The Book Post

Mak hits the UK.

The fourth novel in my Mak Vanderwall series, HIT, will hit the UK next week, published through John Blake's exciting new MaxCrime imprint with Maxim Jakubowski. Jakubowski - a writer, critic, founder of Murder One bookshop (the UK's first specialist crime and mystery bookstore) and now a publisher - is a fan of the series, saying Mak is 'a Sydney female PI with grit and attitude, and dare I say modelled on Tara herself. This is Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton for a younger generation...'

So why the UK, now? In the past, my agent Selwa Anthony had difficulty negotiating with UK publishers because they wanted the Aus/NZ rights included in contracts. Apparently this is a common problem for Australian writers, and has been a Commonwealth tradition of sorts, although arguably an illogical one. (The UK and Australia do not exactly share geographical intimacy.) As many will know, HarperCollins Australia took a major gamble on me back in 1999, publishing my first novel Fetish when I was a twenty-five year old publishing unknown, with only a Scarlet Stiletto Young Writers Award under my belt. After successfully bringing Mak to Aussie and New Zealand readers for the past decade, I simply refuse to break my contract and hand Mak's local rights (and sales $) to a UK publisher.

Further to the issue of UK publishers demanding Aus/NZ rights is this excellent article at Scribe by Henry Rosenbloom. Thank you for the link, Tim Coronel. (* Incidentally, loyalty to the local publishers who take the initial risk to publish and develop a new author is another important and very valid issue in the current Territorial Copyright debate in Aus. But I digress...)

It has been a long journey, with several novels and languages under Mak's belt and the UK remaining as the last 'major' global territory where she has not been published. Now she will finally be available in the UK as of next week, as the lead title at MaxCrime.

At Crime Time, UK, publisher Jakubowski writes that when he was assembling his titles for the launch of MaxCrime, 'My first port of call was Tara Moss. For the past few years, I had been dumbfounded by the fact she was not published in the UK...At Xmas she was, with her new novel SIREN, up at nr 3 on the Oz bestseller list just behind Dan Brown and James Patterson...we had little hesitation at featuring her on the cover of HIT, the first of her 5 novels we will be publishing...This is Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton for a younger generation. High octane adventures with a sexy angle, and a no-brainer as one of our launch titles. Dare I reveal that waiting for the contract to be signed for Tara's books, I was rather nervous someone else would jump in and gazump us. A major find!'

(*Blushes.)

The entire MaxCrime line up is exciting for crime fiction fans like myself. Read the rest of Jakubowski's piece about MaxCrime at Crime Time, UK. You can now order HIT online. My other Mak Vanderall novels, Fetish, Split, Covet and Siren will also be published by MaxCrime. I am currently writing a sixth novel in the series, due for publication in Australia first, late next year.

Happy reading,


PS. MaxCrime has chosen to use me on the cover of Hit in part because of the strong links between myself and my fictional heroine. Some of my other worldwide publishers have done the same. (I doubt this will continue into the next decade, mind...) What are your thoughts on the cover choice?