The book find spawned a literary and television juggernaut, in which the Vera crime novels starring English actor Brenda Blethyn, were made into a series of 12, with the 13th out next year.

Her equally popular Shetland novels were made into 38 episodes with Scottish actor Douglas Henshall starring in the lead role as Detective-Inspector Jimmy Perez, and then the The Long Call, in 2021, which was based on Cleeves’ character Detective-Inspector Matthew Venn.

The popular, warm and easy-going Cleeves, who was awarded an OBE last year for services to reading and libraries, and is in Tasmania this month for the Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival in the Huon Valley, puts her phenomenal success down simply to “luck”.

“My career changed with the first Shetland novel Raven Black,” Cleeves says.

“At the time, Scandi Noir was very popular and Shetland is as close to Scandi as it gets in the UK.

“Then it was luck that my first Vera book was picked up in a charity shop by a TV books executive, who was looking for a series with a strong female lead to adapt for the screen.”

She was “very excited” with the series pilot and says although neither Blethyn nor Henshall look like the characters in her books, “they embody them beautifully”.

“There was no guarantee though that viewers would enjoy it, or that they’d realise that the show was based on my novels, so it was quite an uncertain time too,” she says.
“We never thought that there’d be 13 series.”

Cleeves, who lives in “Vera-land” at Whitley Bay, a seaside town in North East England and also has a cottage in the hills she escapes to, travels a lot, but this is her first visit to Tasmania.

For the award-winning author, the sense of place in her books is vital.

“It’s the most important,” she says.

“I think setting is much more than a pretty backdrop to the action.

“It informs character and plot.

“We are who we are because of the place we live, and the community to which we belong.”

It didn’t take much for festival director Dr L.J.M. Owen to lure Cleeves here.

“I can’t wait to spend time somewhere new,” Cleeves says.

“I’m very excited to explore the landscape and to understand a little of a place very different from my home.”

Always a child who read and made up stories, she was the daughter of the village school’s head teacher and worries that children these days don’t read for enjoyment.

“It’s not easy being the teacher’s kid, so I was more of an observer than a participant – and that’s vital for a writer,” she says.

“I do worry that in school, we’re actually putting kids off reading for pleasure.

“There’s so much emphasis, in the UK at least, on grammar, spelling and comprehension.

“Reading should be a joy.”

A probation officer, she wrote her first book when she and her late husband Tim, an ornithologist, were living on the tiny tidal island of Hilbre, on the North West coast of England where he was the warden.

“We were the only people living there, and I had the time and space to write,” she says. “I kill off a birdwatcher in the novel.

“It was a lot easier to get published in those days, though it took me 20 years to have any commercial success.”

Cleeves has been to the US twice this year, a book festival in Denmark and is headed to Gibraltar for another writers’ event when she leaves Tasmania.

When she’s not travelling for work the
68-year-old tries to write every day. She usually starts a book after she finishes promoting the one she’s just had published.

“I’m an early riser and my brain works much better in the morning,” she says.

“I don’t do set hours, but I usually complete about 1200 or 1500 words a day.

“After that, I lose concentration.

“The ideas come easily, but it is hard to tie all the story threads together.

“I never plot in advance, so it’s always a bit scary,” she says.

“The hard work is turning a good idea into a 100,000-word novel.”

Her latest book The Raging Storm, released recently, is set in North Devon where both she and the fictional Detective-Inspector Matthew Venn grew up.

Cleeves says she enjoys writing about Venn, whose character grew from two close male friends who helped her after the sudden death in 2017 of her husband Tim, after he was admitted to hospital with a heart condition.

“He has no charisma – I think we put too much value on big personalities,” she says.

“He and Jonathan (DI Venn’s husband) grew out of my great gay friends Martin and Paul.

“They looked after me after my husband’s death and I wanted to celebrate their relationship,” she says.

The mother of two daughters and grandmother of seven has no plans to write any more books set in Shetland.

“I think I’ve explored the place in the existing eight novels.

“But I’m still writing Vera. There’ll be a new one published next September.”

For her legion of followers, she has no plans to stop writing.

“I can’t imagine retiring,” she says.

“I love sitting at my kitchen table and making up stories.

“I might cut back on the travel though.”

Festival brainchild and former senior
public servant, artistic director Dr Owen, first met Cleeves at Boucheron in Toronto, Canada, in 2017, at the World Mystery
Writers Convention.

“There were 2000 crime and mystery lovers in one giant hotel. It was life-changing,” Dr Owen recalls.

“I joke that I escaped dark days as a bureaucrat for something lighter – inventing murder. Four days after I put my first manuscript on Kickstarter to self-publish, it was picked up by Echo Publishing.

“After contracting for four books, I moved to Tasmania in 2017 to write full-time.

“In 2018, inspired by Agatha Christie’s
love of Tasmania and the camaraderie I experienced at Boucheron, I decided to found the Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival, a biennial crime and mystery festival in the Huon Valley.”

In 2021, Owen says she was fortunate enough to interview Cleeves as part of
CSI: TASMANIA, Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival’s online international festival.

She understands why Cleeves is drawn to Tasmania.

“I can’t speak for Ann, of course, but I imagine like Agatha Christie and Mark Twain before her, she feels the pull of Tasmania’s shores,” she says.

“The light in the Huon Valley has the same ethereal quality as that of Umbria.

“Our air is sweet, our food first-class and our produce among the best in the world.

“We have the river, the mountains, the sea, the aurora and rainforests filled with fascinating flora and fauna. I think the question is: How can anyone stay away?”

Owen is in awe of Cleeves’ “extraordinary ability to weave character and landscape together”.

“Could you imagine Vera anywhere but Northumberland? Or Jimmy Perez anywhere other than Shetland?” she says.

“Readers love compelling characters and beautifully conveyed landscape.

“Ann offers both, alongside satisfying plots and insightful explorations of human psychology,” Owen says.

She has learnt much from the widely acclaimed Cleeves.

“I learnt that the trick to becoming an overnight success is 20 years of hard work,” she says.

“Ann spoke of her years of writing and being published before major commercial success arrived in the form of the TV show Vera.

“It underlined how important it is to enjoy the process of writing and being published as a midlist author, rather than worrying about greater commercial success. And to never give up hope for that breakout book or TV series.”

Over the three weeks of the festival, as many as 300 people are expected to attend for a day or longer.

With Cleeves as the festival’s International Writer in Residence, Owen says the festival has “an extraordinary professional development program for writers this year”.

She’s confident mystery lovers will be delighted with the line-up, which also includes New Zealand’s Vanda Symon and Australia’s Garry Disher.

The festival’s Tasmanian guest of honour, author of the popular Pufferfish crime series David Owen says Cleeves brings a “high-quality international feel to the unique festival”.

“I am sure she will have some really good insights into being a major international author of crime,” he says.

Dr Owen says readers and writers were “flying in or driving from the UK, NZ, every state on the mainland and across Tasmania to join us at the Kermandie in Port Huon”.

“Word of mouth ran ahead of us this year,” she says.

“Some Tassie Vice events – especially those with Ann Cleeves and Garry Disher – were fully reserved before we opened ticketing.

“There are still vacancies, a handful of weekend passes, and there are always cancellations. Even if an event is sold out, if you jump on a waitlist you may still get a ticket.”

Cleeves will launch Dr Owen’s new
novel anthology, Murder You Wrote: An Interactive Mystery, on October 26. A traditional mystery set in an isolated Tasmanian manor, she says it’s for anyone who loved Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid.•

Ann Cleeves’ latest novel The Raging Storm, Pan Macmillan, RRP $35, is out now.

Terror Australis Readers and Writers Festival line-up

The Terror Australis: Readers and Writers Festival – Australia’s southern-most literary festival, is a celebration of books, writing and community in the glorious Huon Valley.

This year’s four-day biennial festival will be held at The Kermandie Hotel, in Port Huon, from October 26 to October 29.

Highlights of the event will include appearances by guests, including this year’s international writer in residence, the creator of British crime shows Vera and Shetland and the New York Times best-selling author Ann Cleeves.

This year’s festival will also feature Australian crime author Garry Disher, (inset top right) and New Zealand crime writer and radio host Vanda Symon, (inset bottom right), as well as a host of other Australian authors.

With a literary high tea, a murder mystery dinner and a two-day panel program exploring Australian and international crime and mystery fiction since the ’80s, the event is set to offer festival-goers a criminally good time.

The festival also offers aspiring, emerging and established genre writers a chance to progress their careers with a range of events, including waterfront writers’ retreats and masterclasses.

There will also be a professional development program being held for writers from October 21 to November 12.

The interstate panellists include:

Sarah Barrie, Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Sarah Byrne, Lindy Cameron, Natalie Conyer, Tea Cooper, Caroline de Costa, Poppy Gee, Katherine Kovacic, Dinuka McKenzie, RWR McDonald, Angela Meyer, and Nilima Rao, with Tasmanian authors Karen Brooks, S.J. Brown, Alan Carter, Jo Dixon, Tara Marlow, Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Monica Vuu.

Book room authors include:

R.J Amos, Mark Mannock, and Jon Wells.

For more details, go online to:https://www.terroraustralisfestival.com/2023-coming-up