Clan Destine Press Blog

On 3 April 2020 @ 8pm Emma Viskic, Karina Kilmore and Natalie Conyer will explore the flawed heroes of their crime novels and grapple with an equally flawed world. This Sisters in Crime event will be chaired by author Jacqui Horwood at the Rising Sun Hotel, South Melbourne and while booking details are still to come (check back the Sisters in Crime events page), maybe we can think a bit about what 'flawed' means to us when we pair that term with hero. Men, Women, and Non-Binary Heroes—Do They Even Get to Be Flawed? In fiction and in fact we...

Before we go one word further know that this blog entry comes with sage advice from premiere true crime writer Vikki Petraitis and who doesn't want that?*no one raises hand*To get where we're going however, we have to start someplace unexpected—but be assured, there's a method to our madness! Fiction, Non-Fiction Writing & Pee So here's the thing, as writers we believe we know things and we sometimes let those things creep into our stories. I think most of us think we "know" urine is sterile (it is not!), and perhaps we've written ye ol' sea captain as reassuring some...

By Narrelle M Harris It’s always fabulous to have new zombie fiction set in Australia, and it’s ten times as grand when the zombie fiction in question has as much personality, drama and heart as Alison Evans’ new YA book, Highway Bodies. The story is divided into three-chapter sections: the first from the point of view of a teen near the epicentre of the zombie outbreak; the second from a group of young musicians taking a week away in the country to work on songs; the third a pair of non-identical twins whose mother is a nurse at a hospital...

Just watched the NASA Live: SpaceX In-Flight Abort Test, which is like so many things involving space, made me again feel like the kid who read all those sci-fi novels, who loved the Martian stories of Ray Bradbury, the moon stories of Robert Heinlein, the robot and tech tales of Tanith Lee. Two other things struck me about watching today’s successful tests of the "Crew Dragon spacecraft’s ability to safely escape the Falcon 9 rocket in the event of an emergency during launch.” (Yes, quoting directly from NASA.) The first was that of the two main voices heard during the...

What would you think about a Clan Destine Press podcast? You already know we've got nearly one hundred books of great writing, from Australian crime fiction by writers like Sandy Curtis and Lindy Cameron, Aussie true crime from authors like Vikki Petraitis and Emily Webb, historical fiction by Kerry Greenwood, erotic and mystery fiction from Mary Borsellino and Narrelle M Harris, and don't get us started (do, do get us started!) on the award-winning stories in our long-running Scarlet Stiletto series. So what would you think about a regular podcast series talking about the books we've got, the books that...