Frequently Asked Questions

All members are welcome to submit their own reviews of books read  to Aust Crime Fiction as part of their blog page or by clicking on CREATE CONTENT on the left when signed in.

If you represent a publisher or literary agent, or perhaps have written a book yourself and wish it to be reviewed by one of the Aust Crime reviewers please contact us via the "Get in Touch" button or e-mail Andrea Thompson directly at the below:

andrea@austcrimefiction.org

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Absolutely (if you have registered and logged in).  Go to the relevant location page (Australia / New Zealand / Exotic etc) and on that page you'll see at the bottom an option to create a child page - click on that and you'll get a blank screen that you can use to add the author's details in. 

Each page has some categories or tags that you can select - make sure that you select the name of the author (this means that when somebody selects that author's "tag" your page will be included).  All the other tags are optional.

Once you submit the page it will automatically be incorporated under the author listing.

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There are a few sorts of updates you can get.

Newsletter

If you just want to hear on an irregular basis - you might want to sign up for the Newsletter.  We won't be sending out a very frequent newsletter, but we will send one out to let you know of announcements, updates and general information about Crime Fiction in our area.

Notifications

When you are logged in you can go into My account  > My notification settings and turn on notifications to receive a note via email of new content that has been added to the site itself.  These emails go out on a daily basis IF something has been added.

You can stipulate how much of the content is sent to you in the email.

Subscriptions

If there is a subject that really interests you anywhere on the site you can "subscribe" to that subject matter.   At the bottom of most posts there is an option to "Subscribe post".  Click on that and you'll be automatically advised of any updates to the post.

You can see what you have subscribed to via My Account > Subscriptions (or the My Subscriptions list in the main menu).  You can unsubscribe from subjects using that link OR once you have subscribed to a post - the link "Subscribe post" will change to "Unsubscribe post" - click on that to remove the notifications / subscriptions.

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You betcha 

If you click on any of the links at the top of the site (Australian Writers / New Zealand Writers etc) you'll find there is an online chat room on each of those pages ready for you to join a discussion.

The only restriction is that you must be logged in to be able to participate.

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Indeed we do, and we'll probably continue to tweak this on an ongoing basis - I'll post a note to the forums to let you know when that happens.

We're very pleased if anybody wants to comment on books, authors or other entries on our site, but we are aware that not everybody understands the responsibilities that come concomittant with that privilege.

We will actively moderate / check posts, comments and other material before they are allowed to remain on the site to ensure that nothing defamatory, rude, abusive or just plain nasty is allowed to be carried by this site.

By all means, feel free to criticise books or to discuss your likes and dislikes, but remember, we are discussing the BOOKS not the individual authors and we'll take a very dim view of anyone trying to use this site as a way to have a go at somebody and/or carry through any personal attacks.

We're sure that none of this applies to the majority of the reader and writer community, but as we all know, it takes one childish idiot to behave badly to potentially ruin things for others, and believe me, we've got zero tolerance when it comes to childish / trolling or unpleasant behaviour.

We are also aware that sometimes people can do / say things that gets up others noses.  If you feel aggrieved by anything on this site then please feel free to use the relevant report abuse links OR the feedback link to inform us of the offending article and we'll take action from there.  Please resist the urge to have a go in public, it's not your role and will be counter-productive for a sense of community on this site.  You  will undoubtedly either be seen as somebody unwise enough to  exceed your authority, or as a troll or flamebaiter.  Either way, trolls and flame-baiters are not welcome here, nor are self-appointed net-police.

Off Topic (OT) posts / comments / forum entries etc are welcome within reason.  We are more than happy if you take the urge to share something exciting in your life, after all we're all friends here, but obviously we'd ask that you use your common sense and practice some self-restraint  - we've set up a special forum to allow you to chatter away about anything that's not strictly to do with crime fiction for you to use for that purpose.  We're really sorry that we even have to mention this, but whilst the majority of our community will undoubtedly understand the nature of "community" there is always somebody willing to leap up and set the site rules for us.

We'd also just note that we currently allow private messages to be sent via users on the site - if you feel that you're receiving any inappropriate material via that medium please let the admin know about it as we don't see the content of Private Messages and appropriate action will be taken against the sender. 

Authors - we'd love to hear from you about what you are doing, what books are upcoming, how your books are being reviewed.  Please confine these sorts of postings to the appropriate forum and/or your personal blog pages here where everybody will still see them.  Please do not send these sorts of announcements via email and/or private messages to users on this site.

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It can be terribly confusing around here - but there is a simple way you can pick up everything on the site that relates to a particular author, or a subject, or a publisher, or a location... or lots of other "categories".

As we go through and reformat all the pages from the old site you'll see at the top right hand side of page entries there are a set of links, for example:

Australia <Author Name> <Award> <Location> <Year>

These are categories that are used to tag articles.  Clicking on any of these categories will automatically list all the entries on this site that have the same tag or category. 

So, for example, you use the link at the top to go to Australian Writers > then you select the page that shows the bio details of your favourite author.  Click on the name of the author in the tags on the top right and we'll automatically show you everything that relates to that author - that could include forum or discussion entries, any book reviews that have gone onto the site, any polls etc

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"Technically" it's for everyone, but ultimately I guess we'd like to push an environment that's welcoming for readers.  Writers are welcome to participate in discussions about reading - what they read - comparisons of books etc, but realistically - if you're looking for a place to talk about writing - this isn't it.

Readers (whether or not they are also writers) are particularly welcome.  Readers opinions about the books they are reading are cherished... as are Readers comments, discussions, warnings, points of disagreement with a book and anything else to do with Mystery / Crime fiction.

Writers theselves are welcome.  BSP is welcome if you use your own blog and/or the forum that's been set up for the purpose and use some sensitivity towards your fellow site cohabitants.  AustCrimeFiction is to promote Crime fiction (especially the local product) - and that means everybody's.   Not just the authors that market... ruthlessly, relentlessly.  Of course, most of our favourite writers are nothing if not dignified, elegant, people who practice the heights of good manners and sensitivity.      After all, a mildly irritated reader is not a promoting reader!

In other words, we're a conglomeration for everyone interested in crime fiction.

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Okay, well this is a contentious one (in some people's minds) but we're not precious about so called naughty words around here.

This is, after all, a site that talks about crime fiction.  Crime fiction has, as a general rule, somebody getting killed.   Sometimes they mention general maiming, mayhem, torture, abuse - basically all sorts of goings on.

In large numbers these books mention some "naughty words".  (Okay so there are some that don't but let's face it they are in the minority).  Either way - don't care - rude words in context are fine around here as far as we're concerned.  If you feel the urge to swoon when you type something of that nature then by all means obfuscate, but then, as Dorothy Parker once famously quipped when meeting Norman Mailer, "Oh you're the young man who can't spell fuck".

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This site is optimised for Firefox and Mozilla Browsers.

Some people are reporting odds and ends of problems with older versions of Internet Explorer.  Unfortunately we've had a look at layout issues to do with later versions of IE but we won't be addressing everything that doesn't work under IE ... because .... well this site is developed using Open Source Software, Firefox and Mozilla are two Open Source Browsers and we're not going to get too sad over a closed source environment that just expects everybody else to get around it's lack of standard support.

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There is an option at the bottom of many of the postings on this site that allows you to subscribe.

If you choose to subscribe then you will automaticalliy receive an email if there are any updates to the post, including updates, comments etc.

You can also see the posts you are subscribed to via the menu at the left hand side of the site.

 Once you've subscribed you can always unsubscribe as the link will have changed to "unsubscribe".

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This site has been established by me (Karen C) with assistance from a bunch of friends made when belonging to a range of different online crime fiction groups.

We did this because finding detailed information about Australasian Crime Fiction writers, their books, pseudonyms, releases, reviews and appearances can sometimes be a little tricky.

A lot of the information that we are incorporating on this site comes from bits of pieces of notes and locations littered around the place. Please let us know of anything that we're missing via the Feedback link at the top of the site.

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There are going to be an increasing number of features on this site that will be available for registered users (when you are logged in).

RECENT POSTS:  To see a quick list of  Recent Posts  when you are logged in, you can use the "recent posts" link at the top, right hand side to see the list quickly.  If you are registered you can turn on notifications and receive a daily email with a summary of the updates.

BLOGS:   All registered users automatically have their own blog - just go to Create Content > Blog entry to start your own blog.  Feel free to use your blog to raise any topics on any form of crime fiction you're interested in.

SUBMISSION OF CONTENT:  Only registered users can submit book pages, forum posts and other entries (a lot of these will need to be "moderated" or checked before we will publish them - sorry but the majority of Internet users behave like grown ups - there's just a small percentage of prats out there and we like to be careful that nobody get's offended around here)

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Ummm, you're here a tad earlier than we originally anticipated so you're seeing the text as we convert it over from the old database.  We're paddling as hard as we can :)

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At the moment we purposely have not imported the user records from the old site.  This is because we're a bit twitchy about the privacy implications of moving your email addresses from one package to another without getting your explicit permission.

If you wouldn't mind registering here we'd appreciate it - that way we all now that you're here because you want to be.

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Well, to be honest, staying with a Wiki would make maintaining the content much easier for us, but we've been asked a lot recently for more interactivity - the chance to post comments, provide reviews of books, discuss elements of books, answer some quizzes, build a bit more of an Australasian fan site - so we've been working hard to provide that for you.

Please feel free to leap in and play, you are very welcome! The only thing we'd ask is that you keep in mind that this is a public forum and that we don't have any control over who will be seeing the items that you post, so if you could keep that in mind we'd appreciate it.

We also have no problem at all with a bit of author Self Promotion - particularly as each user now has their own free to use blog - but more on that on a separate FAQ.

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