Eleanor Black recently wrote an interesting article in Stuff, about crime fiction in New Zealand, and the lack of interest in the work by local crime writers.
Below is a quote from the article:
“Many local crime writers have already enjoyed far greater success and attention overseas than at home, among them Christchurch writer Paul Cleave, with a million books sold and famous fans including Mark Billingham and Tess Gerritsen raving about his black humour and compulsive readability.
There was little fanfare when Cleave’s book Joe Victim was shortlisted for the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the “Oscars of crime writing”, in 2014 alongside Stephen King.
“Paul getting shortlisted for the Edgar is like a New Zealand music act being a Grammy nominee, a New Zealand actor an Oscar nominee, or a literary writer being listed for the Man Booker,” says Sisterson, who reckons Cleave has been “pretty overlooked” locally.
When Cleave won the Ngaio Marsh Award last year for his eighth novel Five Minutes Alone (his second Ngaio Marsh Award) he commented that New Zealand was a “very difficult” market to crack.
“It’s frustrating,” says Dunedin writer Paddy Richardson (A Year To Learn a Woman, Swimming in the Dark) of readers’ reluctance to pick up local crime. “There are a few reasons I can think of — books are expensive here, readers have their own favourite overseas writers and if there’s a choice between a known and unknown writer they’ll go with the known.” “
Read the whole of Eleanor’s article here.
Image credit: Pixabay[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]