August: Hitwomen 🎯🎯rock climbers 🧗🧗and a Tweeter storm ☁️☁️make up this month's new fiction
Thrilling action, murders (mostly deserved) and a world in flux. Enjoy!
Well hello!
And welcome back to the August edition of New Voices Down Under. It’s a quirky collection of books this month but guaranteed to make your TBR pile groan under the weight of great fiction. In Books to Love, I’ve reviewed two very different titles that are both equally funny. Mark Mupotsa-Russell’s addiction to TV series and movies about contract killers has resulted in The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt. If your taste is more literary than action-thriller but you still want a good chuckle, then Katerina Gibson’s first novel, The Temperature is an issues-based story without all the baggage. It’s low on angst and high on humour.
This month in Meet the Author, I chatted with journalist and rock-climber Claire Sutherland and found out more about her debut crime novel, The Crag. It brings together paramedic and rock-climber, Skye, and the new detective in town, Elly, as they try to solve the mystery of a dead woman found in an abandoned house on the outskirts of town.
And what would be a newsletter without Freebies? This month, there are copies of both The Crag and The Temperature for you to win. Read the interview and review then answer the questions to be in the running.
But, first things first, what’s new in debut fiction this coming month? I’m glad you asked :-)
Happy Publication Month!
Congratulations to all these hard-working debut authors of fiction and non-fiction. May your books fly off the shelves.
Books to Love
The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt by Mark Mupotsa-Russell
(Published 27 August 2024 ANZ)
Olivia has a lovely husband, Jai, who is more than happy for her to be the main breadwinner and he chief carer of their two little girls, Edith and Leena. She can’t believe her luck. Not because she married such a modern man but because she has done so many cold-blooded despicable things before she met Jai that it only seems fitting all her happiness should be ripped from her.
Unfortunately, her fears are realised when a robbery goes wrong and the escape vehicle ploughs into a wall, taking Edith with it. This is the karmic payback Olivia has dreaded. But Olivia isn’t a normal grieving mother, one half of a couple who don’t know what to say to each other in the grip of overwhelming circumstances. In Olivia’s past life, she was a contract killer. She knows exactly how to go about tracking down the four robbers and making them pay for the death of her daughter.
What follows is an action-packed, often hilarious and dark story about a woman seeking revenge. Olivia comes up with all sorts of clever plans in her quest for retribution that leave her hands remarkably clean. No one intimidates her —not the bad guys nor the detective who suspects she’s not the woman she’s pretending to be.
The Hitwoman’s Guide to Reducing Household Debt is not all thrills and spills. Mark Mupotsa-Russell’s debut novel examines a marriage put under extreme pressure and reveals the dynamic and the love that has so far kept them together. Jai knows nothing about Olivia’s previous life. He thinks she has PTSD from her time in Afghanistan serving her country. Olivia has become so adept at lying and deceit that at the very time she needs her husband’s support, that her youngest daughter needs her mother, she has neither the tools or experience to navigate this tricky terrain. It makes what could have been a pretty two-dimensional Marvel-movie of a story come alive. Yes, perhaps Olivia is a psychopath but it’s hard not to be rooting for her to succeed. Yet, it is these same skills, this ability to switch off the personal and kill in cold blood, that makes it seemingly impossible to connect with the people who matter to her most.
Mark Mupotsa-Rusell brings his experience as a screenwriter, a communications adviser and a dad to a novel Candice Fox calls ‘devilishly good’ and Anna Downes says is ‘sharp, smart and suffused with an irresistible energy.’ No wonder the film rights have already been sold. This is a cracker read that will keep you glued to the couch.
A little bit about the author …
Mark Mupotsa-Russell is a writer living on Wurundjeri Country in the Yarra Ranges. His debut novel, The Hitwoman's Guide to Reducing Household Debt, won the 2023 Affirm Press Mentorship Award. Before writing novels he was a screenwriter, film reviewer, cocktail columnist, PR consultant and communications adviser in the suicide prevention sector. He lives among the trees with his art therapist superstar wife, hilarious son and a moodle majestically named 'Mufasa'.
Connect with Mark Mupotsa-Russell
Instagram @markwillrussell
Find out more about Markon his website www.markmupotsarussell.com
Australia: Buy a copy of the book here
The Temperature by Katerina Gibson
(Published ANZ 4 September 2024)
Fi is a millennial social media expert who works for a women called Lexi Bostik, an aging hippy eco-warrior globally successful in bringing causes to the public attention and getting action. That is, up until Fi sends out a Tweet that ensnares Lexi in a social media storm with a shock jock. Fi loses her job and must content herself with licking her wounds and seeking solace in endless cocktails.
She vaguely meets would-be poet and PhD student, Sidney, at a party. Sidney turns out to be Lexi’s ex-girlfriend. She’s dropped out of her studies and instead makes coffee at a café across the road from the university. One of her customers is Tomas, a factory worker and divorced dad. Homeless, Sidney ends up staying with Tomas for a while, neither quite decided if they are flatmates or potential lovers. At the same party, Fi also meets Govita, a non-binary visual artist who’s work’s been in decline a about the same rate their drug and alcohol intake has sky-rocketed.
After Fi’s social media faux-pas, Lexi’s beginning to wonder about her relevance in the face of climate change, political inertia and/ or point-scoring. She is rich enough to walk away from activism and start again, do something real, but where. Her own rural property carries too many bad memories after the death of her one true love. She also wonders about the man, because she is certain it’s a man, who sends her poisonous letters about who she is and what women like her do.
Henry is a third-generation farmer and a third-generation war veteran. His property is so remote, it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. He doesn’t believe in climate change but his river’s dried up, filled with dead fish. The cows’ milk is drying up too. And the chorus of insects that used drown out every thought has sunk to a whisper.
Six very different people struggling to make sense of the world they live in and their place in it. When Fi’s tweet goes viral, it sets off a chain reaction that brings these six into each other’s orbits in quite unexpected ways, changing their assumptions and forging new paths.
Katerina Gibson’s debut novel The Temperature is an eloquent and sophisticated tale that weaves together character and place as she covers territory from climate change to the geo-political landscape to the evolving conversation around gender and sexuality. If this sounds high-brow or too much like an issues-based novel, think again. Because Gibson also has a droll sense of humour. She’s happy to poke fun at her characters as much as she lavishes them with compassion. It’s hard not to see a part of oneself in each of them and recognise how self-defeating we can all be. Gibson’s experience in writing short stories seems to have influenced the way she has structured her debut novel. She dives deep into each character’s life and emerges at a different point only to go deep again. The Temperature showcases depth of Gibson’s talent. At times lyrical, especially when describing landscape, and at others sharp and witty, sketching portraits as if on the fly. It is an extraordinary novel, extremely readable and perfect fodder for your next book club.
A little bit about the author …
Katerina Gibson is a writer and a bookseller living in Naarm. Her stories have appeared in Granta, Overland, The Lifted Brow, Island Online, Going Down Swinging, the Meanjin blog andKill Your Darlings'New Australian Fiction 2020 anthology. Her short story 'Fertile Soil' was the Pacific regional winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Katerina is a 2021 Felix Meyer Scholar and a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist 2023. Her short story collection Women I Know won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2023.
Connect with Katerina Gibson
Find out more about Katerinaon her website www.katerinagibson.com
Australia: Read an extract and buy a copy of the book here
Claire was born in Scotland and moved to Australia at the age of three. She was a metropolitan journalist with the Herald Sun for more than 20 years, and before that at the Footscray-based Western Times, for which she won the Melbourne Press Club's 1995 Young Journalist of the Year award. During her time at the Herald Sun she held roles including books editor, film writer and features editor. She was the editor-in-chief of mX and News Corp's national head of entertainment before leaving to pursue a career in freelance writing. Her hobbies include hiking, rock climbing, cooking and dystopian sci-fi films.
A little bit about the book …
While walking on an isolated track in the windswept Wimmera, rock-climber Skye discovers the body of a young woman. The body has injuries that suggest a rock-climbing accident, but it's been found more than 5km from the nearest cliffs at Mount Arapiles.
Police ask Skye to help them navigate the perilous world of rock climbing as they try to unravel what happened. Skye is secretly thrilled to be part of the investigation, but as it becomes clear that a killer is on the loose, all thrill turns to fear. In the isolated crags of the mountain, stark beauty can conceal horrific truths.
Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind this story?
Mt Arapiles and the Wimmera is one of my favourite parts of Victoria. My husband and I learned to climb there, and we’ve spent more weekends than I can count camping at Mt Arapiles campground and climbing all day. We eventually bought a place up there, which we had for about 13 years, so I know the area really well. I think the combination of that landscape, which is so stark and harsh, but also so beautiful, and the sport of rock climbing is really the main inspiration for the novel. Without those two things being in my life, I don’t think I’d have had a story to tell.
Now, you are a passionate climber. It adds a really interesting dimension to the plot. Were there unexpected challenges in translating the thrill of rock climbing onto the page?
Definitely. The trickiest bit was trying to give people an understanding of how rock-climbing works, without bamboozling them with annoying jargon. There were lots of long technical climbing explanations that had the red pen put through them because they just weren’t interesting to the average reader. I hope there’s enough left in though that people can picture how it all works, and also get a sense of how safe and enjoyable it is when you’re careful and follow best practice.
It’s wonderful to read a crime novel with two great female lead characters, Skye, a paramedic and Elly, the detective in charge of investigations. What were you hoping to explore here?
I wanted to write about violence against women, and I think it’s really only women who know what it’s like to just carry that fear within you at all times. Obviously, men are victims of violence too, but I don’t think most men exist with the constant knowledge that somebody might try and hurt them. I don’t think when they’re at a bar they worry whether someone has put something in their drink, or get instantly nervous when they hear footsteps behind them when they’re walking down a street at night. Men don’t tell their male mates to text them when they get home safely, or remind each other to put their keys between their knuckles when they’re going out to their car after a night out. I felt like I needed two female characters because I wanted characters who just innately understood what that is like.
The novel is set in the region of Mount Arapiles. Is this an area you know well? And, for you, is writing landscape and important ‘character’ in a story?
I know it very well and I think if this novel was transplanted to a city it would almost lose its reason for being. It’s very much a character in the novel – even the way its configured is a key plot point. I write about how on a still day you can hear other climbers 300m away chatting because it has an almost amphitheatre-like quality about it. That is all completely true and was a crucial aspect of the novel.
You’ve had a long career as a journalist and were the books editor for The Herald Sun. In what ways did this help the writing process and did it make it easier to navigate the path to publication?
I think the main advantage I had was that while I was books editor I became acquainted with Jane Novak, who at that time was a book publicist but is now a literary agent. I interviewed many of her authors over the years and we always had a good chat and laugh together. I sent her the first draft, after having not been in touch with her for some years, and she was so kind to read it and put her finger on exactly what was wrong with it. She then read it a second time and gave me more notes, which I also acted on. I think without that connection I might have sent that first draft off to publishers and they would have been absolutely correct to reject it. It really wasn’t very good.
Jane’s advice was to then engage a freelance book editor, which I was on the cusp of doing when a friend of mine noticed that Affirm Press was calling for submissions of crime manuscripts. If I hadn’t received an offer from Affirm I would definitely have used a freelance editor. I’m just incredibly lucky that with the publishing deal came access to the supremely talented editors at Affirm, who further improved and honed it.
In terms of being a journalist, I think the advantage I had there was that I was not at all precious about taking editors’ advice. Journalists are used to sub-editors brutally going through their copy so if I received notes saying a particular scene or clue wasn’t working, I was completely happy to delete it.
What wasn’t helpful was my years of journalistic indoctrination. Journos are trained to make everything as succinct as possible — no words should be wasted, all the facts should line up neatly and you need to get to the point quickly with no fluff. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t writing a fiction version of a news story, that I could relax a bit and take my time to set the scene.
To WIN a copy of A Town Called Treachery, scroll down to Freebies
Connect with Claire Sutherland
Instagram @claire_sutherland_author
Australia: Buy a copy of the book here
Freebies!!
If you enjoyed the interview with Claire Sutherland, then this is your chance to win a copy of The Crag. Thanks to Afform Press for providing us with **three** copies to giveaway. All you have to do is send a reply email with the answer to this very tricky question.
Where is The Crag set?
And if you’re itching to get your hands on Katerina Gibson’s The Temperature, then thanks to the team at Simon & Schuster, you have the chance to win one of **three*& copies. All you have to do is email me the answer to this question.
Name one of the characters we meet in The Temperature?
The fine print: Giveaways are currently only open to subscribers and you must reside within Australia to be eligible to win (postage!) The winners will be picked at random and will be emailed on Tuesday 17 September** 2024. Good luck!
** And remember, you can answer both questions on one email.
Newbie News
Readings New Australian Fiction Prize 2024
Established in 2014, the Readings Prize aims to ‘support and champion new and outstanding Australian voices’. I’m delighted to see so many debut titles that have been featured here in New Voices Down Under. Congratulations to all the short-listed authors. The winner will be announced at an event on 22 October 2024.
Thanks for Having Me by Emma Darragh
Ghost Cities by Siang Lu
No Church in the Wild by Murray Middleton
Salt River Road by Molly Schmidt
The Opposite of Success by Eleanor Elliott Thomas
But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
The End
And here we are at the end of another edition of the newsletter. I hope some of the books discussed have tickled your fancy. Please leave a comment, follow us on socials and come back again next month where there will be more bookish news, reviews, interviews and freebies. See you soon!
Don’t forget, you can always catch up with us on Instagram @newvoicesdownunder
And, if you’d like to subscribe to Meredith’s author newsletter, you can subscribe to A Cuppa With Meredith here The next edition is out Monday 5 October!