Dark Deeds, again

Dark Deeds Down Under 2 includes stories from 22 Aussie & Kiwi authors

Craig every second Tuesday

Kia ora and gidday everyone,

So we've hit April here in the UK, and the signs of Spring have been taking over for a while. Miss Nine and I particularly enjoy spotting the early flowers bursting through in February and March on our park walks and streets: cherry blossoms and daffodils, then some crocuses and in recent weeks, hyacinths and magnolias. Later this month we'll be heading out bluebell-spotting (April and early May being the best time of year). Of course back home Down Under in 'the antipodes' of New Zealand and Australia the opposite is true, with summer waning and autumn colour taking over, as I see in vid chats with my mother and her well-tended garden in the background.

Looking up through the magnolias last week

It's also the season, at last, for Dark Deeds Down Under 2, an anthology that I've been working on sporadically as editor for the past 18-24 months, through some rather bumpy times in my personal life. The second volume in our pioneering anthology series showcasing Australian and New Zealand crime writing, it comes out globally later this month. I don't yet have my editor copies, but a few of our contributors have posted enthusiastically on social media about receiving theirs in recent days, which has filled my heart and made the overlong gestation all worthwhile. 

I was also recently interviewed for a piece in the biggest newspaper in my home country, the Weekend Herald. I'm far more used to being on the interviewer side of these things, rather than the interviewee, so I'm curious to see how the resulting article comes out in a couple of weeks' time. In the end these anthologies aren't about me, even if my name is on the cover as editor, but all the wonderful authors who've contributed their stories. Hopefully that comes through. 

Sydney podcaster and kids author Dani Vee with her copy of Dark Deeds Down Under 2;
Dani's contributed her first adult crime story to our collection

I've known about the power of short stories since my high school English teacher, Mrs Sivak - a US immigrant to the Top of the South region of New Zealand - introduced my class to the likes of "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson and "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell. They still resonate, decades later. So it brings me great joy (in among the life bumps) to have gotten the opportunity to help put these anthologies together in recent years, since long-time Sisters in Crime Australian national co-convenor Lindy Cameron, a crime writer, event organiser, and publisher, came to me with an offer I couldn't refuse back in late 2021. Like me, Lindy has a longstanding passion for showcasing the quality and diversity of our local Down Under storytellers at home and abroad, so it's been really cool to 'join forces' on this rather exciting project. 

Back in late 2021 (and still) I was honoured to be asked to be series editor, and very keen to dive in. My enthusiasm just escalated after a weekend of video chats with a bit of a wish-list of contributors. I’d expected to receive a majority of ‘noes’ given we were asking novelists with busy lives to supply a new short story on short-ish notice, so I had a long list of possibilities to speak with, but instead I got 90%+ yeses, and I barely got partway down my wish-list before having the first anthology full! Given the enthusiastic response of Aussie and Kiwi authors to our project, and the many more fab authors I wanted to include, we soon decided to make it a trilogy, at least. 

David Wenham as Murray Whelan in "The Brush Off", a 2004 screen
adaptation of Shane Maloney's book, directed by Sam Neill 

Our first anthology, which came out mid 2022, included new brand adventures for some popular antipodean crime fiction heroes like Vanda Symon's Detective Sam Shephard, Garry Disher's "Hirsch", RWR McDonald's 'The Nancys', Katherine Kovacic's Alex Clayton, Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman, Dan Rabarts & Lee Murray's Penny Yee and Matiu, and Alan Carter's Nick Chester. Sulari Gentill and Dinuka McKenzie offered prequel tales for their series characters Rowly Sinclair and DS Kate Miles. And we even had the honour of 'bringing back' Murray Whelan, political advisor turned sleuth (played by David Wenham in screen adaptations) from legendary Melbourne author Shane Maloney. Not to mention some terrific standalone crime and thriller short stories from the likes of Nikki Crutchley, Narrelle M Harris, Renee, Stephen Ross, Fiona Sussman, Lisa Fuller, Aoife Clifford, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, and David Whish Wilson. It was a pretty cool project that I was very proud to be a wee part of. 

The Queen of Crime, Val McDermid, with the first hardcover
of Dark Deeds Down Under, at Harrogate in 2022. 

Overall, I’m very happy with how Dark Deeds Down Under has been received by readers and critics. We’ve had some really lovely reviews and feedback, and lots of nice moments. Some unforgettable stuff like the great Val McDermid holding it up onstage at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July 2022 and telling an audience of 800+ people how great it was and that they should all go and buy it! – unfortunately Val hadn’t realised that I’d given her a pre-release hardcover (the first off the press, so to speak) as a thank you for reading the manuscript and giving us a cover blurb, so it wasn’t in the festival bookshop! What might have been. 

So I'm pretty excited that we're back later this month with a second volume. Hopefully we'll be able to get both books into more readers hands, and showcase a range of cool Aussie and Kiwi storytellers at home and abroad. 

TV news producer turned crime writer Stephen Johnson with a
pre-release copy at the recent Clunes Booktown Festival

Our contributors are mainly crime novelists (one of our guiding ideas was to get new short stories about familiar characters from ANZ crime series, eg Vanda Symon’s Detective Sam Shephard, Garry Disher’s South Australian cop ‘Hirsch’, etc), but also include some genre-blending authors, short story specialists, and fresh/unpublished authors. This time around we're planning some bookshop or library events around both countries, among other things, celebrating many of the forty one authors who are featured across the first two volumes. 

I feel pretty lucky to get to do what I do, and how my lifelong love of mystery fiction has grown into this rather surreal more-than-a-hobby/less-than-a-career life in adulthood. And particularly that I get to help shine a light on cool storytellers from our corner of the globe (yes, I know globes don't have corners, but you know what I mean). 

So Dark Deeds Down Under volume 2 will officially be out around 16 April, though you can pre-order copies now direct from the publisher (Australia/New Zealand here, United States here) with a nice wee discount. 

The second volume includes a diverse array of intriguing and exciting stories from a cool range of Kiwi and Aussie storytellers, who I'll talk more in depth about next time on Murder is Everywhere: Charity Norman, Anna Downes, Jack Heath, Jennifer Lane, Emma Viskic, Natalie Conyer, Malla Nunn, Chad Taylor, Jean Bedford, Ben Hobson, Peter Papathanasiou, Helen Fitzgerald, Andi C Buchanan, Dorothy Porter, Shelley Burne-Field, Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Robert Gott, Dani Vee, Stephen Johnson, Michael Botur, Renee, and Peter Corris. 

But for now I hope you're enjoying Spring or Autumn, wherever you are in the world, and you have some great books to read. If you're looking for something new, maybe try a little Dark Deeds Down Under. 

Thanks for reading. Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Poipoia te kākano kia puawai

(Nurture the seed and it will blossom.)

Sharing a joke with the wonderful Renee, a legendary figure in Kiwi storytelling
and one of our DDDU contributors, at Nelson Arts Festival in Oct 2022