One of the very first questions people ask me about my life is why? Why serial killers? Unfortunately, that is also one of the questions I ask myself on a regular basis. I have pondered the question many times, particularly after a nastier-than-usual interview with one of these creatures and I cannot remember a time when I was not researching the vicious criminals that stalk their innocent victims-  those who dare to cross that line in the sand. But where did that fascination come from you may ask? Well lets look back and see.

I was born in Bankstown, New South Wales, Australia in the seventies - I am a Scorpio in the horoscopes, an ox in the Chinese year and as stubborn as a mule for the most part and I am the oldest of two daughters. My family moved to a new estate near Campbelltown shortly before my fourth birthday and I have remained in the region almost constantly ever since.

At the time, you could not throw a stone far enough to hit the nearest house in the estate. The street where I spent my earliest years was albeit vacant land when we moved in, shopping centres and schools were planned for the future and McDonald's restaurants were still something only in America.

As the years went by, I remember fondly the annual festival called Fisher's Ghost  with a street parade it's highlight of the two week celebration, it was a coming together of many organised groups in the area, scouts, dance troupes, the local theatre. We all bought our ghosts on a stick and waved to the passing procession. The festival was in honour of a legend that still remains a strong part of our heritage in Western Sydney. The Legend of Frederick Fisher.

Now looking at it at face value it is probably odd to celebrate a murder, but that is what we do in Campbelltown and the story is one that I still love today. It is the most likely reason that I started my 'life of crime' as it were. I can also remember early on in my life, before I started school, listening to family members talk about a guest at a party we were attending. The man was the prime suspect in a still unsolved double murder case. The infamous Bogle and Chandler case remains one of my favourite studies and though it seems more than likely that they were accidentally poisoned rather than murdered, I still remember looking at the man and wondering what he had done. Naturally as inquisitive as I was then, I stored the information for a later time, when I was able to understand the concepts of a possible double homicide.  

I have been writing for most of my life, as soon as I could construct a sentence, I began making up stories. I remember in year 3 at school, at the tender age of 8, writing a screenplay about friends having fun at the beach. In year 4 I wrote a story about a girl and her imaginary pet dragon. It was six pages long. I agonised over it for a week, but was pleased with the final draft. I kept it for many years, but it has been lost over time and several house moves.

Then in my teenage years my interest in writing and crime became a passion.

In 1989 the news in Sydney reported a number of murdered elderly ladies. In the ensuing few years the murder count rose and there was speculation that a serial killer was hunting the grey army of Mosman, on Sydney's affluent North Shore. My mind reeled at the thought, and I began to wonder about what sort of person would do such a thing. An expert on profiling put together a list of traits of such a person. A young man, with a hatred of his mother, mentally unstable. Essentially a madman.

Instead it turned out to be a middle-aged slightly overweight pie salesman, husband and father. John Glover was the Granny Killer. I was hooked on true crime then and there. I began to search out articles and information, my first true crime book was Small Sacrifices by Anne Rule. An excellent pedigree of true crime writing to whet the appetite.

From there we had the Backpacker Killer, who was arrested at his home, only two streets away from my own. Sitting on my sun deck outside my house, I can still see his home. My interest in the subject was now a large part of my life and I began studying at university the hows and whys of crime.

While at University, I discovered the wonders of the internet and began putting together little biographies on serial killers from around the world. My first website was rather funny, with jpeg files of dripping blood and spinning skulls. That soon gave way to more sophisticated and simplistic pages.

In 1997, I married the love of my life, Steve. We had been high school sweethearts and remain soulmates. We were blessed with a son, in 1998 a week after our first anniversary.  Though my new little family was my main focus, I continued to write biographies on serial killers and continued in my studies for a while.

Then in 2004, I decided the information I had was enough for a book. With help from a friend I had met via my website, I went about the task of publishing my first book. River of Blood: Serial Killers and Their Victims is the result of that. The book was released in August 2004.  With ROB, as I affectionately call it, doing well in sales, I continued to work on another book, Loss of Innocence. The book was to be the culmination of my years studying Australian crimes. The book continued to grow, but I was in no hurry to publish it at the time, instead I turned my attention to another favourite, Jack the Ripper. I wrote several articles for various international magazines dedicated to the subject and am honoured by the title of Ripperologist.  

My writing also caught the eye of Dr Paul Wilson, one of Australia's foremost experts on criminology. Having read my book, ROB, he offered me the opportunity to help him write a book on child sex killers, entitled Predators. I gladly accepted the offer, who could pass up such an offer.

At the same time, I was asked to be the Keynote speaker at the Western Sydney Writers' Festival as well as doing guest spots on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, Today Tonight, Australian Story, and numerous radio programs across Australia.  I was also interviewed for the award winning program Crimes that Shook the World for Discovery Channel.

Writing had always been a passion and now it was becoming a full-time career.

In 2006, following the birth of my daughter I was commissioned by ticktock and Bearport Publishing to write a book on the forensics involved in solving the kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne in Sydney in the 1960's. I was given an extremely short deadline, but provided them with the book Lottery Kidnapping soon after. Following from that ticktock commissioned two more books. Terror in the Skies about the Lockerbie terrorist bombing and Million Dollar Art Theft about the theft of two Van Gogh painting in Amsterdam followed.

With four books now published, I returned to two projects I had been neglecting, Loss of Innocence (LOI) and Predators. I worked on these two books for the entirety of 2007, while at the same time shopping for an agent to handle the enquiries that continued to come in regarding my projects.

By the end of 2007, one agent, Rick Raftos liked what he read. I had sent him incomplete copies of both books and he seemed keen to see what he could do with them. I continued to write for Ripperology magazines and plodded along with LOI and Predators, but something just didn't seem right anymore.

I still don't know what, how, or why, but Christmas 2007 was a turning point for me. True crime no longer held my attention. I met each new story with boredom. I no longer wanted to write about real killers. I had stared into the eyes of darkness, peered over the edge in to hell and just shrugged my shoulders. 

With the feeling of restlessness brewing inside of me I threw out fifteen years worth of research, destroying folders and files and boxes upon boxes of information I had used over the years. I no longer wanted to look at it day in and day out. I had no desire to read about new cases, nor look into older ones.

Then my  trusty old computer died, taking with it alot of my old information. The old pc hardrive was retrievable but I decided to go through the old files and deleted most of the old stuff, keeping only what I needed for the last two books. Then my restlessness waned. I purchased a new laptop and with it came a renewed sense of writing about crime, but this time fiction was the genre. Something happened on December 26, 2007. We call it Boxing Day here in Australia, to me now, it is Fiction Day.

While going through the old files on the burned out computer I came across an old short story that I had commenced writing many years ago.  It was called "The Chase". It was meant to be entered into a competition, I don't even recall if I ever did enter it, but it started me off. I sat down in front of my new laptop and started typing. No more scribbled notes, no more checking and cross checking dates, no more listening to recorded interviews, no more court transcripts, no more crime scene photos, just freedom.

Freedom to write what ever I wanted. I had a story in me that just flowed. For the next seven months I feverishly typed away whenever the baby was sleeping, or spare time at night when everyone else slept. Finally on July 23, 2008 I completed my first work of fiction. Naturally, it is a crime fiction, with a serial killer, but it was just liberating to write from the heart, not from my scribbled notes.

I gave the manuscript to my agent Rick Raftos and I look forward to seeing it in print. But in the meantime, I headed back to compete LOI and Predators, having received a publishing deal for both books. The books are now complete and I look forward to seeing them on the shelves in all good book stores. LOI has been renamed, it is now called Innocence Lost: Crimes that Changed Australia and is due for release in May 2009. Predators will be out in July 2009.   

Once that is done, I plan on continuing drafting my second, third, fourth and fifth fiction manuscripts that are all sitting on my flash drive in various stages of completion.

And like all good stories, this one is to be continued...

Amanda