Here’s another exciting addition to
our YA Crime guest posts, and I’m thrilled to be hosting today’s guest - ladies
and gentlemen, it’s the fabulous Kim Kane!!! *wild applause, whistles,
cheering*
All the hullabaloo is
well-deserved, folks. Kim Kane has been
writing children’s fiction for some time, starting out with The Family Forest. Recently she collaborated with writing buddy
Marion Roberts on the novel Cry Blue
Murder – it’s an eerie tale about a serial killer who stalks a Melbourne
community, told in a unique way, through a series of police and court
documents.
Woven together with the other
strands of Cry Blue Murder are the
emails of two girls, Celia and Alice, who are living in the middle of the nightmare. As the killer becomes more brazen, the
exchanges between Celia and Alice become more tense and heartfelt – and you won’t
believe what’s coming…
I met Kim recently during the
Emerging Writers Festival, and she’s lovely – not a serial killer at all! – and
I was really happy to hear that Cry Blue
Murder has just made the shortlist for this year’s Inky Awards!! Congratulations, Kim, it’s so
well-deserved! So without further ado…
Kim – hi! It’s lovely to have
you visit with us!
Thanks Ellie. Thrilled to be
invited. Congratulations on your book!
Gosh, thanks :) Now first, a question I always want to ask other writers (so excuse me if I diverge): what
chair do you use? Or do you stand to
write, like Hemingway? (In other words,
how do you combat lower back pain from all the sitting??)
Hmm, I don’t have a study or even a
desk so I work in a café when I feel a bit lonely or have to be out of the
house (when the kids are driving me nuts) or on my bed or at the kitchen table.
My favourite spot is definitely bed – all propped up with pillows, especially
in the evening when it’s cold – but if I have research to do, the sunny kitchen
table is best. All I really care about
is sunshine and warmth (having written half ‘Pip: the Story of Olive’ in a
charming but completely unrenovated and uninsulated former belt factory). When
I’m getting to the end of a book and am mainly copy editing, I need to sit at a
table and I also tend to listen to musicals – one per book – over and over
again until I can recite the lyrics verbatim. I’m not sure why. I am sure Hemingway
never did that.
Cry Blue Murder is a dark
mystery with a criminal twist, and the story is developed within all these
fragments – emails, police witness statements, investigative documents. Did you and Marion find that it was a bit
like putting a jigsaw puzzle together?
How did you know what to include and what to discard?
Cry Blue Murder started as a very different novel for
younger readers, but once Marion and I knew what we were doing and had a
story and a proposed form for that story, we plotted extremely carefully. We
had to, really, as we each wrote a character and we needed to make sure we were
dripping information to the reader punctiliously; we had to be in complete
agreement about the role each document served.
It was actually a fantastic
discipline as we were forced to do some of the harder thinking I tend to put
off until later drafts when I’m writing alone (as it’s dull and difficult –
although putting it off only makes it duller and more difficult). After we’d
done the plotting, the rest of the novel was colouring in. I should note,
however, that the few changes we did make to the documents were a nightmare as
there were so many consequential changes – in the emails and in our police and
legal reports. Sometimes the whole thing felt like a house of cards. We changed the colour of a car, for example,
and watched our structure teeter!
The book seems to be designed to encourage the reader to be the
detective – I often found myself flicking back to previous pages, to check clues
I’d found and see if they matched up with my theory about the killer. Did you plan it this way? And did you have the final twist already in
mind before you started?
Yes and yes! We started the book
with the final twist – that came to us very early on in the process and
completely informed the characters we then developed. We found the most
interesting murder mysteries were the ones in which the reader had to play a
role – drawing conclusions from the facts presented, experience first-hand the
frustration of dead ends – and we were keen to replicate that for the reader.
In some ways, we wanted the reader to keep reading to affirm what s/he already
knew.
Can you tell us a little bit about what kind of research you did for
the book? (It sounds like it would have been uncomfortable to research…)
We looked at a number of cases
about grooming here and abroad. We also had to research all of the documents in
the book – the pathology reports, witness statements, citilink documents etc
and speak to relevant professionals. We needed to understand how the documents
for a crime are put together, the role of police, the psychology of both the
victim and perpetrator.
The villain of Cry Blue Murder
is incredibly creepy. Did you kind of
freak yourself out when you were writing those scenes?
Marion wrote the character Alice
and she was a wonderful creep – it’s quite frightening to hear her discuss the
various states of her character in the novel and the reasons for this (if
you’re interested here’s a link to a Radio National interview we did in which
she discusses Alice
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/booksandartsdaily/cry-blue-murder/4659374).
Sometimes Marion did freak me out and I haven’t quite ruled out my suspicion
that she may in fact be a serial killer...
On a lighter note, who is your favourite fictional detective? (and why,
of course) And do you have any skills
that would serve you well if you were called on to be a detective yourself?
I like PD James, Alexander McCall
Smith’s gentle The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series, and I completely adore TV crime – Midsummer, Law and Order,
The Killing, Morse. I’m not sure that I’m systematic
enough to be a detective although I’m certainly nosy enough and I’m fascinated
by the psychology behind crime.
So what do you do when you’re not reading and writing? How do you recharge?
I like running, walking and swimming
although I’m finding less time to do that these days. I adore my family and
spending time with them – scooting, walking, hanging at the library or building
castles at the beach. The twins are four so we go to lots of panto and theatre,
playgrounds, or we just knock around with sticks at the park. I have some very
amusing friends whose company I adore, but really any down time is usually spent
reading as I’m too tired to do anything else and have to be home to look after
the kids.
I can understand that! Thanks so
much for coming over, Kim – good luck with the Inkys!!
If you’d like a copy of Cry Blue Murder, go to where all good
books are sold. You can find out more
about Kim over here :)
Well, it’s going to be a busy
weekend for everybody. The Splendid
Wrens outside are dashing around, looking for mates, and the pobblebonks are
going off in the creek – and I’m
going to the annual Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards, the grand celebration of Australian
women’s crime fiction, on Saturday night.
I’ve already got my red and black gear picked out (not a frock, sadly –
I really need to get a proper Sisters in Crime frock, for special events) and
I’m looking forward to seeing good friends and kicking up my heels. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.
Now here’s another bit of exciting Every Breath news – I’m starting a
Goodreads giveaway today, so if you’d like a copy of Every Breath, go on over to the website and put your name down (or
check the widget here at right!). There
are three copies to giveaway, and I’ve actually opened it up internationally as
well, so bootscoot on down there quick!
And…a little birdy told me that the
Readings newsletter in today’s edition of The Age features a wonderful review
of Every Breath by the lovely Emily Gale from Readings Carlton :) Have a gander and see if it’s true-all-true…
Remember, if you’re ready to party,
we have two parties coming up. The Official Every Breath Launch, which will be
on at Readings Carlton on Thursday 12 September at 6.30pm, is almost upon
us! I’m ordering enormous cakes and
buying bottles of wine, even as you read this.
If you can’t make it to Melbourne, you’re also welcome to come on down
to the Castlemaine Every Breath Big
Bash, which is on at the Castlemaine Library on Friday 20 September at 6pm. Send me an RSVP to
elliemarney[at]gmail[dot]com if you can, or just come on over and help me
celebrate.
I’ll be giving big hugs to everyone
who’s been involved in bringing Every
Breath to life – friends, family, reviewers, editors, copyeditors,
bloggers, supporters all! I can’t wait
to see you at the parties, and I’m incredibly grateful to everyone involved. So many people have been amazingly supportive
in the lead-up to the book’s release – respect, guys. I couldn’t have done it
without you.
Talk again soon.
xxEllie
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