Garland Cove: Deborah Sheldon
Murder! Mystery! Mayhem! Book 6 is Garland Cove by Deborah Sheldon. Deborah and DEMAIN have previously worked together on a Short Sharp Shocks! (Hand To Mouth). The book is published on 21st August (but is currently available for pre-sale) with a cover by Adrian Baldwin.
Shane Croft, part-time crim, moved with his wife from Melbourne to the coastal town of Garland Cove to make a fresh start. Instead, he became the reluctant informant of corrupt detectives, Terry Patterson and Michaela Green.
Shane’s one chance: gather evidence against them for a covert investigation in return for immunity from prosecution. However, suspecting they are under scrutiny, Patterson and Green decide to stage a fake robbery. Patterson plans to arrest the robber in the middle of a bank job, believing that positive media attention will derail the corruption investigation. Shane must set up the job. Despite his perfect planning, the bank job goes horribly wrong.
Now Shane is persona non grata to the good guys and the corrupt coppers are hell-bent on killing him.
You can buy Garland Cove from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Deborah Sheldon Talks To Demain Publishing
(Originally featured on the Demain Publishing Blog, 2nd August 2021 HERE)
DEMAIN PUBLISHING: Welcome back Deborah – it’s great to be working with you again. Okay, so for those that don’t (yet!) know you can you tell us a little about yourself and how (or why) you became a writer.
DEBORAH SHELDON: Hi, it’s great to be back. I’m an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia. I write short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. My award-nominated titles include the novels Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and the collection Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories. My collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Collected Work’ Award, was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and longlisted for a Bram Stoker.
As editor of the 2019 edition of Midnight Echo, I won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award. My short fiction has appeared in many well-respected magazines such as Aurealis, Midnight Echo, Island, Pulp Modern, Andromeda Spaceways, and Dimension6. My fiction has been shortlisted for Australian Shadows Awards and Aurealis Awards, and included in various ‘best of’ anthologies. In 2020, Demain Publishing released my novelette Hand To Mouth. As a child, I loved superhero comics. I created my own comics for fun and pleasure. At first, I thought I wanted to be an illustrator until I realised that I enjoyed writing stories much more than drawing the pictures. I’ve been a professional writer since 1986. Earlier credits include TV scripts, feature articles, and award-winning medical writing.
DP: Very cool. With regards to the crime/thriller genre, what was your first introduction…
DS: Enid Blyton’s Five Find-Outers and Dog series. However, the real heartstopper was Raymond Chandler. In the early noughties I discovered Chandler’s masterful creation, Philip Marlowe, and gobbled up the novels and most of the short stories. (I’ve kept three stories in reserve to read on my deathbed. At the time, I jokingly swore that I didn’t want to live in a world that didn’t have any more Marlowe stories and, to my surprise, I’ve so far kept that promise. Those final three stories await.) As everyone knows, Chandler is a tremendously talented author who writes ‘low-brow’ characters in a ‘high-brow’ way. His use of slang, ear for dialogue and attention to the specifics of locale influenced me greatly. I’m probably misquoting him, but in one interview, he said that a good story only needed action and dialogue; anything more (such as internal monologues or authorial asides) revealed the writer to be a hack. While I don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to that philosophy, I certainly keep it in mind when I’m writing.
DP: Brilliant. I’ve read a couple of the Marlowe stories and love Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye (1973) but think I need to add some more to my (ever-growing) TBR pile. Tell us a bit more about Garland Cove.
DS: The germ of Garland Cove came from a news story in an Australian newspaper: an armed robbery was thwarted when somebody noticed the assailant’s gun was a replica. I’d been wanting to write a story with a cast of shady characters who are secretly at odds with one another, and this news snippet was my catalyst. Shane Croft is the protagonist of Garland Cove. He’s a small-time crim forced into working for corrupt detectives. Meanwhile, the detectives realise they are under scrutiny, and tell Shane to arrange a bank robbery where the robber has a replica gun. The detectives will save the day, become national heroes, and therefore derail the corruption investigation. Naturally, since every player is lying, shenanigans ensue.
DP: They definitely do! Did you have to do much research for Garland Cove?
DS: I worked in television back in the 1990s. I was researcher, scriptwriter, and script editor of the crime re-enactments on the show Australia’s Most Wanted. This first-hand experience helped me to write Garland Cove with a degree of confidence. I researched the nitty-gritty as I went along and filled in the gaps. I only ever do enough preliminary research to get started. To me, trying to do all the research before writing the first draft is a form of procrastination. How much preliminary research do you need? Well, how long is a piece of string? It’s too easy to lose yourself for weeks, months or even years down a rabbit hole. That’s why I research as I go.
DP: Nice! So I suspect then that you didn’t find Garland Cove particularly difficult to write?
DS: No. Once I had worked out the temperaments, ambitions and needs of the characters, the story flowed with reasonable ease. It was first published in The One That Got Away (Dark Prints Press, 2012), and I’m grateful to Demain Publishing for giving it another chance.
I loved writing Garland Cove so much that, in 2013, I expanded the novelette into a novel, which I titled Garland Cove Heist. While I received plenty of positive and encouraging feedback from Australian publishers, none were prepared to take the risk of signing the manuscript because I was not a ‘name’ author. Such is life. Garland Cove Heist is my ‘bottom drawer’ novel. But doesn’t every author have at least one to feel sad about?
DP: At least one! And a couple of screenplays! Anyway, let’s not get too morose. What books/authors do you read and do you think they influence you as a writer?
DS: I have eclectic tastes. Generally, I avoid bestseller lists. I like to wait until history decides if a novel is worthwhile. That’s why my bookshelves are filled mainly with novels from the early-nineteenth to late twentieth centuries. However, short stories are a different matter. I read English-language anthologies all the time – mainly those published in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Canada and South Africa – and I enjoy translated works too. My go-to genres are horror, crime, noir, classic and literary, but I read across a wide range. I don’t think you can aspire to be a good writer unless you’re well-read. To put it another way: if you only explore one genre, you’ll only be a one-dimensional writer. Everything I read influences me. Each story that I enjoy prompts me to try a different technique, approach or style. And each story I dislike reminds me of what not to do.
DP: I’m with you – though I class myself as a ‘horror’ writer I actually don’t read many horror stories anymore (other than those I read for DEMAIN obviously) and my tastes are getting broader and broader…creatively is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t yet?
DS: I have a background in scriptwriting. The subject comprised part of my writing-oriented Bachelor of Arts. I was employed by Grundy Television for a few years and worked with Crawfords Australia (another TV production company) on a couple of projects. I developed a documentary but not to the point of signing on that final and much-coveted dotted line. I have one script in particular, I’d love to bring to the screen. However, Australia’s film and TV industry is woefully underfunded, and while ‘reality TV’ rules the roost, I doubt I could find a single producer willing to look at my work. That said, I console myself by remembering how the world keeps turning. What’s hot today will be cold tomorrow; what’s passé now will soon be in vogue. Perhaps the marketplace will be receptive if I just wait long enough. And if not…well, that’s life in the big city, right? No use crying about it.
DP: Definitely not. You’re so right about the world keeping turning – The Queen’s Gambit (2020) was in development for over thirty years I believe! Is writing a long term or short term career for Deborah Sheldon
DS: Writing has been the through-line of my life. I’ve been a professional writer for 35 years. I sold my first piece when I was 18 years old – a non-fiction article about steroid abuse in bodybuilding that I wrote during my first semester of university, 1986. For a few years, I contributed feature articles to Australian and international magazines, then worked as a section editor for a small London newspaper when I lived there for a while. Back in Melbourne, I worked at the aforementioned Grundy Television, focused on medical writing (winning a couple of awards), released two non-fiction titles with Reed Books and Random House, and had an original screenplay optioned by Crawfords Australia, amongst many other projects. I made a good living as a writer back in the nineties and early noughties. I turned my focus towards fiction in late 2007 and just kept on going.
DP: And finally Deborah, can you tell us something your readers might be surprised to find out about you?
DS: While I write hardcore crime, noir and horror, I’m a private and sensitive person who is easily moved to tears. Writing fiction helps me exorcise my anxieties.
DP: Thank you so much for your time Deborah, it was great to speak to you again. Best of luck with your M!M!M!
Deborah Sheldon
DEBORAH SHELDON is an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia, who writes short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. Her short fiction has been published in many well-respected magazines including Quadrant, Island, Aurealis, Midnight Echo, Dimension6 and Andromeda Spaceways. Her award-nominated titles include the novels Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; novella Thylacines; and collection Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories. Her collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Collected Work’ Award. Deb’s fiction has also been nominated for various Australian Shadows and Aurealis Awards, and long-listed for a Bram Stoker Award. As editor of Midnight Echo 14, she won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award. Other credits include feature articles for national magazines, non-fiction books for Reed Books and Random House, TV scripts for shows such as Neighbours, and award-winning medical writing.
If you would like to connect with Deborah direct:
Website: www.deborahsheldon.wordpress.com
Goodreads: Deborah_Sheldon
Amazon Author Page: Deborah Sheldon
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