Yeah.

But I think as a female writer, I was really conscious of, yeah, I have some bad guys because there are bad guys, and I need to have a balance.

And all along I have peppered the novels with good guys and unexpect- and s- unexpected good guys and unexpected allies, and then of course, Antigone's partner.

I wrote Waza very, very carefully because I wanted someone who was really happily married with a whole bunch of unruly kids, that Antigone is not a threat.

The wife doesn't refer to her, "Oh, you're the work wife." There's no kind of push/pull.

Antigone is really good friends with Waza's wife.

Yeah.

And Waza is, he is very supportive of not only her, but of women.

I think you were a teacher to start off with when you first got the publishing yeah it's incredible congratulations

31 years yeah for 31 years out of my career I taught full-time and I wrote books you know holidays and nights and weekends and But they're all true crime and true crime, I think it was good that I had a full-time job because I never had to worry about will this make money or will this be popular? I was very focused on these are the stories that I want to tell and these are the stories that need to be told.

So one of the books that took me a year to write was called Rock Spider about child sex offences and I was writing it with the head of the Child Exploitation Squad in the Victoria Police.

So we wrote the book, or I wrote the book, and he sort of compiled statistics and gave expert advice because it's like, well, here's how offenders target children.

All parents need to know this.

Now, I knew that that book would not sell wild numbers.

Some bookstores wouldn't even have it on the shelf.

That was so well done.

What was it like for you? Were you like, hang on, I'm going to start diving into crimes? Was there something specifically that you were like, ah, there's more to be uncovered here? What was the journey like from there? Yeah.

Again, I think as a reader, we start with books, right? So we go straight to the bookstore and I found a book by an American author called Gary Provost and it was called How to Write and Sell True Crime.

Step one, find a case.

And here are all the criteria that it needs to have.

And so right when I was reading Gary Provost's book, I was at Teacher Professional Development and they told the story of the Phillip Island murder, which I later wrote my first book on.

And they told it under the guise of that this was a program being set up for kids of divorced families because sometimes kids are ignored in a divorce or not given due consideration.

And Vivian said, Cameron in the book that I ended up writing, her father divorced her mother when she was eight and then her own son had just turned eight and she found out that her husband was having an affair and she just snapped and she killed the girlfriend and jumped off the Phillip Island Bridge.

Yeah.

It's hard enough to find a good person as it is, let alone going into that pool of dudes.

I think that we need to ask ourselves, and we confronted this idea when Denny was applying for parole, And he had, they used the same legislation for him as they'd used for Craig Minogue, the Russell Street bomber.

Now, Craig Minogue was about 23, I think, when he planted the bomb in the heart of Melbourne and killed a policewoman and badly injured a friend of mine who I've interviewed many times over the years.

And, you know, he's gone on to be... 40 years later, he's done a PhD and he's in jail and he's arguing, I'm a different person.

And my question is, if you have it in you to set a bomb in the heart of Melbourne and drive around the corner to wait for the explosion and then giggle when it goes off, not knowing who you've hurt, can you ever get that out of you? And do you want to take the risk? So luckily, Craig Minogue will never get out.

Julie Knight will never get out, the Hoddle Street Shooter.

And so we knew that then you would apply.

That's so cool.

Naughty Little Vicky

...

he just, you know, went tore through me.

"Who do you think you are? Why would you think you would get an extra...

This has to come through me." But, you know, it was just violent.

It was really violent, and I'm expected to sit there and cop it.

And so after a little while I said, "Are you gonna pay this invoice or not?" And, "I'm not gonna..." And I just got up and walked out and slammed the door.

Mm