Michael Robotham
Michael Robotham
Michael Robothamis an Australian crime fiction writer. His daughter is the ARIA and APRA Award nominated songwriter, producer and musician, Alex Hope...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth9 November 1960
CountryAustralia
illustrate inevitable rather reactions readers ways witness worst
Violence is inevitable in crime novels, but there are many different ways to tell a story. I use my characters' reactions to illustrate the worst moments rather than let readers witness them at first hand.
characters few hopefully hours resonate suits
I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.
collapse gulf northern reported soviet ten took troubles war worked
Journalism took me around the world. I worked in London for ten years and reported on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the first Gulf War.
confident german
I'd like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.
closest everybody job recognise work
Everybody you work with has their own voice, and if you do your job well enough, even their closest friends or their partner of 40 years isn't going to recognise the fingerprints of a ghostwriter.
book favourite supposed
You're not supposed to have a favourite book - it's like children.
afternoon beat began country court felt grown newspaper though
I wasn't always a novelist. I began my writing career as a journalist, working on an afternoon newspaper in Sydney, Australia, doing the crime beat and court reporting. Having grown up in a small country town, I felt as though I had nothing to write about.
dreamed few fortunate happily love people
I'm very fortunate to be doing what I dreamed of, what I love. So few people get that opportunity. So while people continue liking what I write, I'm going to happily continue.
joke peace war wrote
I often joke that I could write 'War and Peace' and make it sound like Geri Halliwell wrote it.
became feature job legends needed pop quit senior soldiers sports sunday writer
In the mid-nineties, I quit my job as a senior feature writer at 'The Mail' on Sunday in the U.K. and became a 'ghost writer,' collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers and sporting legends who needed help in penning their autobiographies.
critical gratuitous novels offer perhaps readers shock
I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn't necessary. If that's all you have to offer as a writer, perhaps you're in the wrong job.
sixty-minutes lasts remember
Remember, the worst hour of your life only lasts for sixty minutes. (292)
together balance strange
One of the strange things about friendship is that time together isn't cancelled out by time apart. One doesn't erase the other or balance it on some invisible scale. You can spend a few hours with someone and they will change your life, or you can spend a lifetime with a person and remain unchanged.
true-friend father lying
Sometimes friends do foolish things. My father told me that true friends are like gold coins. Ships are wrecked by storms and lie for hundreds of years on the ocean floor. Worms destroy the wood. Iron corrodes. Silver turns black but gold doesn't change in sea water. It loses none of its brilliance or colour. It comes up the same. It survives shipwrecks and time.