G'day!

I'm Claire McNab, transplanted Aussie, living for the last ten years in the ever-astonishing Los Angeles.

In my writing career I've had over 50 books published, and am known in my native Australia for crime fiction, children's novels, picture books, self-help, and English textbooks (yes, for my sins I was once a high school English teacher).

I started my writing career while a student at Sydney's Macquarie University, where I won the university play writing award.  This led to my being accepted into the inaugural play writing course run by the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

Plays and then textbooks followed.  My very first mystery, LESSONS IN MURDER, was published in the States in 1988.  Set in a school situated in the beautiful Northern Beaches area of Sydney (coincidentally rather like the school in which I was teaching at the time) it introduced Detective Inspector Carol Ashton.

I had not the slightest idea how close Carol and I would become.  I thought I'd written a stand-alone mystery novel.  Carol (and my publisher) had other ideas.  The sixteenth Carol Ashton mystery will be published at the end of 2004.

Apart from my own writing, I have the rewarding experience of teaching not-yet-published writers through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.  It's crash hot (this is good) every time one of my students ascends to the "published" category.

Send me an email