The Enemy Within follows journalist John Bailey writing a piece on white supremacy and far-right nationalism in Australia. Violence quickly blooms, and as Bailey searches for answers, he wrestles with questions about the role of media and interference with press freedoms.

With The Enemy Within, Ayliffe has tapped into something unsettlingly relevant. At the time of writing this article, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the suicide bombing at Kabul on August 26 airport raised questions in public discussion about the resurgence of global jihadist movements. However, the reality is that the concern in countries such as Australia about the threat of Islamic extremism is far outweighed by the threat of white supremacy.

Given Ayliffe started writing the book in 2019 and finished drafting it in October 2020, his exploration into the dangers posed by far-right nationalism in Western countries feels prophetic. I ask whether he feels as much, given the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection in America, or the reports of a group of Neo-Nazis in the Grampions on Australia Day (January 26). He speaks with a broad accent whose drawn out syllables give time for a composed and thoughtful answer.

“These are things that have been bubbling around my head for a few years,” he admits. “A lot of the far-right nationalism stuff, and a lot of the white supremacist research I’d done was around 2019,” he adds. However, he believes “this is the most realistic book I’ve written out of three in terms of the ideas that I explore.” To evidence this, he notes that a quote in the book from the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in which he identified white supremacy as a key threat facing Australia, was directly taken from a 2018 speech.

This conversation took place before the anti-lockdown protests in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane on August 21—Melbourne police said they were the most violent for over 20 years—the organising groups of which are mired within white supremacist ideology, even if many of the attendees at such events (if you can call people flagrantly flouting public health and assaulting police officers and animals an event) do not believe themselves such.

Given various stories in August this year revealed that half of the Australian intelligence community’s important domestic counter-terrorism cases now involve neo-Nazi cells working through COVID-19 disinformation channels to increase recruitment, hoping to start a race war, it’s hard to not wonder what crystal ball Ayliffe was using when he wrote The Enemy Within.

However, Ayliffe does have a bit of an advantage: he’s been a journalist for the last 20 years and is the Managing Editor of Television and Video for ABC News. He was one of the people instrumental in establishing the ABC News Breakfast in 2008 (which I watch most mornings). The programs he oversees now include The Drum, ABC News Breakfast, and Planet America. With pride, he tells me that ABC News is “the one area where we’re actually growing an audience at the moment,” but he distributes that pride amongst the people with whom he works, as he attributes the channel and shows’ success to a “lovely team of people.”

Being in this particular position, then, Ayliffe has had insight into issues before they land on the radar of public awareness. But it’s through writing engaging fiction that he’s able to not only bring these issues to public awareness, but to unpack them, too. The humbleness reappears as he says “as a journalist, my job is to speak to people that are smarter than me. I believe in climate change, because 99.9% of climate scientists tell me it’s real. They’ve spent decades of their lives studying this stuff.”

So it’s no surprise that this humble, thoughtful attitude is reflected in how he views his writing. He quotes Philip Roth who said, ‘Updike and Bellow hold their flashlights out into the world, reveal the world as it is now. I dig a hole and shine my flashlight into the hole’, going on to explain, “I’m looking at the world, I think, as it is now. But I’m also really trying to go a bit go a bit deeper and look at, you know, some of those dark places we don’t we don’t like to look, but we know they’re there. And I think that’s one of the things that intrigues readers about crime fiction is, you get to have a look into the darkness, but you’re always given that glimmer of light.”

I ask about the space between being a journalist and being an author of fiction—if we could really call The Enemy Within wholly fiction. Perhaps a fictionalised narrative around very real issues, might be a better way to describe it—which I also add. He pauses. When he speaks, the broadness to his accent is emphasised as he slows down his words as he thinks the answer through. “Look, the best crime thrillers that I’ve read over the years, and the writers I most admire, they actually tell you, they explore something in the real world today, and they have a plot sitting in that world. So that’s what I’m doing,” he tells me.

As we back and forth about the limitations of a news story, as it has to briefly inform rather than take the time to break down the layers of complexity behind many stories, he observes, “this is the good thing about fiction, you get to get to dance with the truth, you know, you get to get really close with it, without having to worry about the kind of the sort of strict rules around nonfiction and reporting, […] you get to pose a lot of questions that you don’t get to pose in nonfiction.”

Certainly, it’s not uncommon for journalists to explore some of the stories they encounter in more depth in a fictionalised narrative—Katherine Firkin’s books are the example which spring to mind. When I ask about how directly what he experiences in his job as a journalist influences his writing, he answers simply and clearly; “my day job’s like research. I get to have conversations with people that ordinary people don’t, I get to find out things that everyday people don’t find out, some things that I shouldn’t know. So that’s the thing about being a journalist and having good contacts and being plugged into the backrooms our world.”

Ayliffe doesn’t pull his punches in speaking about those concerns arise from what he sees across his job. One of the other themes of The Enemy Within which intersects with the investigation into far-right nationalism is the overreach of authority, especially when it comes to censoring the media. Some readers may remember the controversy surrounding Australian Federal Police raids on journalist homes in 2019 and the ensuing discussion surrounding free press. Ayliffe draws my attention to the fact that in the course of the book, he quotes “directly from the warrant that was used to raid the ABC,” which “had the power to, to alter change, copy or delete our files in their investigation.”

The need to safeguard journalistic freedoms arises within a context of distrust toward traditional media. The issue is a complex one, arguably problematised by tabloid-style media. Although, when I raise this, Ayliffe surprises with the perspective that, “tabloid journalism can be very powerful, and it’s getting people to read stories in a more accessible way and getting people to read the paper and learn about what’s going on in their world.”

However, questions about the place of media are further complicated by the rise of misinformation and agenda-based reporting that challenges traditional media sources in a variety of ways.

While much of the misinformation that plagues our COVID-ridden society (pun not intended) appears to be aligned with far-right conspiracy theories or agendas, the comment with which I opened this piece, that sometimes you read a book and its relevance to events surrounding you just seems to grow exponentially, became even more true as I thought I read a report which detailed how journalistic practice is being eroded by voices on the far left, too, just as I was finishing off this piece.

I feel a bit bad, really. I pressed Ayliffe quite strongly about views that media sensationalise or editorialise news stories in such a way that makes it difficult to clearly differentiate fact, opinion, and context. Yet he patiently steps through his answers with that careful, deliberate manner. “I think that every good journalist will agree that their job is to report the truth. And I think that good journalism is not sensationalising things,” he says quite firmly. The Enemy Within takes a long hard look at how a lack of care when reporting on certain issues can inadvertently serve as recruiting campaigns for dangerous groups and ideologies, so its particularly interesting to hear him speak on this.

He uses the example of the 2019 Christchurch terrorist attack after which the New Zealand Prime Minister declared a refusal to speak the name of the perpetrator to deny him the platform he’d sought to draw attention to his white supremacist ideology. Ayliffe notes, that although it’s “tricky around that stuff,” we “tried to remove him from able to be part of a propaganda machine for broader cause.” He points out, “if you want to know why this person did it, sure, you can find that out pretty quickly, and we will tell you that in the story, but it’s not the focus of the story […] The easy thing is to dive straight in to get inside the mind of a psychopath and what he said in his manifesto, but if you do all that, then you’re actually you’re doing what he wanted you to do.”

He ends by reiterating his stance that, “the media has a responsibility to […] report stories for the people who are affected by that story and for the victims, not the perpetrators.”

Where Ayliffe is less circumspect is commenting on the cultures where this careful reporting is less prevalent. “America has been really good at inadvertently making heroes out of villains, because you want to know […] who is this evil bastard who did this thing. So [if] you start writing profiles about the killer, that puts them on a pedestal in a really twisted way for other people,” he says, adding, “I think most journalists are going to agree that you can actually report on the Christchurch massacre, without sending the balance towards what could then be used as a celebration of a psychopath and what motivated him.” He concludes with the observation, “I think, particularly that we’ve seen in the United States on the left and the right, in terms of media coverage, is where it can actually be detrimental, because where do you find that centre ground? And the best journalism is done in the centre.”

That centrist approach is encapsulated by his protagonist, Bailey, a recovering alcoholic who Ayliffe says “took a long time to get to this space,” especially given the death of his longtime love, Sharon Dexter, at the end of book two (don’t worry, it was a spoiler for me, too). Ayliffe admits, “I got quite emotional writing that,” and he had “such an overwhelming response from readers who were pretty angry with me.” But he’s clear that Baily is a deeply sustainable character for him, as he acknowledges, that although he has other ideas, “I’ll write probably another, I don’t know, five or ten Bailey books.”

Alyiffe’s writing schedule is an impressive one. “On the weekends I’ll write early,” he explains. As he goes on to outline his schedule, I feel increasingly slothful. “I’ve got a really busy day job which I love. So I’d actually don’t really do too much of it during the week,” he notes. Instead, “five thirty in the morning [I get up and write] for a few hours on Saturday, and then maybe a few more on Sunday.” Having given his old study up to his 11-year-old daughter (he’s speaking to me from there, which explains the decidedly un-studylike décor I noted when we first joined the call but couldn’t find a way to politely ask about), he writes wherever he can find space, with the view of, “if you want to write, you’ll find a place to write and you’ll find a way to do it.”

In the way of people who are very busy, he establishes clear boundaries across his time, telling me, “I’ve tried to remove it a bit from our family life. […] my favourite time of the week is watching the kids play sport on Saturday morning. And I might get a few hours of writing in before that.”

He admits, “I’m constantly thinking about my books […] I don’t really ever tap out,” which means that when he starts a book, “I’ll tend to know enough to get going. And then I’ll write enough of the book, and then stop and then I’ll go okay, how does this book now, unfold? How’s it sitting? And then I’ll pretty much plan it all out. And then as I write it, I may deviate from the path but I will mostly plot everything out.”

The care and consideration to the way he structures his time is the same sort of care with which he constructed The Enemy Within, the same kind with which he speaks about his work as both an author and a journalist. When I tell him how much I enjoyed reading the book, he’s genuinely delighted: “Even though I’m you know, trying to shine a light in a dark place, it’s got to be a gripping story, doesn’t it? And that’s most important for me, [the reader has to] enjoy the ride and learn a little bit of something about the world at the same time.”

It’s a really beautiful approach to stories, and how we engage with concerning issues. When I note my own concern about the apparent growth of some very nasty attitudes in society, he takes a beat to consider. “It really does worry me that we’ve got this far right nationalist movement growing around the world. And in some ways, it’s going unchecked. And a lot of that is [because of] dark web and social media chat rooms where people get to share their own hate with each other and feel like they’re part of something bigger when, in fact, they’re part of something very tiny,” he admits.

I ask him point-blank if he remains optimistic, given all of this. He pauses. “It’s a tough question,” he acknowledges, “but I’m a bit I am a glass half full guy. So even if the glass gets down to half full, I’m always gonna side with ‘things are going to be all right’. Because I do think that the world is in a better place than it was 100 years ago; I think even though we’re going through some odd and rocky periods at the moment, I would like to think that a smarter, better world, will prevail.”

It’s comforting thing to hear that someone who sees things on a daily basis that can be quite depressing and alarming believes in a positive future. In an era where it can be frustrating to see the conduct of media outlets, speaking with Ayliffe not only reassures. It reinvigorates.

The post Interview with Tim Ayliffe, Author of ‘The Enemy Within’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

My grandmother’s next communication was that the book looked so interesting, she’d started to read it. Then she messaged me to tell me what a delightful story it was. Finally, I was able to read it. I couldn’t put it down.

The intersection of Fred’s personal story with the meta narrative of the Kosovar refugees’ temporary resettlement was beautifully managed, the story was tightly written and the pacing was perfect. It’s why I was so excited to read Binks’ second novel—a young adult this time—The Monster of her Age.

The story is told from the first-person narration of 17-year-old Ellie, a member of the Lovinger acting dynasty, who returns to her family home in Hobart, Tasmania, because her grandmother is dying. In coming back home to say goodbye to her grandmother, Ellie confronts the trauma that arose from her experience as a young child playing the monster in a cult horror movie alongside her grandmother. This personal journey is assisted by Riya, a young film buff she meets in a chance encounter.

What I really loved about this story was the delicacy with which it explored how loving and being hurt by a family member can simultaneously exist within us. Ellie’s struggle to unpick her complicated feelings toward her grandmother (and consequently, the manner in which she comes to grips with her own status as a child celebrity) is tenderly explored, unpacking with genuine finesse and nuance the realisation which is a challenging, yet core, component to growing up: the adults in our lives are flawed and themselves vulnerable to errors in judgement. Similarly, the difficulty in facing the loss of a key family member is beautifully shown. The strength of The Monster of her Age thus lies in the depiction of the Lovinger family relationships and the way they navigate their grief. While the romance between Ellie and Riya is deftly handled, as is the perspective Riya offers Ellie on horror as a genre, the power of films, and Ellie’s own legacy as a child actor which encourages Ellie to challenge her underlying assumptions, Ellie’s relationships with her family were simply so well done that it was this which really kept me eagerly turning pages.

In exploring the question of Ellie’s understanding of herself, and of her relationship to film, Binks interweaves references to various horror films across the story. Most of the films are real, although the ones in which Lottie, Ellie’s grandmother, starred, are made up—Binks acknowledges in an author’s note at the novel’s conclusion that she ‘decided to envision an alternate filmic history’ for the Australian film industry. Depending on your appreciation for and knowledge of them, the pop culture references enhance the (quite interesting) major theme about the horror genre’s relegation of women to helpless victims, unless they take on a gender-busting role and, in essence, kick ass. The sheer number of references can occasionally feel overwhelming and throw the reader out of the narrative as they try to place the film, or work through its plot and relevance to the narrative point being made. Perhaps most difficult at times was one of the central points of tension across the book, the fictitious horror film Blood & Jacaranda—in which a younger Ellie played the central monster, starring opposite her grandmother. The narrative of Ellie’s current struggles can feel interrupted by questions that naturally arise in the reader’s mind about the plot of the film. It felt at times like it was a reference to a piece of pop culture of which I had no knowledge. Elements of it are alluded to across dialogue with other characters— possibly suggesting that Ellie herself does not want to remember the plot (or cannot, given we learn she herself never saw the final product), but I felt this needed to be more clearly articulated for me to understand why there was this gap of knowledge, especially given it was referenced so frequently.

At times, The Monster of her Age didn’t have the same tightness of writing and narrative drive as The Year the Maps Changed, but this could be because the story wasn’t being driven by external actions and events across the middle of the book, which meant there was a sense of aimlessness at one or two points. However, what it arguably captures is the fact that when you’re effectively waiting for someone to die, there is a sense of suspension, of trying to determine what exactly it is you should be doing. Indeed, chapter twenty opens with the sentence, “If grief feels like emotional jetlag, then waiting as someone slowly dies and fades away is like being in a perpetual airport terminal—waiting and waiting”. Yet this wasn’t enough to make me put the book down. Far from it.

Binks’ second offering is a beautiful story about loss, love, and loving your family even when they hurt you. I ripped through it a little over two days. You will enjoy it, too.

The Monster of Her Age is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Monster of her Age? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

In a neo-Gothic mansion in a city at the end of the world, Ellie finds there’s room enough for art, family, forgiveness and love. A coming-of-age story about embracing the things that scare us from the author of The Year the Maps Changed.

How do you ruin someone’s childhood? You let them make-believe that they are a monster. But sooner or later, the mask must come off…

Ellie Marsden was born into the legendary Lovinger acting dynasty. Granddaughter of the infamous Lottie Lovinger, as a child Ellie shared the silver screen with Lottie in her one-and-only role playing the child monster in a cult horror movie. The experience left Ellie deeply traumatised and estranged from people she loved.

Now seventeen, Ellie has returned home to Hobart for the first time in years. Lottie is dying and Ellie wants to make peace with her before it’s too late. But forgiveness feels like playing make-believe, and memories are like ghosts.

When a chance encounter with a young film buff leads her to a feminist horror film collective, Ellie meets Riya, a girl who she might be able to show her real self to, and at last come to understand her family’s legacy – and her own part in it.

A story of love, loss, family and film – a stirring, insightful novel about letting go of anger and learning to forgive without forgetting. And about embracing the things that scare us, in order to be braver.

The post Review: The Monster of Her Age by Danielle Binks appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Fortunately, I rein in any and all serial killer energy (I hope) when we meet via Zoom on a sunny morning in early Winter. Most of his author pictures are of a who stares at the camera with an intensity that appears almost self-conscious, even when smiling. Yet from the get-go, he’s warm, thoughtful, and smiles with a frequency emphasised by the laugh-lines across his face. He speaks with a reflective humbleness, that is balanced against the confidence that comes with an established and successful career in his chosen field.

And Barry’s career is indeed an impressive one. His first novel, Syrup, was published in 1999 and adapted into a 2013 film of the same name. To promote his second book, Jennifer Government (2003), he created NationStates, an online national simulation game, that by all definitions, is successful in its own right. His subsequent five books have achieved varying levels of commercial and critical acclaim, with the screen rights for several of them being acquired—most recently among them, the television rights for Madison May.

While he speaks in a deep, clear voice, he is generous with his answers, and enthusiasm for what he does suffuses his demeanour. Above all, he comes across, both online and in person, as a reflective person whose interest in the world around him is concentrated into the stories he produces.

That reflection can be seen in his blog posts (“I’m pretty old school in that I still enjoy writing long form more than tweets”); he’s unafraid to consider himself and his own work. He wrote about Jennifer Government that he most appreciates “it’s crazy, oblivious energy. It’s not always great from a technical perspective […] But it has a wild abandon that works because it doesn’t much care about its missteps.” I quote the blogpost back to him and he smiles: “When you’re young, and you’re just entering this field, you don’t know what’s right and wrong, according to the established custom. And so you just sort of do stuff. And everything that we do as artists is this gravity defying process where you have to try to walk out from the cliff and not fall. And you’re suspending yourself just from sheer hubris or your own conviction that what you’re doing makes sense. When you’re younger, I think it’s easy to do that, to have that kind of diluted sense of, ‘this is fantastic what I’m doing, of course, this makes sense.’ And now that I’m 48, it’s probably harder for me to avoid being more reasonable or sensible, and so you are more critical.”

Barry describes his pathway to publication as “bumbling around rather than any clever strategy.” Because he was querying in the nineties, “it was really just writing letters,” until one of the New York agents he contacted “liked the letter enough to see some sample chapters. And then that guy did an amazing job of representing my book.”

I think a lot of established authors often forget how special it is to get a publishing contract at all, let alone the rush that accompanies your first book going into the world. Despite the intervening years and success, his voice takes on a softer quality as he recalls the start of his career. “It was really exciting,” he says. “It’s that that time where you’re a new author with a hot book. I will never experience that again, no matter what, because you’re this unknown quantity.” He smiles at the memory. “I was living in Perth at the time, having these midnight phone calls with people. It was really wonderful.”

It’s interesting to speak with someone whose career is so established. Most authors will tell you that their process changes from book to book—sometimes subtly, sometimes significantly. But a 22-year career means Barry has a good length of time to review and consider how he’s developed and changed as an author. “I used to avoid planning at all,” he admits, going to note, “I feel confident enough [now] that I can do a bit of planning without completely destroying the things that make the story feel real, and the characters feel real […] There is a constant push and pull between what the characters want to do to be real people and what you want to do as the author to make the plot interesting. And it’s a really delicate balance.”

That balance is something he worked hard to achieve in Madison May, the premise of which he had “kicked around for years, like five years, ten years, and could never quite find a way into.” The reflectiveness re-emerges as he looks at the intersection of his interest in the premise of parallel lives and worlds with his personal life:

“I’m at the point now, where I feel like, my life is kind of set, like, I’ve made all my choices about what kind of career I’m going to have, what kind of family I’m going to have […] So I start thinking about how it got here. And how much of that was due to my choices and how much was fate or things out of my control.” He tells me that as he played with the premise, he arrived at the idea of a man trapping a woman in a house (which is the first chapter of the book), which “immediately that solved a whole bunch of problems for me, and also exposed the type of story that I really liked, the type of science fiction I like, which is where there’s a science fiction concept, but you can’t see it.”

He goes on to note that while the science-fiction concept and mechanic exists, a great deal of the content bears remarkable similarity to real life – a man obsessively hunting down a woman and inflicting violence onto her—but “made them even bigger because of the concept.” It’s a demonstration that Barry has a deliberate and conscious understanding of his craft, not just from a story structure sense, but from a perspective of the genre’s conventions.

In my review of Madison May, I made the observation that, while there are very few new ideas, something about the way Barry constructs his concepts, premises, and narratives has a unique feel. He himself articulates what it is in particular about his latest book that takes the concept of moving through parallel worlds and gives it a fresh feel: “I really like that it was a ‘what if’ story that was forward looking, because all of my previous iterations of this idea tended to naturally look backwards; be someone who was looking at a different version of their life or trying to fix something that went wrong or, and I didn’t want to write that sort of story.” I comment that the premise of alternative universes in Madison May felt really tightly constructed. He gives a little laugh:

“It appears that way; it took a lot of drafts to convey that impression.” He tells me he produced “pages of notes” to ensure he had a clear and specific understanding of how the mechanics of his concept work “logically and consistently”, so the story can flourish within the framework of the concept. It’s the kind of writing I really like, and that I do to a lesser extent in my own fantasy writing, so it makes inherent sense to me. But this is next level. Partly, it’s the difference in our genres, but partly (and obviously), it’s the difference of that many years honing your craft to tease out a concentrated, tight story. “When it’s a good concept, then there are really interesting implications from that idea,” he explains. “You don’t keep adding complications, but rather you keep exploring the implications of the core idea. That’s what makes a good idea for me, when it’s something that it’s a simple idea. You can articulate it pretty cleanly. But the deeper you go into it, the more interesting doors it opens.”

Yet while there is clearly a lot of thinking, research, and reflection that goes into the construction of the story’s premise, unlike much sci fi which can focus almost exclusively on the premise at the expense of significant character development, Barry, as he himself said earlier, works to create characters that are ‘real people,’ even if they aren’t always completely likeable. “I quite like stories where there is a really cold, unfeeling framework that people have to find their humanity inside,” he admits. Constructing a story like that allows for really interesting character growth. I comment that I found Madison May’s protagonist, Felicity, a bit unlikeable at the beginning of the story, and his interest sharpens. After a moment of consideration, he comments that he particularly enjoys constructing a narrative in which a potentially unlikeable character is “getting hammered by more powerful forces, [because they suddenly become] so likeable and sympathetic.”

How people respond to more powerful forces—especially forces that are cold and unfeeling and distinctly non-human, is something Barry himself admits he finds “endlessly fascinating” and which has “stuck with me my whole career”.

“We all tend to have this idea that we’re perceiving reality and that’s an objective thing. […] And the reality is, everything is way more subjective than we think. Our own memories and our own thoughts are being cranked through this very fallible machine that gets all kinds of stuff wrong all the time,” he explains. I ask about AI and its intersection with this, as AI was a core component of the story in Providence. He shifts in his chair, as though settling to really dive in to the subject, and he admits, “it hits upon a few of my favourite things about human perception and capitalism and how people work in groups.” This is clearly something about which he’s thought a great deal. “It’s like a bomb where we don’t really understand what will happen when it goes off. It plays on […] this wrong idea of our own infallibility, where we feel like we can perceive the risks properly, but humans are terrible at perceiving risk properly,” he says, going on to add, “it’s going to hit upon our biases of expecting non-human things to think and feel like humans.”

He must see my expression of horror, because he reassures me, “we’re a long way away from getting any of that right,” but given we’ve just been talking about humans’ inclination to delude themselves about the scope and immediacy of risk, I wonder if the reassurance is a collective delusion between the two of us.

When I ask what he’s currently working on, he’s polite, but firm: “I won’t be talking about it until it’s done.” Given he’s admitted his experience is that “I find the first draft to be the one where I can get stuck for long periods of time,” because “I never know how far down the road I am with an idea until, you know, suddenly it starts working,” it’s a fair comment. However, he also notes that we talking about a work in progress, “the second it comes out of your mouth, I feel like half the magic flies away.” The only clue as to what it might be about is from an earlier part of our conversation when he let slip, “AI, I’m always interested in writing about it. And the book I’m working on at the moment may be returning to sort of that idea.”

“I’m also at the point now, where I really enjoy the process of writing just for myself now.

I could, you know, much more happily now write a book and get to the end and feel like that was a great book and put it in a drawer never to be seen again,” he adds.

At the end of the day, we all write for ourselves, really. But it’s easy to lose that as writing becomes not only a career, but a successful one. To hold on to what excites you, what interests you, and what you love about your craft is something special, and I think that translates across to Barry’s books. Certainly it’s what came across in our conversation, and one of the reasons it was such a treat to sit down with him.

The post Interview With Max Barry, Author of ‘The 22 Murders of Madison May’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

The opening chapter of The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell poses just this question, introducing us to Kim, the mother of 19-year-old Tallulah, who tries, with an increasing sense of dread, to piece together where her 19-year-old daughter went when she doesn’t come home. The next chapter flashes forward to approximately fifteen months later when Sophie, who has just moved in to the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started as the head teacher, sees a sign nailed to the back fence, saying ‘dig here.’ Thus begins the unravelling of what actually happened to Tallulah.

Jewell tells the story across multiple voices and multiple points in time in order to play with the reader’s expectations which are established by the first chapter from the perspective of missing Tallulah’s mother, Kim, and the impressions and assumptions generated from the findings of her informal investigation. While I don’t always love a non-linear narrative structure, I felt Jewell generally did this quite well, as she also introduced the perspective of Tallulah, which deftly provided insight into her internal world, and the secrets she herself kept from her mother. The result is that, as a reader, we know the truth is obscured by lies and misperception, and become increasingly curious as to what exactly happened on…you guessed it, the night she disappeared.

One of the things I really liked about this book was the way it drew attention to coercive control; behaviour that is—finally—being discussed as something that falls under the umbrella of abusive behaviour and regulated accordingly in some jurisdictions. However, it felt as though this message was somewhat lost, as the book’s focus was also on a question of class divide, with a critical focus on the behaviour of the wealthy, the impunity with which they live their lives, and the disposability of other people to them. The multiplicity of such themes might have been intended to be red herrings, or at the very least, elements of ambiguity as to the ‘who,’ ‘how’, and ‘why’ dunnit, but it instead felt as though the book couldn’t quite decide what it was trying to say.
This felt even more so when considering the Sophie’s arc. Her presence in the village and involvement in the case is because she has moved in with her boyfriend of six months, who has just accepted the position of headmaster. It’s obvious from the start that moving from London to a rural environ after only being together for six months is careering toward disaster, and Jewell makes clear that, while the relationship may be a good one, the decision to rush into living together in this fashion is a poor idea. While it was an interesting and, I suppose, enriching point to the character of Sophie, its resolution felt abrupt, and it didn’t necessarily contribute that much to the unravelling of the mystery at the centre of the book.

While The Night She Disappeared does have the problem of confusingly entangled messages, which aren’t necessarily properly teased out to their fullest extent, the ending is particularly pleasing in its subversion of women’s victimhood. Moreover, when reading about the way Kim’s life almost becomes suspended following her daughter’s disappearance, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Katherine Firkin, when she spoke to the way cold cases have a particularly horrendous effect on the lives of the families. The depiction of Kim’s grief and the derailing of her life is handled with just the right amount of nuance to add an extra hook to the story, because we want answers for her sake.  Often, thrillers don’t necessarily place full emphasis on the fact that when someone disappears, the effect of that disappearance is devastating to their loved ones.

By chance, I’ve read a lot of thrillers recently. While The Night She Disappeared is not the title that springs to mind as the best that has passed through my hands, it is far from the worst. If you are looking for a reasonable story with a couple of elements that move beyond the stock-standard thriller, then this is the one for you.

The Night She Disappeared is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Night She Disappeared? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

2017: 19 year old Tallulah is going out on a date, leaving her baby with her mother, Kim.

Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.

The next morning, Kim phones Tallulah’s friends who tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the nearby woods called Dark Place.

She never returns.

2019: Sophie is walking in the woods near the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started work as a head-teacher when she sees a note fixed to a tree.

‘DIG HERE’ . . .

A cold case, an abandoned mansion, family trauma and dark secrets lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell’s remarkable new novel.

The post Review: The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

The central focus of the mystery revolves around the rise of white supremacy in Australia. I really enjoyed the fact that the novel was set in urban Australia (something which Katherine Firkin mentioned was not usual for a lot of Australian thrillers, when I spoke with her about a month ago), and that the central underlying thematic focus of the novel is a genuinely thought-provoking issue. Far-right nationalism is an issue of which may of us are unaware, or do not necessarily treat with the requisite level of concern, despite the increasingly bold behaviour of groups such as the collection of neo-Nazi men who went camping in the Grampians—an Australian National Park—in January of this year, amid the existence of calls for greater legal frameworks to confine such groups. Given the January insurrection of Capitol Hill in America, it’s obvious that Ayliffe has a clear understanding of some of the more meaningful points of concern across Western societies – especially considering the manuscript of The Enemy Within would have been completed last year.

I’m of the firm belief that there is such value in books like this which are written with competence and in an engaging, easily digestible format. Because they don’t need to be the attention-grabbing short form of most news stories, books such as this have the space to really provide in-depth and nuanced explanations behind certain issues. In this instance, exploring the causes and insidiousness of white supremacy is something that often seems obvious at face value, but because of that obviousness, it can sometimes be difficult to mobilise people to understand exactly why those kinds of ideologies are so dangerous and need to be treated with the same kind of seriousness with which our society views fundamentalist Islam extremists.

The novel unfolds in a manner that differs from standard thriller and crime novels in terms of its pacing, but given the effective antagonist and perpetrator of the crimes is white nationalist ideological movements, it completely works, and at no point is the sense of pace forfeited. In fact, I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers of late, so I actually really appreciate the ones whose plot unfolds in a manner that subverts or plays with the traditional formula. In fact, the way the ultimate perpetrators are revealed is cleverly done, in a hiding-in-plain-sight sort of manner. It was a twist I didn’t see coming, but definitely should have.

In part, it’s because the manner in which Ayliffe tells his story of the investigation is done in concert with an interesting discussion about how the media can inadvertently advance the cause of extremist groups; by reporting on them, it can incentivise people to actually seek out these groups, and play into the agenda of people who want to incite specific reactions from others. Moreover, the question about the media’s complicity —inadvertent and deliberate—in creating inflammatory content for a variety of reasons, is beautifully explored, and is ultimately tied in to the mystery at the novel’s conclusion quite skilfully.

In short, The Enemy Within is the kind of timely read with an important issue at its core, but one that’s told with an engaging and clear voice. I highly recommend it.

The Enemy Within is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 28th 2021.

Will you be picking up The Enemy Within? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Like Michael Connelly’s Bosch, former war correspondent John Bailey will risk everything to get to the truth – and expose a deadly enemy.

He heard a voice, someone calling out in the distance, followed by a loud fluttering of birds.  Bailey looked up just in time to see a body falling from the sky …

Investigative journalist John Bailey is doing his best to turn his life around after losing the woman he loved. He has a new job. He’s given up the drink. He even has a dog.

But then Federal Police raid his home with a warrant granting them unprecedented powers to take anything they want, including all his electronic devices and passwords. When Bailey protests, they threaten to put him in a prison cell.

Someone wants to stop Bailey doing what he does best – exposing the truth. He has been investigating the rise of a global white supremacist group and suspects that a notorious neo-Nazi in the United States has been directing deadly racist attacks on Sydney’s streets.

When the body of one of his key sources washes up on a nearby beach, it’s clear Bailey and anyone helping him have become targets. Bailey reaches out to a ruthless old friend – CIA veteran, Ronnie Johnson – to lure the enemy from the shadows.

An enemy who thought they were untouchable. Until now …

The post Review: The Enemy Within by Tim Ayliffe appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

One of the reasons she’s back in Australia is to promote her second book, The Girl Remains. Moving away from the urban setting of Sticks and Stones to Blairgowrie, a small town on the coast of Victoria (which I noted in my review has the perfect eeriness for a grisly mystery and a quick glance at some photos of the coast reveals why), The Girl Remains charts the investigation into a set of bones that suddenly appear on the beach and are believed to be the remains of fifteen-year-old Cecilia May who disappeared twenty years earlier after she and her friends snuck out one evening. Although Firkin clearly views her central character, Emmett, “as a city detective,” offering the additional tantalising snippet that “the Third Emmett [book] …will be back in Melbourne,” she had a specific reason for the change in setting. Whilst she admits she was “actually bit nervous about such a dramatic shift in the setting because I was really proud to write a book that was very urban and very gritty,” her reason for the plot unfolding by the sea is because “I had this story in my head quite for quite a while and that’s where it needed to be told”. Although she was by no means lacking in a clarity of purpose or competence when we spoke last year, I get the sense that she’s settling in more firmly to having the title of ‘author’ sitting alongside that of ‘journalist’. She has a firmer appreciation for the writing process, for future projects, and for the way she controls the differing stories she’s created.

That much is evident when she elaborates on the setting, revealing “Blairgowrie was a place I used to go with my school friends, when we were young”, describing it as “kind of our escape when we were adolescents.” She goes on to reflect on how that personal experience informs a broader theme of the book: “I think when you’re that age, and you finally get that freedom from your parents, there is that sense of like, anything can happen, there’s that real kind of excitement, and also a bit of fear.” Of course, in The Girl Remains, that kind of fear is justified, because something does indeed go wrong.

Much as with Sticks and Stones in which Firkin explored “how trauma affects generations, and how it can infiltrate through the years,” The Girl Remains shows how the trauma of a childhood friend suddenly disappearing on what should have been a trivial night of rebellion trickles down through the years, while paying homage to the manner in which “cold cases are horrendous for family of victims.” This story also has a tight focus on how we don’t necessarily grow with our trauma, or acquire the capacity to see it with a different, more mature framing. Firkin’s pace speeds up when she talks about the characters of the two surviving girls—a clear signal that this is perhaps the part of the story in which she’s most interested: “I also think teenagers are interesting, because they hide a lot. They keep a lot from their parents, they keep a lot from each other […] I think it’s an interesting age to write from because in The Girl Remains, they’re all keeping secrets. And some of these secrets are not actually that big. But to them, at that age, they can’t tell anyone that, you know, it ruins their perception of themselves, it might ruin what other people think of them. So they don’t ever give the police a really true account of what’s happened. And that actually really hampers the investigation.”

One of the other roadblocks that Firkin throws in front of the investigation snags my interest, as I wonder aloud how much of her personal experience she is drawing on in the crafting of Emmett’s wife, Cindy, who herself is embarking on a career in journalism and in so doing, makes some questionable decisions. My comment comes alongside the blunt admission that I found the character very unsympathetic. Like all good authors, rather than bridle, Firkin’s head tilts and she asks why, curiosity at how the words she’s crafted find new meaning in the head of a reader shining through her expression. It’s one of the reasons I not only enjoy speaking with her, but find I really like her as an individual, too. She pauses once I offer an explanation for my feelings about Cindy. “Working in media, I know how consuming it gets,” she admits. She elaborates: “It’s not something I like to admit, but all journalists have had a moment, I think, where you’ve crossed a line. […] Because there is a rush of a nice sense of victory when you get something, and something you do does contribute to a case being solved or to a bigger picture.” Her candour is impressive, as is the reflectiveness that she turns on herself and what she’s witnessed. My ears prick up when she concludes by saying, “but it does mean you cross some lines that you probably shouldn’t,” because I vividly recall the discussion about crossing lines which she and I had last year.

This is where the development of Firkin’s thematic nuance really shines, as last year, she also raised the matter of the lines people crossed, and the way people can justify their own behaviour. I point out that this seems to be an ongoing point of interest for her. This year, she’s able to identify with even more incisiveness not only how this manifests in the everyday world, but how this point of focus intersects with the story she’s created. “I suppose there’s a part of human psychology where once you do cross a line, whatever that line is, you have to go on living. So you do have to find a way to justify or forgive yourself, or, you know, I suppose there is that element of it. But I do find it really interesting how lines get blurred in our lives,” she muses. Drawing on her time as a court reporter on criminal cases, she goes on to point out, “quite often people are able to justify what to do […] they can kind of put it in a box and not feel anything. And for me, it’s such an interesting character trait, it’s a little bit scary, because it makes you wonder, where does that line end?”

I wonder how witnessing dark actions and battered pasts being brought before a court would affect someone. Surely, they’d become desensitised, especially if they have to sift through everything they hear to determine not necessarily what is most important, but what is going to grab the attention of an audience the most effectively. Perhaps that’s what prompted Firkin to pursue her childhood interest in writing as thrillers provided the space for her to reflect upon what she’s seen across her career. I make the observation to her and she pauses again. “I don’t necessarily stop and reflect on how much I see that maybe the general public don’t get to see. But there are definitely moments, particularly in court, but even just general reporting, where I come across people, and I think, how can you be like that? How can you do that? How can you go home and think this is fine?” She references Adrian Bailey, who raped and killed Melbourne woman Jill Meagher in 2012, saying, “I just remember looking at him and just thinking, you know, he went to the gym, you know, you bought a kebab, afterward, you talk to your girlfriend, you warned her to be safe on the street? How, how do you do that? And then look yourself in the mirror?”

It’s a sombre thought, but what Firkin does through her writing is to emphasise the underlying complexity to her readership—a complexity that a news report can’t convey. It’s one of the reasons I’m looking forward to whatever she has in store for readers next. I ask her what and when we can expect from her, and she offers brief insight into the manuscript she’s currently working on, which she describes as “very, very different to the first two books,” revealing that “it’s not a police procedural [or] even set in Australia.” All going well, it will be out in 2022.

It’s a challenging thing to move to a different format of book (I can attest to that from my own writing experiences), but it’s a testament to the fact that Firkin is intent on refining her craft. “I was talking to Benjamin Stevenson about this actually […] I really don’t like five star reviews,” she notes. “I feel like a five star review is like, Yay, books. Awesome, cool. Whereas a four star, someone has thought about this, thought about what they don’t like. And there are very few books, I think, where you’re going to think there’s nothing that couldn’t be improved.” She adds, “I think you always think you can do better […] you’ve got to keep wanting to push yourself.” It’s an attitude and approach that I understand completely—I firmly believe that each book you write is about doing better than the one before, about making sure you aren’t resting on your laurels. It leaves me imbued with a genuine excitement about what Firkin has in store for readers, and also with the firm belief that Firkin will make her mark upon the literary scene for years to come.

The post Interview with Katherine Firkin, Author of ‘The Girl Remains’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Arguably, it’s why many Australian thrillers leave the urban environment and are set in the coast—and why I loved how Katherine Firkin’s debut Sticks and Stones found the grisly and unsettling amid the concrete landscape of inner-city Melbourne. Certainly, Nicola West makes the most of the small-town setting in her debut, Catch Us The Foxes, which follows rookie journalist Marlowe ‘Lo’ as she investigates the murder of her childhood friend and the town’s reigning showgirl, the kind and lovely Lily Williams. As Lo doggedly pursues the truth behind what happened to Lily, she not only stumbles upon what seems to be a near town-wide conspiracy linked to the mysterious symbols carved on to Lily’s back, which she sees when she discovers the body and which are subsequently covered up, but she must face the question of what she herself is willing to do in order to escape the stifling insularity of her town—including pursuing questions around Lily’s death that others don’t want her to ask.

It doesn’t feel like a huge spoiler to say that what Lo seems to have uncovered is a cult (the promotional material and blurb pretty heavily hint at it). And really, who doesn’t love a thriller where there’s a cult involved? There’s something about a book with a cult at the heart of the mystery that’s so enthralling. Of course, it also feels as though cults and small towns go hand in hand (a sentence one doesn’t find oneself writing every day, to be sure)—perhaps because of the insularity of smaller communities that one can envisage slipping in to the characteristics of a cult’s behaviour or outlook. West’s descriptions of the township of Kiama have a really grounded feel—probably because it’s where she grew up—and it means the story as it unfolds has the kind of ‘oh god I can totally see this happening’ that drags the reader along, desperately flipping page after page to know the truth behind the various mysteries. While I didn’t find the story progressed at a breakneck pace, I was sufficiently invested in the mystery and premise, and curious to see how it unfolded that I was able to easily power through the sections where I thought to myself ‘ok something could happen now’.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nicola West (@nicolawestbooks)

At times, the voice almost felt YA, rather than NA, which isn’t too big of an issue except for the fact that Marlowe’s competence as a reporter and investigator could have been emphasised a bit more to make the investigation she runs feel more authentic and likely (although when you’re in a story about cults in small country towns, how credible are things, really?). As a result, it feels as though this title will have an appeal to people who enjoy reading YA moreso than readers who enjoy the thriller novels of, say, Jonathan Kellerman.

Bookending the narrative with scenes set seven years after the central events of the novel was an interesting authorial choice, and it casts an interesting lens across the story. It does a good job of playing with the trope of the unreliable narrator, and looking at the ongoing question of Marlowe’s ambitious drive to escape the confines of her town and succeed as a journalist and how that may skew what how she presents the historical events she’s relating to us from the first person perspective. With that being said, I thought the final twist of the book did somewhat undercut a really powerful theme that undercut a great deal of the book, which is a shame, because it was an otherwise great twist.

Catch Us The Foxes is an interesting debut from a clearly competent writer. It will be exciting to see how Nicola West’s next books unfold!

Catch Us The Foxes is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 7th 2021.

Will you be picking up Catch Us The Foxes? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Some secrets you try to hide. Others you don’t dare let out … Twin Peaks meets The Dry in a deliciously dark and twisted tale that unravels a small town

Ambitious young journalist Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local paper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of Lily Williams, the reigning showgirl and Lo’s best friend. Seven strange symbols have been ruthlessly carved into Lily’s back. But when Lo reports her grisly find to the town’s police chief, he makes her promise not to tell anyone about the symbols. Lo obliges, though it’s not like she has much of a choice – after all, he is also her father.

When Lily’s murder makes headlines around the country and the town is invaded by the media, Lo seizes the opportunity to track down the killer and make a name for herself by breaking the biggest story of her life.

What Lo uncovers is that her sleepy home town has been harbouring a deadly secret, one so shocking that it will captivate the entire nation. Lo’s story will change the course of her life forever, but in a way she could never have dreamed of.

The post Review: Catch Us The Foxes by Nicola West appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

The Girl Remains is a direct sequel to Sticks and Stones, following Detective Emmet Corban’s investigation into the cold case of a missing girl when human remains are inexplicably discovered on an Australian beach.

I think it’s always quite difficult to follow a superbly crafted debut; the weight of expectation is tricky to live up to, especially given there is a natural invitation of comparison, rather than allowing the book to stand on its own merits. Moving the setting away from the macabre elements of the urban Melbourne setting of Sticks and Stones was a clever decision, because first and foremost, it immediately signals that this is a different type of murder mystery. However, I immediately liked this change in primary location because it utilises some of Australia’s distinct environment as a setting, which, as an Australian, I can very much appreciate. And the thing is, the beach, especially around the Mornington Peninsula area, is actually a great place to set a historic murder. Anybody who’s been to the beach on a cloudy day can attest to the fact that there’s an underlying ominousness just waiting to arise. It’s a shame, then, that it felt Firkin did not make the most of this setting to explore the inhospitableness that can arise from the landscape which would in turn imbue the atmosphere of a storyline in which a small costal town is filled with people whose secrets have kept the disappearance of a young girl a mystery for two decades.

The central mystery is an interesting one, and has all the trademark creepiness you may want from a thriller: nostalgia rooted amid the seemingly-less protective 1990s, characters with webs of secret agendas, and an underlying sense of the tragic that a young life was lost. It’s for this reason I was disappointed by the fact that I was able to deduce from a relatively early point who the killer was, and their motive for crime. One of the things I loved the most about Sticks and Stones was the fact that I was guessing right up to the very end. With that being said, there’s something about thinking you’ve figured out who the murderer is that makes you really rip through the rest of the story in order to achieve that glorious vindication, and there were aspects to the final ‘reveal’ that I didn’t see coming, so there was some mystery preserved.

Perhaps the biggest point of frustration I had with the story was the plotline of Emmett’s marriage. Previously, we were introduced to Cindy who was seeking to enter a new career as a photographer. The distance that is often imposed by a long-term marriage, small child, and a focus on career was interestingly teased out, and the way Cindy’s plot interacted with the central mystery was interestingly explored across the previous instalment of this series. While Cindy’s narrative thread similarly dovetailed with the main mystery in a manner that was not only enjoyable, but credible, I struggled with Cindy herself. To her credit, Firkin examines the nuances of Cindy’s frustration and desperation to carve out her own identity and career, but unfortunately, I found myself disliking her as a character, and not finding the complexity of her motivations sufficient to excuse some of her behaviour. A little bit more character development for both Emmett and Cindy would thus have been quite welcome, to my mind.

With that being said, I enjoyed the book and I read it quickly because I was drawn into the plot and the mystery. The writing is good (with the exception of a couple of awkward typos), and Firkin’s background as a journalist is obvious in her efficient, clear prose.

As thrillers go, while this isn’t on the same level as her debut, Katherine Firkin’s second release is a compelling read that draws you in and keeps a hold of you until you’ve read to the last page. I’m certainly keen to know when the next one’s coming out, as I’ll definitely be giving it a read.

The Girl Remains is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up The Girl Remains? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

A chilling police thriller set in a small coastal town on the Mornington Peninsula, where the discovery of human bones on an isolated beach has reawakened a twenty-year-old cold case…

On the evening of September 22, 1998, three teenage girls venture out for a night of mischief in the coastal town of Blairgowrie. But only two return . . .

For over twenty years the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Cecilia May remains a baffling cold case – until human bones are discovered on an isolated beach.

Now it’s up to Detective Emmett Corban and his team to dig up decades of trauma, and find the missing piece of an investigation that’s as complex as it is tragic.

Does the answer lie with the only suspect, a registered sex offender who confessed, then immediately provided a rock-solid alibi? Or with the two teen survivors – neither of whom can keep their story straight?

But the police aren’t the only ones hunting for the truth: someone else has arrived in the seaside town. And she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to find her own version of justice…

The post Review: The Girl Remains by Katherine Firkin appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

My favourite thing about Barry as an author is that the premises of his books are unique. I mean, sure, they’ve likely been done before by someone, somewhere—nothing’s new, right?—but there’s a freshness to them which means I’m excited from page one. If I had to pinpoint what it is about the originality of his works that delights me so, I think it’s the depth of thought that has gone into the construction of the premise, and the roundedness of the characters who guide us through the idea and situation he’s exploring, even if the characters aren’t necessarily that likeable (more on this later). While the notion of alternate realities, or the multiverse, has been looked at before, combining it with the idea of a man who is obsessively killing the same woman in every reality where he finds her immediately piqued my interest. It’s a novel twist on subject matter that’s been done before (serial killer/stalker and dimensional travel). I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plot because I think the delight in reading a book such as this lies in the discovery of the unfolding narrative events, especially when the premise is this interesting.

And the premise is not at all let down by the execution, as so often happens with exciting concept books. Barry’s writing is compelling; I had to force myself to put the book down when the clock was hitting midnight, only because I had to be up early the next day. Moreover, Barry’s writing is invisible. You don’t see the brushstrokes of the author’s constructed world, but instead the writing drags the reader into the story, morbidly curious as to what’s going to happen next. This is the other thing that’s worth noting; as with all of Barry’s stories, the plot developed in genuinely unique ways. Combined with really solid pacing which keeps the narrative moving, it meant that I ploughed through the book in only a couple of days, ultimately finishing it in an afternoon.

While it could be argued that the tone at times seems inconsistent, it was one of the things I found kept me so compelled by the text; I was never bored, and, honestly, I don’t think I could have managed to read at the pace I did if the book was as consistently creepy and ominous as it was in those chapters which focused on the perspective of the Madisons as they were being stalked (and killed) by the obsessed, dimension-travelling murderer.

If there was one point of critique I had to raise, it would be the protagonist, Felicity, who is inadvertently pulled into the multiverse and consequently becomes entangled in the hunt for Madison’s killer. I didn’t really love her as a character and I found it difficult to empathise with the vague sense of dissatisfaction she felt toward various aspects of her life, like her job and her boyfriend, even as I understand that this sense of existing in her life rather than making active choices and appreciating what she has was part of the point. On reflection, those aspects of Felicity’s personality are the very foundation from which her character development grows, and a large part of the book’s central idea about embracing the life you have, and acknowledging your choices. Felicity’s character development sits alongside the way she’s first inadvertently, and then increasingly drawn into trying to prevent the next murder of poor Madison. It’s an interesting idea, and one I really like, but perhaps it could have been teased out a little more robustly. However, given the book’s interesting premise and the very competent writing, such things are easily forgiven.

If you enjoy science fiction, murder mysteries/thrillers, or both, this is definitely the book for you. Barry has not disappointed with this latest offering.

The 22 Murders of Madison May is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 6th 2021.

Will you be picking up The 22 Murders of Madison May? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

From the critically acclaimed author of Jennifer Government and Lexicon comes mind-bending speculative psychological suspense about a serial killer pursuing his victim across time and space, and the woman who is determined to stop him, even if it upends her own reality.

I love you. In every world.

Young real estate agent Madison May is shocked when a client at an open house says these words to her. The man, a stranger, seems to know far too much about her, and professes his love–shortly before he murders her.

Felicity Staples hates reporting on murders. As a journalist for a midsize New York City paper, she knows she must take on the assignment to research Madison May’s shocking murder, but the crime seems random and the suspect is in the wind. That is, until Felicity spots the killer on the subway, right before he vanishes.

Soon, Felicity senses her entire universe has shifted. No one remembers Madison May, or Felicity’s encounter with the mysterious man. And her cat is missing. Felicity realizes that in her pursuit of Madison’s killer, she followed him into a different dimension–one where everything about her existence is slightly altered. At first, she is determined to return to the reality she knows, but when Madison May–in this world, a struggling actress–is murdered again, Felicity decides she must find the killer–and learns that she is not the only one hunting him.

Traveling through different realities, Felicity uncovers the opportunity–and danger–of living more than one life.

The post Review: The 22 Murders of Madison May by Max Barry appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

The truth is that if you want to be an author, the first thing you need to understand is that it’s a job. Even if it’s not your full time work, if you are creating a product that you intend to sell, writing goes from being a hobby to a business.

The foremost strength of How To Be An Author is that it explicitly recognises this. To anybody who told me that they’ve written a book and want to try and get it published, I would recommend they read through this first so that their entrance to the literary industry is dispelled of as many illusions as possible. It’s an almost coldly practical approach to a business that a lot of people prefer to describe in terms that resolutely avoid any suggestion that money, profit, or sales, are involved in the literary industry.

Drawing on the collective wisdom of various authors under the Fremantle Press umbrella, the book divides the business of writing into various stages, from questions surrounding how to cultivate writing routine, to how to identify your audience.

As an established (sort of) author, it was a nice back-to-basics to see how other authors approach planning, genre, and the protection of time dedicated to writing. However, I felt the point was at times a bit belaboured. A lot of this information is already instinctively discovered by would-be writers, but that said, where the appeal of a book such as this really lies, to my mind at least, is in the sections which examine agents, promotion, contracts, and the process of publication—in short, the bits that happen after you’ve written the story. Regardless of whether you’re an independently or traditionally published author, the need to establish an author ‘brand’ and create a presence that is part of the marketing machine surrounding your work is a simple fact of the current landscape, but there’s not a lot of clear information out there on how to actually achieve that. More investigation and offering clear and specific actions and strategies that achieve these requirements would have really helped How To Be An Author stand out as a must-have handbook.

Perhaps most valuable is the list of organisations and resources at the end of the book. There’s such a multitude of groups, competitions, organisations, blogs and lists out there that knowing how to distinguish between what’s useful and what isn’t is a near impossible task. Having a specific starting point is an invaluable resource.

Given the fact that there are a lot of courses out there on ‘how to write’ and ‘how to get published’, at $34.99 RRP this book is a hell of a lot cheaper, and covers a lot more ground. It’s therefore something I’d recommend any day of the week to someone who was interested in pursuing writing over one of those courses, which, dare I say, can be quite exploitative at times.

With that being said, How To Be An Author did at times fall short of what I believed to be its potential. Frankly, I’m almost inclined to say that this book could have been in two volumes: one that go over the craft of writing, and one that goes over the business of writing.

How To Be An Author is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.

Will you be picking up How To Be An Author? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

If you dream of being published, this book will teach you the nuts and bolts of what it means to be an author.

Georgia Richter and Deborah Hunn look at the business of becoming an author. In a friendly, informative and practical way they share all you need to know about inspiration and research, preparing to submit to a publisher, creating an author brand, legal, ethical and moral considerations, pitching, effective social media and much more.

Practical advice and top tips from Liz Byrski, Alan Carter, Nandi Chinna, Tim Coronel, Amanda Curtin, Daniel de Lorne, Deb Fitzpatrick, James Foley, Alecia Hancock, Stephen Kinnane, Ambelin Kwaymullina, Natasha Lester, Brigid Lowry, Caitlin Maling, Meg McKinlay, Claire Miller, Brendan Ritchie, Rachel Robertson, Holden Sheppard, Sasha Wasley, David Whish-Wilson and Anne-Louise Willoughby.

The post Review: How To Be An Author by Georgia Richter and Deborah Hunn appeared first on The Nerd Daily.