Books & Literature

Interview: Author Candice Fox on Crimson Lake

We caught up with author Candice Fox to chat about her new book, Crimson Lake, and her experiences as a popular crime author.

Crimson Lake is the latest book by back-to-back Ned Kelly Award winner, Candice Fox. Fan-girl, Samantha Bond, sat down with Candice to chat about her new book and her writing more generally.

To bring you up to speed, Crimson Lake is set in the suffocating, claustrophobic heat of Far North Queensland. Ted Conkaffey, a former police officer, has fled to Crimson Lake. Cleared of an accusation of abducting and assaulting a teenage girl, the tarnish still remains. He is steered towards convicted murderer and local PI Amanda Pharrell, who is investigating the case of missing author Jake Scully. Did either of them commit the crime they were accused of? And what happened to Jake Scully?

Crimson Lake is your new book. I’ve read it and it has kept me up till all hours while I read ‘just one more chapter’. Can you please talk about what readers can expect?

I was trying to write a novel where you never quite feel safe to trust anyone in it, whether they’re likeable or not as characters.

I’ve had fans who’ve written to me and been a little bit intense for my liking, which is worrying. But I’m still getting used to being an author and people whom I don’t know knowing things about my life. I have one female writer friend who’s been sent naked pictures by guys, and I know Michael Robotham has had someone turn up on his doorstep. It was fun to write about being a writer, though – the anger and frustration aspiring writers can feel. I took it to the extreme in my book, but I certainly felt that intense anger and frustration when I was trying to get published.

Crimson Lake raises questions about guilt and innocence. Your protagonist faces public persecution as ordinary citizens believe in his guilt. In researching this novel, did you find cases of this sort of thing occurring in real life to the extent you’ve portrayed it in your novel?

Certain aspects of it., like the mob turning up at his door and people calling him a monster was very similar to what happened to Dennis Ferguson (even though he was guilty). That mob mentality and how people will bond together over sex offenders is extraordinary. You don’t see people taking vigilante action over any old crime, including murder. I was really interested in the media reaction to celebrity accusations like Robert Hughes and Bill Cosby etc. The general consensus from the public, long before any serious investigation happened, was that they were guilty, or people would say that they knew all along. If people think they can tell what a sex offender is like, wouldn’t it be terrifying if you suddenly realised that, actually, you can’t? Or, on the flipside, if you were accused of it and people were saying they knew you did it irrespective of the evidence.

It was intended as a standalone novel, but I hear Crimson Lake has been so well received there’s another in the pipeline.

It’s hard to talk about it without there being a spoiler. I can say the victim’s father from Crimson Lake comes into it. And Ted and Amanda are investigating the slaying of three young people in a road side bar. It will probably be out about this time next year.

For me, one of the masterful aspects of Crimson Lake is that it’s not a conventional mystery novel that focuses all attention on the solving of one crime. There are, in fact, three separate mysteries to solve!

I have a good instinct for going back and forth between plot lines. I tend to do it in the Bennet Archer series. I’d have a back story, and the front story of the actual investigation and then usually a third character perspective as the third line. It’s how I tend to work. I don’t like to be too linear. What’s unique in this from my other novels is that it’s all from the one perspective (other than the letters to the writer). My agent was a little concerned I was being overly ambitious, but I think as long as it’s managed carefully and the reader can follow, it’s fine to do it.

The TV rights to Crimson Lake have already been bought by the makers of Rake and Jack Irish. That’s awesomely exciting! Are you able to tell us any more than that at this stage?

I’m sort of waiting to see what will happen. I’ve had queries from other places that have wanted to join with the media partnership over Crimson Lake. Over in TV land, things take a lot longer than they do in book world, so I don’t really know much more myself. I’m excited about it being in their hands, though.

Never Never was the novel you co-wrote with James Patterson, and that was a huge hit for 2016. Are there more novels planned for that series and are you continuing to work closely with James Patterson?

I am and it is. We had Never Never come out in the USA and it’s hit both the number one spot and best overall on the New York Times Bestseller list for combined print and e-book sales. We’re in draft mode on the second full novel in that series, and it should be out in Australia later this year. James is a lovely guy and he’s taught me a lot about crime writing in general and I want to be able to work with him as much as I can.

Readers and aspiring writers love hearing about the path to publication. Your bio says you accumulated something like 200 rejection letters before Hades was published. What sort of books were you writing back then, and why do you think Hades was successful when those earlier works weren’t?

Hades was the first crime novel I ever wrote. I was writing supernatural and paranormal stuff before that and it was hard to get published in that genre. I read a lot of Anne Rice as a teenager! As a writer, I had to grow into a book like Hades, I had to clear the pipes and learn not to overwrite. I did my honours in creative writing and then I did my masters at UQ and what I learnt was to pare back and get the right flow. I’d not attempted crime before this because I had been intimidated by the prestige of the police procedural, but I realised I actually knew quite a lot about crime from consuming it all my life and I had enough to get by.

There’s no doubt you spin a great yarn and are accumulating fans by the truck load, so, please tell us what’s in the pipeline and what you’re planning to write over the next year or so.

The sequel to Crimson Lake is due to my publisher in June and will be published this time next year. During the first half of the year, I write my own novels and in the second half I write novels with James. So hopefully soon we’ll start discussing a third Harriet Blue novel. This time next year I’ll be writing something of my own, it might be a Crimson Lake 3, but I don’t really know how Crimson Lake 2 ends yet. Last Chance is the sequel to Never Never, and it will be out later this year in Australia and probably this time next year in America.

I still feel like a newbie, for some reason. I don’t feel particularly seasoned. But a lot has happened since Hades came out in 2014. I’m now working on my seventh full-length work.

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