Featherstone 
Author Petronella McGovern shares mystery and crime writing tips while discussing her latest book: The Last Trace
Imagine being a crime/thriller writer and being too scared to stay home on your own at night to write your current manuscript. Yikes!
That’s exactly what author Petronella McGovern is dealing with right now as she works on a new title that delves into some of her deepest fears.
If it’s scary for her as the author…how will us readers cope when that book is eventually released!?
That’s just one of the behind-the-author stories Petronella shared during her in conversation with event librarian Leanne Wright. The packed house of readers and writers at Port Macquarie Library also learned about her genre journey, from the early days when she won a bottle of perfume in a Mills & Boon writing competition right through to where she is today, an author with multiple books published, more on the way, and a Masters in Creative Writing.
Leanne commented she thought The Last Trace would be a great book club read, noting Port Macquarie Library supports 120 book club groups and has 330 book club sets available! One of those book club sets, Honey Farm Dreaming, is my farm-lit/ memoir/recipe book – so the book clubbers sure have a diversity of genres at their fingertips!
Besides Leanne’s great interviewing style, no wonder so many well-known authors make the trek to Port on the unceded lands of the Birpai People (approximately half way between Sydney/Gadigal and Brisbane/Meanjin) as they can combine meeting readers, signing copies at the two bookstores in town (Book Face and Collins) and having a fab mini holiday. I’m just wondering when one of these crime writers is going to set their next book in Port!
About The Last Trace book by Petronella McGovern
The tagline for The Last Trace is: ‘What if you’re scared you committed a crime. But can’t remember?’ Petronella describes it as ‘Secrets, siblings and the traces we can never erase’.
Here are some of the writing life takeaways from Petronella’s author talk.
Try and avoid social media before writing
‘The subconscious works wonders overnight…it’s unexpected, part magic…so when I wake up I don’t want to be distracted by social media, I just get down to work.’
Scrivener for POV tracking
Petronella uses writing software program Scrivener to help her stay on top of the POV of different characters and when and where they appear in the book, but she doesn’t use many of the other bells and whistles of the program. For example, she keeps her basic character details in a word doc.
Research for characters – one-one-ones:
For a previous book when doing research, Petronella spoke to 4 different detectives for information but for The Last Traceshe interviewed a water engineer and solar engineer, not so much for the technical aspects of their work, but the emotional side – how they felt about their work and the world that drove it.
Research for characters – broader
She also researched for the current book by attending lectures by a forensic scientist and reading up on online case studies and blogs. Doing this type of research helped her build deeper characters.
Physical vs emotional descriptions for characters
Petronella thinks a lot about what drives characters and how those characters react to the world. Then she finds pictures that correlate to use as inspiration for the characters’ physical descriptions.
Book Covers
When the cover design for The Last Trace came in she mentioned to her publisher, ‘There are a lot of books with red coats on the cover.’ Her publisher replied: ‘That’s because they sell!’.
How long does it take to write a book?
It took Petronella 6 years to write her first book, but now she tries to write one a year.
To read similar books in your genre or not?
When she’s in writing mode, Petronella won’t read other crime thrillers in case they influence her work, but when the book is done, she devours them! She loves the close knit Australian crime author community and many of them read eachothers’ works.
Thanks Petronella! Petronella McGovern’s website
