Writers' News - Burning ambition

Burning ambition

An Australian subscriber who emigrated from Britain in the 1960s writes to us from Beaconsfield, Victoria.

In ten years of subscribing to WN, Jackie Tritt has had articles, short stories, children’s stories and a novel published. She has also enjoyed success in a number of short story competitions in Australia and internationally, the most prestigious being the Herald Sun/Collins last year, with its prize of $5,000.

Now her crime novel, The Burning, which was originally published as a paperback in Australia has been contracted by American publisher, Virtual Tales where it will be released as twice weekly issues to VT subscribers’e-mail addresses. ‘It’s a new venture, so it will be interesting to see how it goes over the next few months,’ she said.

The first publisher of The Burning, about a murder investigation, set against the background of bush fires in the Australian summer, was Australian Pocket Press, now defunct.

As Jackie’s area was devastated by the fires of Ash Wednesday, 1983, she had plenty of first-hand experience on which to base her descriptions. ‘It sounds flippant, but I found them by going through a list of markets and, as their name started with A, it was the first I came across,’ Jackie explains, adding: ‘I worked strictly by the publisher guidelines, sent in a synopsis and the first three chapters, was asked for the whole manuscript, and was lucky to have it accepted.’

She is now re-working The Burning with American grammar and spelling, breaking the chapters into issues for Virtual Tales, and trying to find a home for her second crime novel, Raven’s Cry, based on the disappearance of a child. Jackie has also started another novel with the same protagonist, crime reporter,Tara Edwards.

‘I like to write short stories and stories for children as relief from the novel,’ she says, ‘and usually have a few on the go.’

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