My tumultuous year is ending on a high note, with The Half-Child making lists of best crime reads for 2010 in the Sydney Sun-Herald (‘Footnotes’), the Adelaide Advertiser (‘The best words between the covers’).
It is high praise indeed to be mentioned in the same paragraph as Garry Disher’s Wyatt and Adrian Hyland’s Gunshot Road, which were among my favourite Australian crime reads of 2010, not to mention international bestsellers like Peter James and Val McDermid, both of whom I had the genuine pleasure of meeting in 2010.
The Half-Child also made a Best of Whatever list on Day Labour, the official blog of Crimefactory magazine — though in the interests of full disclosure, I should note the list-maker in this case is my beloved and highly discerning partner Andrew Nette.
Top of the list of my 2011 New Year’s resolutions is to finish the third Jayne Keeney novel. A month ago, I was 30,000 words into what I thought was the third book in the series when it dawned on me that it was actually the fourth or fifth book. So I have set that manuscript aside and started another. I don’t want to jinx the new book by giving too much away, but it’s set in the exquisite southern Thai coastal province of Krabi during the hot season in 1997.
I also hope to get my act together to enter a short story in the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards next year. Like Andrew I hope to read more, too, in 2011 and to support our daughter in learning to read as she starts school in February.
I’ll be appearing at the Writers at the Convent festival in February and the Literati Festival on the Gold Coast in May 2011. But more about that as the time draws closer.
Wishing everyone reading this blog post a happy, healthy and restorative new year in 2011.
