. Back in 2010 she reviewed my debut novel, A Few Right Thinking Men.  I remember well the excitement of being reviewed for the first time by Bernadette Bean.  She said at the end of that review: "I’m chuffed to have discovered this debut work (of adult fiction though Gentill has published YA fiction) by an author whose work I can now look out for with pleasure."  Bernadette did continue to look out for my work.  She read and reviewed every single one of my novels.  It became so that I did not feel that a book was truly out in the world until Bernadette had reviewed it.

Authors and reviewers have always had an interesting relationship - one in which fear and gratitude feature in equal measure (on the part of authors anyway).  We would not be published writers if we did not care, if we did not want readers to connect with our work.  Reviewers introduce out books to the world... without them our voices would be lost in the general din.  A bad review can be shattering but when a reviewer truly understands your book, it is encouraging, and gratifying, and just plain wonderful.   But more than that, a thoughful, insightful review can guide other readers on how to read your book - it can point out facets and ideas that they might otherwise have missed.  It can help your book find a readership in a world crowded with stories.  Bernadette wrote those kinds of reviews.

Of course Bernadette was also fearlessly honest when she came across books, subjects or characters she did not like.  But those reviews were reasoned and fair and often linked to reviews which expressed the opposite view.  Like everyone, she had her preferences but she was open to her mind being changed.  

From Bernadette's review of A Decline in Prophets : "I really ought not to have enjoyed this book. Its hero, Rowly Sinclair, is the kind of world-wandering dilettante living off inherited wealth instead of the product of his own toil that should offend my lefty sensibilities. But, in what might be evidence that my principles are only skin deep, I like Rowly very much and loved the book too."

Almost every Australian crime writer has been reviewed and championed by Bernardette at some point. Her reviews were eloquent and witty - the kind that inspire you to write harder still. She sought out new writers and supported us out of obscurity. 

Over the last seven years,  I have, with every release, waited anxiously for her review, her nod, which I never took for granted. In many ways Bernardette was my mythical ideal reader. She knew crime fiction, but she also truly "got" my work. Her published reviews of the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries were beautifully stated and kind, but it is the personal messages she'd send me after reading my work that I treasure most as a writer. In her, Rowly had a friend, and though we never met, I'd like to think I did too. Vale Bernardette.

My fellow writer, Margot Kinberg, had posted a very moving tribute to Bernadette here.

Tuesday
Nov072017

2017 - Where did you go? - October

October saw the release of A Dangerous Language the latest instalment in the Rowland Sinclair Mysteries.

It was launched, fittingly at the Museum of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House in the Senate Chamber by the Hon. Graham West... who went so far as to recreate the cover on the steps of the House.  

 

The month following the launch was a blur of events and reveiws, meeting readers, visiting bookshops, and general dancing the new book waltz.

 

 

Tuesday
Nov072017

2017 - Where did you go? - September

September saw the re-release of the entire Rowland Sinclair Mysteries with their glorious new covers!  I spoke at the Canberra Writers' Festival, the Historical Novel Society's Conference and as the after dinner speaker at the VicWater Conference among other things.

 

 

Photo: Abbey's Bookshop        With Reni Eddo Lodge; Deb Stevens Dan O'Malley and Karen Viggers; Ellie Marney; Louise Peiper 


 


 

Tuesday
Nov072017

2017 - Where did you go? ... August

 

 

Once again the days and weeks and months have slipped away... not completely out of my grasp - I did manage to hang on while the latter part of 2017 dragged me along as it galloped out of control, but my grip was always tenuous.  

The craziest months were August, September, and November.  At the beginning of each there were new releases.  So this was August.

The first of August saw the international release of Crossing the Lines, my metafiction.  Published by the wonderful Poisoned Pen Press in the US, and the extraordinary Pantera Press in Australia, it was launched with a great deal of cake and celebration at The Nest in Tumbarumba and Readings Hawthorne in Melbourne.  My husband Michael launched it in Tumbarumba and my dear friend and fellow writer, Robert Gott launched it in Melbourne.  Crossing the Lines was for me a real departure from the historical crime fiction for which I am known.  I've been overwhelmed by the reception it's received from readers and reviewers both here and in the US.  The Huffington Post called it "a deeply-imagined and inventive novel about art, truth, and the blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy" and the Australian said: "Crossing the Lines is a book that smiles and offers cake while it thinks".  Through August I spoke spent many hours travelling with this book and through wonders of modern technology also managed to chat with a lovely bookclub in Hockessin Delaware.

 

 

  Photo: Hockessin Book Shelf

 

Wednesday
Apr262017

Crossing the Lines

So... despite falling behind with my website, I have been working.  The eighth Rowland Sinclair Mystery, A Dangerous Language will be released in Australia in October, and Miles off Course in the US in June.  I'm immersed in writing book 9 at the moment. And in between I wrote something else...

Crossing the Lines will be released internationally (the US and Australia) in August.  The novel is a departure from my other work.  It's a strange little story about the relationship between writers and their protagonists, about what happens when the lines between life and art are crossed and imagination becomes a better reality.

To be honest I've been quite overwhelmed by the early reaction to this book.

 

A tour de force! Crossing the Lines is a brilliant blend of mystery, gut-wrenching psychological suspense and literary storytelling. The novel stands as a shining (and refreshing) example of meta-fiction at its best--witty and wry, stylish and a joy to read.

                                                                             -Jeffery Deaver

  

"A delightful, cerebral novel featuring a crime writer who grows dangerously enamored with her main character. As the interplay between creator and created reaches Russian-nesting-doll complexity, it forces us to question the nature of fiction itself."

-Gregg Hurwitz, New York Times bestelling author of Orphan X and The Nowhere Man

 

I wrote it because the idea niggled at me, demanded to be written and when it was I wasn't sure if anyone would like it.  Needless to say I'm delighted, relieved and still a little scared.

The novel will be published by Poisoned Pen Press in the US and Pantera Press in Australia.  As such it has two different and wonderful covers.

 

Poisoned Pen Press' Cover (US)            Pantera Press' Cover (Australia)

 

Please look out for it.