Category Archives: Kerry Greenwood

Dishing up Pulp Curry in a new way: why I am starting a Substack newsletter

After much thought I have decided that to experiment with moving the focus of my blogging from this site to a new Pulp Curry Substack newsletter.

Why am I doing this?

The first post on this website appeared on July 2010 (about the incredibly underrated 1979 Australian heist film, Money Moversyou can read the post here). I’ve been writing on the site with varying frequency ever since (579 posts in all), and for the most part have enjoyed it immensely.

But for the last 12 or so months I just haven’t been feeling it – or getting the hits to make it seem worthwhile – and have started to wonder whether it’s worth continuing with the effort. Posting on a website has been starting to feel like the equivalent of trying to read a broadsheet newspaper in a crowded tram carriage, unwieldy and inconvenient.

And, thinking about it, I suspect the blog format is starting to get a bit stale for me and is actually now a brake on my posting more regularly.

I know that I’m no Robinson Crusoe in this regard. The majority of the blogs I used to follow have gradually fallen by the wayside, as people have moved on, grown weary of the effort, found other interests, adopted other means to get their message out, or, in some cases (gulp), died.… Read more

The comfort of crimes past? Why we love period crime procedurals

sherlock-holmes

You only have to take a quick look at the television guide or go to the crime section of your nearest bookstore to know that period crime procedurals – crime stories set in the past – are popular.

Showing or having recently aired on free-to-air television have been Foyle’s War, a police procedural show set during or immediately after the Second World War; Dr Blake Mysteries, set in Ballarat in the 1950s; Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, based on the successful books by Melbourne writer Kerry Greenwood set in late-1920s Melbourne; andAquarius, dealing with the murders committed by Charles Manson in 1960s California. These programs feed into a much wider canon of popular period shows – everything from Downton Abbey, to Mad Men and Wolf Hall, the adaption of Hilary Mantel’s 2009 bestselling Booker Prize-winning novel.

Our desire for period crime procedurals is just as big on the printed page. In Australia alone, there are Sulari Gentill’s books featuring the 1930s sleuth, Roland Sinclair, Robert Gott’s police procedurals set in the newly formed homicide squad in 1940s Melbourne, and Geoffrey McGeachin’s award winning Melbourne police detective Charlie Berlin, to name a few.

What is driving this? Is this a symptom of our refusal to come to grips with modern reality?… Read more

SheKilda and women’s crime writing in Australia

It’s when someone asks you to contribute a blog post on the state of female crime writing in Australia from the point of someone watching the industry, that you realise you just don’t read enough.

Not nearly enough.

That said, in my view, female crime writing in this country looks in rude health.

Exhibit A is SheKilda this weekend, the women’s crime writing conference I’ve been asked to write this blog post to coincide with. There’ll be 60 speakers spanning fiction, true crime, young adult, ‘crimance’ and screenwriting. With the exception of the Crime and Justice Festival, there’s nothing else like it.

The 53 books by local female writers entered in the current Davitt awards for female crime writing, is Exhibit B.

It’s when you make statements like these that you come up against claims female crime writers are discriminated in reviewing and awards. Certainly, studies overseas have shown that female writers are vastly underrepresented in the review sections of newspapers. I presume the same is true here.

Awards? Let’s look at the top categories for the last ten years of the Ned Kelly Awards, 2002 – 2011.

The results are fairly split in the category of true crime. Five women have won it (it was tied between two women in 2007) and five men (with the result being tied between two men in 2002).… Read more

Not another post about the crisis of the publishing industry

This is not going to be another post about the crisis in the publishing industry.

Well, not quite.

The Emerging Writers’ Festival has been running over the last week in Melbourne.

The events I attended, including the crime genre panel at the Wheeler Centre last Thursday night (more about that later), were great. Good speakers, interesting discussion, a refreshing absence of hipsterdom.

I’ll certainly be marking the week off in my diary next year and trying to attend more events.

Not surprisingly, a central theme of the proceedings was the future of publishing. Much of the discussion focused on whether it was in crisis or not.

Before going any further, it’s important to set the record straight. I love books. I mean the paper kind you can smell and touch and thumb through. I’m not going to be coy about it, I really hope the manuscript of my crime novel set in Cambodia gets to become a book made out of a dead tree.

Hopefully you’ll be able to buy it from a neighbourhood bookstore owned by someone you’re on first name terms with. Shit, I even hope I make some money off it.

I also love newspapers, party politics, Hawaiian shirts and a whole lot of other things that have an uncertain future.… Read more

Crime time at the Emerging Writers’ Festival

Melbourne’s Emerging Writers’ Festival gets underway later this week. The agenda features a mind-boggling array of writers, editors, publishers and other literary types.

This year, the Festival includes a series of panels on genre writing. Young adult, speculative fiction, romance and crime are all going to get a going over.

And guess who’s got a slot on the crime fiction panel on Thursday, June 2?

Yes, I’m going to be one of the three panel members. I’m the emerging writer (go team!).

Also on the panel is Jarad Henry, policy advisor to the Victorian police by day and author of two books, the most recent of which is the 2008 novel Blood Sunset.

The third person is veteran crime writer, Kerry Greenwood. Greenwood is the author of approximately fifty books, including the well-known series featuring the female sleuth, Phryne Fisher.

I’m sure it will be a great discussion so come along.

This is going to be my first literary panel and I have to admit I’m a little nervous, especially given the experience of my co-panelists. Carmel has asked me to send her my thoughts about being an emerging author. Hmm, I’m going to have to think about that. Any aspiring or emerging writers reading this post who’ve got ideas about what I should say, are encouraged to drop me a line.… Read more