The Black Hand, vol.56
Hello! Good grief, we’re already halfway through March – how did this happen? I guess it happened while I was distracted, but we’re in it now.
I’ve been crunching like crazy on the new book, so I’ve been a total hermit, and life has been whipping by…The closest analogy I can think of is that book crunch time is kind of like being a passenger on a train; you can look out the windows to see what’s going on out there, but you’re enclosed in this bubble, and you’re moving too fast to see outside details.
But finally, the train has arrived at the station. I’ll talk about it a little more further down.
Apart from being a bit stiff and un-exercised from sitting in my writing chair all day, my health is good. I hope you’re doing okay wherever you are!
Black Dahlia and Zodiac
Okay, this is a really OLD couple of cases we’re talking about today.
For those of you who have only heard the name ‘Black Dahlia’ without any awareness of the background, here’s the bare bones (so to speak) of that case: On January 15, 1947, the body of an American woman named Elizabeth Short, who came to be known as ‘the Black Dahlia’, was found in Leimert Park in LA, California. Short’s body was gruesomely mutilated and posed at the discovery location. The LAPD conducted an extensive investigation which produced 150 suspects, but never brought a conviction.
The nature of Short’s mutilation – she was transected neatly through the lumbar vertebra, in addition to other horrible things – suggested she’d been killed by someone familiar with medical procedures. Her murder became a media circus and a cultural flashpoint, and is considered one of the most famous unsolved murders of the postwar period, grabbing national attention.
Over the years, there have been a number of credible claims about individuals who may have committed Short’s murder – for instance, the son of Dr. George Hodel claimed (with a significant amount of evidence) that his father was the perpetrator. Also accused after the fact were the folk singer Woody Guthrie, mobster Bugsy Seigel, and filmmaker Orson Welles. There also seemed to be potential links to the Cleveland Torso murders (originally investigated by Eliot Ness), the Lipstick Murders, and the Lone Woman murders.
Basically, the case is a mess – and at last count, at least 500 people have come forward to confess to the crime. Some of them weren’t even born when Short was killed.
And now, according to recent news articles, a guy named Alex Baber has given a number of news interviews claiming that he has solved Short’s murder using LLMs – and that he’s found links between the Short case and the longstanding mystery of the Zodiac killer.
Zodiac is another confusing old case – kicked off by the murders by an unidentified serial killer of five people in the San Francisco Bay area in 1968-69. The fascination with Zodiac is that he sent a series of coded messages to newspapers at the time of the murders. Only two of the four messages have ever been decrypted, but the ones that were solved seemed to indicate that the killer had up to 37 victims throughout California. Again, the Zodiac case was a media circus and community panic at the time, and the fascination with the unsolved case has never really dissipated (if you’ve ever watched David Fincher’s film ZODIAC you’ll understand why).
Both Zodiac and Black Dahlia have been the subject of intense scrutiny over the ensuing years – and there’s an entire panoply of amateur sleuths who have devoted themselves to solving these cases.
Many of the current crop of amateur detectives have cast doubt on the new claims by Baber – but honestly, who can say? These are the cases that are so obfuscated by history and conflicting reports (and in some instances, police mismanagement) that they’ve become as inscrutable as the Bermuda Triangle. They’re often the entry point for a lot of people interested in true crime. While they sound plausible, I personally don’t believe Baber’s claims, but I also don’t think the real answer will ever come to light.
I do feel sorry for the families of the victims, though, who seem to endure a new round of public scrutiny and law enforcement interest every time one of these ‘headline’ cycles rolls around. The people who committed these murders are probably lost to time. It seems cruel to keep digging up the victims to keep the mythology alive.
Now – onward…
NO ONE IS SAFE – this is the official release month
I know! It feels quite weird, because the book basically launched in February with its inclusion in the First Reads program…But I kind of don’t mind having a second ‘official’ launch month?
So far, NO ONE IS SAFE has been a bestseller in the ‘Serial Killer’ and ‘Murder’ categories on Amazon, which is very gratifying – and yes, I am 100% absolutely getting a t-shirt made up that says “No#1 IN SERIAL KILLERS”, literally no one can stop me from doing this:
NO ONE IS SAFE currently has over 1900 ratings on GoodReads and over 2000 ratings on Amazon (with an average rating of 4.3??? WILD). If you’ve read the book and enjoyed it, please feel free to review it somewhere, or let someone else know that it’s a good time!
GoodReads giveaway
If you’re in the US, and you missed out on a free/cheap copy of NO ONE IS SAFE during February, there’s still a GoodReads giveaway happening, with 100 digital copies to hand out.
Add your name and good luck!
Submit your questions about NO ONE IS SAFE!
We had a very small (but very lovely!) celebration in Bendigo to mark the official launch of NO ONE IS SAFE – it was organised by Cecile Shanahan from the Story Society, and I got to chat with Amy Doak, who is a delightful friend (and a kickarse author in her own right), so overall, a great time!
But I appreciate that this is rather low key, as events go, and also Bendigo is far away from anywhere else. So I was thinking…would you like to ask me any questions about NO ONE IS SAFE?
If you have any queries or questions about the series, drop them in comments or drop me a line, and in the next edition I’ll give spoiler-free answers! I’m also doing a series of character dives over on my Instagram, so pop on over there if you’ve got a burning question you’d like answered…
Events
I’m appearing on @eves_readsTiktok channel this Friday (18 March 2026) for a Tiktok Live interview, if you’d like to check it out…
I’m also going to be delivering a weekend in-person workshop on self-publishing in Brisbane in June, you can find tickets here…
And also in June, it’s my favourite time of the year – ComicCon time! If you’re in Melbourne and you’d like to come along for a weekend of cosplay, fandom, and community, you can sign up here. I’ll be at my usual table with paperback copies of NO ONE IS SAFE to sign 😊
A little rant about Writers Victoria
This section is mainly for the Australians:
Last week, I taught an online workshop about Writing a Series, hosted by the lovely Queensland Writers Centre, and in June I’m giving another workshop for them, up in Brisbane (see Events, above). And I’m a Melbourne girl! Funny, huh? Well, if you’re confused about why I’m working for QWC instead of my local writers organisation, Writers Victoria, you might want to catch up with the news here – tl;dr Writers Vic has been defunded by the government of my state.
Yeah, I know – it seems like whenever there’s a deficit in the budget, arts and cultural organisations get it in the neck. Tale as old as time, etc.
I think it’s good to remind people that the infrastructure we all need and use is basically paid for by artists and those who require social services, who experience a ‘necessary cut’ in their funding when state infrastructure projects exceed their budgets. Seems like we’ve got plenty of cash to subsidise fossil fuels, and blowouts in construction projects, but when it comes to the arts (or education, or health), then…sorry!
This time around, artists are paying for the construction of a new railway hub and series of train stations in Melbourne. Which is great! I mean, I want a Melbourne Airport Railway loop as much as anybody! But now my state is the only one in the country without a funded writers’ body.
If you’re wondering how important a writer’s body is, then let me tell you:
I workshopped my debut novel’s manuscript at Writers Victoria. I met my acquiring editor at Writers Victoria. I have been employed to give workshops for many years by Writers Victoria. Writers Victoria has played a significant part in my professional career – as a place where I made the connections that have allowed me to have a career. And they have supported me during the lean years, when they gave me paid work that saw me through. WV sits at the centre of a web of writers and authors who live and work in Melbourne, which has the largest number of writers and artists per capita than anywhere else in the country.
Melbourne is supposed to be a UNESCO City of Literature…and now it’s got no writer’s organisation? Make it make sense!
It feels churlish to be raising this issue when bombs are going off and political systems are collapsing in other parts of the world. But the arts matter. It’s not enough to claim that we live in a community, if the people within that community have no support for self-expression. To quote Emily St. John Mandel (who was quoting Star Trek), “Survival is insufficient” – and the creation of culture and artistic work is the creation of the story we tell ourselves about the kind of society and community we want to live in.
If you want to support Writers Victoria during this time, please sign the petition appealing for funding restoration. Apart from that, you can contact your local representatives. And hey, if you have a spare hundred thousand dollars or so, maybe throw some WV’s way?
Anyway – onward…
Finishing NO ONE TO FEAR – did I make my deadline?
Yes!! I made my deadline and finished the book!!
It was a pretty mammoth effort. I came back from India in January with 100 pages of what I anticipated would be a 300 page book, so I definitely had some ground to cover. Then the final 2 weeks of January were a bit nightmare-ish, with summer bushfire alerts and recovering from jetlag, as well as my partner getting sick.
By the time February arrived, I knew I was in trouble. Then my partner recovered, and a friend offered to let me stay at her house while she was travelling overseas – and my partner said the magical words, “Stay as long as you need.”
Friends, I wrote nearly 100 pages in 2 weeks.
Then I came home, where life is a bit more chaotic – but I screwed myself into my chair and bashed out the final 120 pages (yes, the book went a little longer than I anticipated), finally writing The End at 2.30AM last Wednesday morning.
So the book is done and has been submitted to my publisher. I’ll keep you updated about next steps and info about it as things move along. Right now, I’m just enjoying a few weeks of freedom before my edits return!
DUNE 3 trailer just dropped
I don’t know your personal feelings about Dune? Maybe you hate it…that’s fine! For me, it was one of the first ‘adult’ books I read as a kid, and it genuinely expanded my mind. Although a lot of people who kind of stopped after the first book might be under a misapprehension about the role of Paul Atreides…
Also I still think this pic below is the best meme anyone has yet created about the DUNE movies, but you may not get it if you’re not an Australian (soz):
The new trailer just dropped, and yes, I think this is probably already my most anticipated movie of the year (followed VERY closely by Tom Holland reappearing AT LAST as Spiderman in BRAND NEW DAY, and yes that link has the real trailer, LFGGG) – anyway! Enjoy!
Serial Killer Games
Look, I haven’t read this book in its entirety yet, but the writing is great, so it may interest some of you.
If you’ve ever wanted to read a romcom mashup of The Hating Game by Sally Thorne and Dexter, then maybe this one’s for you.
March giveaway
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed over the last month! I’m delighted to have you aboard – and you may not be aware, but I pluck a random name out of the hat each month for a giveaway, so…
Steven Gregory, congrats! You’ve just won a None Shall Sleep tote 😊 I’ll drop you a line to work out a postal contact so I can get your parcel headed your way.
If you’re new to The Black Hand, or just passing through, feel free to subscribe if you’d like to participate in similar silliness each month!
Phew – friends, it has been a bit of a mega month. I’m real tired. I’m gonna hit up my sister next week to see if she and I can go have a spa day or something, because I really need to rejuvenate a little before I go back into the word mines.
But hey! I am dead-set stoked that NO ONE IS SAFE has finally made it out into the world! I’m so thrilled that you all finally get to read it!
Between now and next month, I hope all is well in your world, and that good things come your way – especially good books. Take care, keep reading, and see you ‘round 😊
xxEllie