Healesville author Sandra Thom-Jones has found herself in the spotlight again at the Sisters in Crime’s 32nd Scarlet Stiletto Awards.
Having already had a category win and third overall placing at the same awards in 2023, Ms Thom-Jones went one better and claimed first prize this year.
Ms Thom-Jones said she was absolutely delighted and shocked.
“I totally didn’t expect it… there were 31 shortlisted writers, so I knew I was shortlisted and I was sitting there as they announced all the category prizes,” she said.
“You clap for everyone and then they were going through, and ‘the third prize goes to… second prize goes to… ‘ and then they got to the first prize and I was sat there thinking ‘That’s my name’.
“I didn’t think I’d ever win first prize, because that’s just the pinnacle, it was pretty amazing.”
In 2023, won the Sun Bookshop and Fremantle Press, which is overall third place in the competition, for her story ‘The Safehouse’.
Winning the first prize this year for her short story ‘Der Hölle Rache’, Ms Thom-Jones said it was inspired by a story on social media she followed about a really terrible case of animal cruelty.
“I was feeling really emotional about it, but really powerless and obviously, in fiction, you can do anything,” she said.
“So I was sitting there imagining what it would be like in a world where there was no rules, and I had no morals, and I could actually do something to avenge these animals who were so badly treated and that was my inspiration for the story.
“It’s a story about someone who takes the power back and tries to change the world so that people don’t think it’s okay to hurt animals.”
As an autistic person herself, Ms Thom-Jones aims to represent autistic people in fiction often, having won the Liz Navratil Award in 2023 for the Best Disabled Protagonist for the character ‘Professor Alex Macario’ in her story ‘The Motif in the Motives’.
Ms Thom-Jones said for anyone who might read the story to expect that the story is going to bring you in and it’s going to surprise you by the fact that you’re actually going to feel a fair bit of empathy with the villain.
“Expect not to see it as quite so black and white about who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy in this story, and maybe you’ll be on the side of the villain a little bit,” she said.
“Hopefully, just to enjoy the story as well, there’s a little bit of fun in there as well as the moral behind it… personally, all of my stories start from observing something and thinking, you know, how would I react in that situation or what would my character do in that situation,
“Typically I’m inspired by something I see or something I read about, and all of my stories tend to include an autistic character in some way, whether that’s as the main character or one of the minor characters, because as an autistic writer, that’s really important to me to see autistic people represented in fiction.”
The Scarlet Stiletto Awards is a national competition for Australian women writers with crime and mystery short stories featuring a strong female protagonist, with 231 entries submitted this year.
Ms Thom-Jones said she’s not the judge, so can’t say for sure, but thinks the characterisation, plot and level of detail in the story might have made it stand out.
“I managed to find an ex-police officer who was willing to have a look at my police procedural aspects and make sure they were right,” she said.
“I talked to my dad, who knows a lot about guns as he’s a gun collector, I know nothing about guns, I find guns quite terrifying but I talked to my dad about bullets and guns and reloading bullets.
“I paid a lot of attention to making sure that I had every tiny little detail of the story right, so I think that was important.”
Ms Thom-Jones receives $2000 and the coveted ‘Scarlett Stiletto’ trophy, which is in the shape and colour of the footwear of its name.
Ms Thom-Jones said she’s always writing short stories but she’s currently also working on a novel which she’s really excited about.
“I’m hoping I can find a publisher for it, because I think it’s a fun novel, I won’t give too much away, but my two main characters in my novel are an autistic person and a cat, and I think it’s kind of quirky,” she said.
“I really want to encourage anyone who is autistic or neurodivergent in any way to follow their passion for writing, many of us are really creative and imaginative and I think this is an example of where our slightly different ways of thinking can actually really resonate with other people.
“Sometimes we’re told that we can’t write, we can’t be creative, but we really can, we can really enjoy it and other people can really enjoy reading what we write so I really encourage all those autistic people out there to pick up your pens or your keyboards and keep writing.”
