Whitney Fitzsimmons’ thriller The Rising has been published by Ventura Press. Whitney is a graduate of our Crime and Thriller Writing course, which she credits with giving her the structure she’d been missing every time she’d tried to finish a novel before.
“The course gave me a solid foundation in which to really build a story knowing what the structure is, what the tropes are,” she says.
A cold case in the mud
The Rising opens with a catastrophic flood ripping through the rural town of Birradurra and uncovering a shocking cold case. “Unearthed from the mud are the skeletal remains of a baby. Shaken by this and haunted by her traumatic past, journalist Bec Carter is consumed with getting justice for the victim. But when her friend Harry Adams who vowed to help with the investigation vanishes in violent circumstances, authorities look to Bec for answers.”
Underneath the thriller plot, Whitney says, is a question for the reader. “At its core it’s a story about morally grey areas and what happens when good people do very bad things for good reasons and the effect that has on a town and its community. The story purposely puts the reader in a situation where rather than being judgemental they are forced to ask themselves ‘what would I do if I was faced with this situation?’”
What the course changed
Whitney came to the Australian Writers’ Centre while working in corporate affairs, with a long career in television news behind her and an unfinished manuscript or two in the drawer. She loves crime and thrillers, and this time she was determined to get to the end of a book.
What she valued most was the detail on how crime and thriller plots are built. She loved “learning the specific plot points in crime and thrillers so that you can really work with the craft and start to subvert it and surprise your readers.”
That structure carried through into character as well. “It really did help from a plotting point of view and then of course because a story isn’t all plot, it is driven by the decisions that a character will make – so they inform each other – so the course really helped with that too.”
Whitney went on to do several more of our courses, including Anatomy of a Crime: How to Write About Murder, Focus On Pace, Focus On Style and Tone and Write Your Novel.
Ninety rejections and a book deal
Writing The Rising was, in Whitney’s words, a lot of work. “Any one will tell you it’s a lot of work – BUT it is A LOT of work. And you go through phases with it – there are weeks where it’s the coolest thing to spend your time on and then there are weeks where you are so sick of reading your pages that you become almost immune to it. Like it’s white noise because you have read it SO MANY TIMES! That’s editing and proof period/process. But it’s good to have the lows because they make the highs stand out.”
The submissions process tested her too. “I think because the book had been rejected about 90 times, although I still believed in it – I was really worried about what the readers would think. I did think the story had legs and so far the feedback from readers has been FABULOUS!!!”
Even the yes took a while to sink in. “It felt good but also surreal. I knew there was a lot of work still to come and to be really honest it wasn’t until the book was published and went to market that I felt relieved. Now it’s in the hands of the readers, so I have to just let go. I wrote it in service to the readers with the hope that they enjoy it and it gives them that feeling of suspense and thrills, that they are gripped by the narrative and the characters and can’t stop turning the pages!”
The one she never finished
The Rising was not Whitney’s first attempt at a thriller. Years earlier, while she was reading the news for the ABC’s international network and bird flu was leading the bulletins, she started a novel about a global pandemic. “An agent was interested at the time but I never finished it because I didn’t know my process. I kept writing myself into corners.”
Did she ever imagine she’d become a published author? “Honestly yes, I just had to get out of my own way and stop doubting myself. I’m very stubborn and persistent – once I set my mind on something – it may take a while but I do get there. My whole career has been like that.”
Writing around a corporate job
Whitney lives in Sydney’s inner west and still works in a corporate role, so the writing happens at the edges of the day. “I write early or late in the day and on the weekends. Because I spent years in newsrooms with a lot of ambient noise I can write anywhere – quiet places and noisy locations both suit me!”
Readers have been asking for more of Bec Carter and Birradurra, so she’s working on a sequel, along with a standalone thriller set in London in the world of live television news, politics and terrorism.
Would she recommend an AWC course to a friend? “Crime and Thriller Writing – it’s very good for giving emerging writers a good grounding and foundation in writing that genre.”
You can follow Whitney on Instagram and Facebook, or visit her website at whitneyfitzsimmons.com.
Courses taken at AWC:
