Category: Writing novels and short stories

Author Madeline Te Whiu working at her desk, surrounded by editorial notes and bookcases.
Alumni news
Australian Writers' Centre Team

How Madeline Te Whiu became a debut fantasy author

Her perseverance paid off with the completion of her first draft for The Assassin Thief. But over 50 rejections later, she knew she needed to try a new approach. Madeline enrolled in Creative Writing Stage 1 at the Australian Writers’ Centre to nail the basics of her story, then went on to edit her manuscript with Cut, Shape, Polish. After taking Pitch Your Novel: How to Attract Agents and Publishers, she was ready to send out her novel again – and this time she was snapped up by New Dawn Publishing.

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

How Ellie Marney got the idea that sparked ‘The Killing Code’

By Ellie Marney About ten years ago, I watched a BBC Television production called The Bletchley Circle, an historical drama about four women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII, and how they regroup a decade after the war to solve a mystery. I was completely fascinated by

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

VIDEO: Veronica Lando on her novel, ‘The Whispering’

Veronica Lando is an Australian crime author who won the 2021 Banjo Prize for her then-unpublished manuscript The Whispering. As a child, she grew up above her parents’ Melbourne bookstore, surrounded by other people’s stories. Now, as an adult, she lives in Queensland and enjoys using the uniquely wild and sometimes

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Photographs of the exterior of Sulari Gentil’s writing hut, and the interior where two dogs sleep next to a heater.
Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Sulari Gentill’s idyllic writing hut

Many aspiring writers dream of an idyllic creative space where they can pen their next masterpiece. Sulari Gentill, who has recently released her 15th book, The Woman in the Library, turned that dream into reality when she installed a writing hut on her property in the Snowy Mountains in Australia.

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

VIDEO: Kathy Reichs on her novel ‘Cold Cold Bones’

Kathy Reichs has written over twenty novels featuring forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan, including Cold Cold Bones. An international best-seller, she’s also worked as the producer of the television series based upon her work, Bones, and she’s one of very few forensic anthropologists certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology.

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Video: Kimberley Starr on ‘The Map of Night’

Kimberley Starr is an Australian novelist and teacher whose novels have won and been shortlisted for multiple literary awards, including the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Text Publishing YA Prize. She lives with her sons and their labrador in semi-rural Victoria and is currently completing a PhD in Creative

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A pile of four notebooks with crimson thread and golden scissors resting on top, and two copies of Kate Forstyh’s The Crimson Thread
Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Inside the notebooks of bestselling author Kate Forsyth

By Valerie Khoo. Bestselling author Kate Forsyth has written 48 books, across all age groups and many genres. She is published in 20 countries and her most recent book is The Crimson Thread, a reimagining of ‘The Minotaur in the Labyrinth’ myth, set in Crete during the Nazi invasion and

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Author and Australian Writers' Centre alumni Gabriella Margo
Alumni news
Australian Writers' Centre Team

How Gabriella Margo became a published romance writer

“I have always been a big reader, and I thought it might be interesting to learn some new skills. I didn’t really intend to do anything with them, but that’s not how things panned out!” Gabriella told us.

Her latest romance novel All’s Fair in Love and Tequila is set to be released by Harlequin/HarperCollins in December, while her previous manuscript Tulips from Mal was a finalist in the Romance Writers of Australia Emerald Award and is available now independently.

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A wooden desk with a plant, coffee, glasses, notebook, and hands typing on a laptop with the screen showing ‘Landing Page’.
Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Why authors need landing pages – and what to put on them

By Allison Tait. When people talk about landing pages, writers seem to look the other way, assuming that landing pages are for people with, I don’t know, products to sell. The fact is, though, that if you are an author, with a book to sell, you have a product. Not

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Video: Sarah Vaughan on ‘Reputation’ and ‘Anatomy of a Scandal’

Sarah Vaughan studied English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist. She spent eleven years at The Guardian as a news reporter and political correspondent before leaving to freelance and write fiction. Her first thriller, Anatomy of a Scandal, was an instant international bestseller, translated into twenty-two languages,

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Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Video: Matthew Ryan Davies on ‘Things We Bury’

Matthew Ryan Davies is also the author of Things We Bury and (as Matt Davies) This Thing of Darkness, a contemporary young adult novel about guilt, grief, love and forgiveness set in modern-day Melbourne. As a manuscript, This Thing of Darkness was highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. He’s

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Woman in scarf reading a novel with cup in hand outside and sunset in background.
Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Top 7 cosy mystery series to read right now

By Valerie Khoo. In the cold weather, is anything better than curling up with a nice cosy mystery? If you’re not sure what a cosy mystery is, it’s a subgenre of crime fiction where the main character is often an amateur sleuth. There is minimal graphic violence or explicit sex

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Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Video: Kelly Rimmer on her novel ‘The German Wife’

Kelly Rimmer is the author of historical and contemporary fiction, including The German Wife, The Secret Daughter, The Things We Cannot Say, and The Warsaw Orphan, with more than 2 million copies of her novels sold to date. Her books have been translated into dozens of languages and have appeared on bestseller

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Crime and thriller
Australian Writers' Centre Team

Video: Rae Cairns on ‘The Good Mother’

Rae Cairns is a former youth worker who has turned to a life of crime… writing. She is fascinated with how ordinary people manage when faced with extraordinary circumstances, and the lengths everyday characters will go when all they love is put at risk. She writes crime with heart; thriller

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Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

How to edit your own writing: 7 authors share their top tips

By Allison Tait. “Write as though no-one’s watching.” “Your first draft doesn’t need to be perfect.” “Your first draft is just you telling the story to yourself.” There’s a lot of information around about first drafts and how they can be messy embryos of a polished idea. What’s more difficult

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Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

7 side-splitting tips for writing funny flash fiction

The best stories engage the reader – making you FEEL something. That emotion might involve being nervous for the fate of a character, angry at a detective missing a vital clue, sad at a loss, or rolling in fits of laughter. While most of these emotions must be earned through

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Woman sitting on a floor covered with open books, holding a black coffee and reading a book, tracing words with her finger.
Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

What does it mean to “read widely”?

By Allison Tait. If you are searching for writing tips, it doesn’t take long to discover that one of the (if not THE) top tips offered over and over is this one: “Read!” It makes sense, if you consider writing to be a “words in = words out” equation. The

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Build your profile and promote your book
Australian Writers' Centre Team

What to do when you don’t have a book coming out

By Angela Slatter. To paraphrase Jane Austen (poorly), it is a truth universally acknowledged, that once you’ve got a publishing contract, you’ll have a book coming out every year! Right? Sorry, no. Wrong. You might be one of the fortunate few who do have this sort of regularity in their

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Fiction writing
Australian Writers' Centre Team

How to write a book dedication

By Allison Tait. One of the most difficult pages to write in any book is the dedication. Sounds silly, right? By definition, a book dedication is a personal note from the author to someone of importance. At its simplest, a book dedication is no more than two words. For [insert

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