CAROLINE Angel is a local author out to prove how powerful women in their sixties can be and with a prestigious award under her belt, Ms Angel is keen to take everyone along for the ride.
The Australasian Horror Writers Association recognised The Dead Spot as the winning Shadow Award for best horror novel at its Conflux Shadow Awards Ceremony in Canberra earlier this month.
“The suspenseful, psychological story [is] set in a country town in Victoria,” they said.
Ms Angel likes to write a good, intelligent, suspenseful story.
“I’m 63 years old and I don’t hide that. I go to events along with young people, but I’m the one they are lining up to see when the doors open,” she said.
“I believe a reader or a publisher sent a nomination in. I was knocked off my feet when I saw I was in the top five. The book sales were spiking.”
The Dead Spot is not Ms Angel’s first book, her repertoire of horror, science fiction and fantasy spans 10 publications and a decade dedicated to her genre.
“My first book wasn’t published until I was in my fifties,” she said.
“The inspiration for The Dead Spot came about as I was driving with my grandkids.
“I said one day, as we were coming up to a dead spot, imagine if the [internet] dead spot killed everything. They said oh yeah, you have to write a book about this!”
Ms Angel’s passion for writing began at five years of age and she attributes her to vivid, yet scary imagination to growing up in a religious cult, but she has no plans to write an autobiography just yet.
“I feel like that would sound like a pity party,” she said.
“My year seven teacher entered a book I wrote into a competition, and I won a prize, it was just so wonderful and it was the first encouragement I had about my writing.
“Three of my books have dystopian themes, and I’ve written my escape in three of them. It’s been cathartic.
“Seven are supernatural horror. I think real people scare me.
“People are scary; the world could end because of people, because of wars.
“I am anti-devastation, anti- starving people to death and anti-bombing cities.”
The Dead Spot, published in September 2024, has attracted five-star reviews on its Amazon retail platform.
A previous novel, Less, was trolled; its story of terrified characters working together to create a new society or just to survive ruffled some feathers as their leaders were homosexual.
“My publisher sent the review to me, it said. Clearly this writer hates white Christian men,” Ms Angel said.
Ms Angel said she was grateful that Amazon removed the reviews under their hate speech policy, but then the trolling got personal.
“It’s author went back to the Fundamentalist Christian Facebook Group; there’s around 2,500 of them.
“I had horrible reviews attacking me personally and also on all my social media channels. I had to close a couple of them down and reopen them.
“As a writer, you have to be careful not to have a political opinion, I could alienate half of my readers.
“In the Dead Spot, there’s an Indigenous character and you don’t even realise until half way through the book that he’s Indigenous.
“I wanted people to like him for a young fella that has a lot of guts, and he’s not the token Aboriginal boy. It’s only when he talks about his connection to the land that you realise.
Ms Angel is a resilient woman who adores her rural lifestyle complete with horses to ride, and emerging writers to mentor.
Together with a friend they co-founded a Facebook community six years ago to unite and inspire local writers.
“So many people are emerging writers,” she said.
“I say do it, you want to write, just do it. I motivate people to work on their elevator pitch, blurbs, application letters and they have to read it out at our next gathering.”
The group meets monthly for friendship, workshops and to hear from special guest speakers. To learn more search for the Mitchell Writers Group.
Ms Angel has generously given the Review two copies of The Dead Spot for our readers to win.
To enter the draw, send an email to sales@ncreview.com.au by close of business on Friday, October 24 and the lucky winners will be announced in the following edition
