Hickey bringing book to Bendigo

FORMER Bendigo local turned author and academic Margaret Hickey will finally share her crime thriller novel Cutters End at the Bendigo Library on 18 November.

The book was published by Random Penguin House on 17 August, but opportunities for the author to meet with readers have been limited.

“Because of lockdown and the terrible timing, this is only the second time that I’ll be actually speaking to people about the book, so it kind of is a launch really,” she said.

“I am really excited to come back to Bendigo and see my friends and to come to the terrific Bendigo Library and share Cutters End with a Bendigo audience.”

Hickey studied in Bendigo and now lives in Beechworth and is a lecturer at La Trobe University.

A playwright and author for almost 25 years, she published collection of short stories Rural Dreams last year, and Cutters End is her first full length novel.

“I found the short stories difficult to write. They were very literary, published in small literary magazines and I thought ‘I’m going to write something popular fiction’ rather than literary fiction,” she said.

The novel is set in the South Australian outback town of Cutters End and follows 18-year-old Ingrid Mathers as she hitchhikes Alice Springs and finds herself caught up in a mysterious murder.

For inspiration, Hickey turned to her own childhood, reminiscing on her own experiences of hitchhiking.

“I’ve always liked crime and I thought back to my days of hitchhiking back when my cousin and I, after school in around 89 and early 90s, used to do a lot of hitchhiking up and down the Stuart Highway,” she said.

“We had some scary experiences, not terrible but we did have some, and those experience inspired me to start the book from the point of two young girls hitchhiking.”

Hickey said she enjoyed the freedom of writing the novel and let the story flow naturally.

“Unlike the short stories which I found quite torturous to write, I was really conscious of not planning this book at all,” she said. “In literary, writers talk about being a pantser or a planner and I definitely fit in the pantser category.

“That means whenever I would write I’d read the last paragraph I’d written and keep writing from there, so I’d just let it grow very organically. I only really found out who did it not long before the readers would’ve.”

Hickey said she is excited to be able to share her book in public with an audience she knows well.

“It’s lovely to meet with readers and people interested in reading and books,” she said. “It’s a double delight because I get to see old friends, we’ll go out afterwards and I’m really looking forward to it.”

Hickey said she has been contracted to write two more novels in the series and is currently “busily writing” the sequel.