Candice Fox admits she was reading James Patterson's books at an inappropriately young age so when she had the chance to meet the bestselling author at a cocktail party she jumped at the chance.
"I thought what have I got to lose," says Fox. "He was being introduced to all the important people and I just thought I'm going over there.
"I pushed my way in and went excuse me and started chatting to him.
"I got locked in this celebrity moment, had the perfect three or four minutes with him and then I ran away before I could say anything stupid."
Far from it; the initial conversation sparked a collaboration, calls were made by publishers, Patterson read Fox's books on the plane on the way home, and now the pair are about to publish their second book, Never Never.
The author of a handful of award-winning crime novels, both Hades (2014) and Eden (2015) won Ned Kelly Awards, Fox didn't think she had any chance of being picked up to work with Patterson.
"I knew he was in Australia to promote his crime collaboration with Kathryn Fox and his young adult series with Ed Chatterton but I was a newbie on the scene, I thought it would never happen," she says.
But once their publishers got talking the whole process fell into place. They swapped emails, developing ideas back and forth, and Never Never was completed in just a few months.
"We started with a very basic premise," says Fox. "James wanted a strong female protagonist, not necessarily a Sydney or a city setting."
One of Fox's best characters is Eden Archer, who appears in Eden and Fall. A policewoman who moonlights as a serial killer, there's a touch of the Dexter about her. In Black & Blue, her first collaboration with Patterson, as part of the BookShots series, little pocket-size thrillers which were less than 150 pages, they introduced Harriet Blue.
In Never Never Harriet's on the job in the West Australian outback, tracking down three missing people while working out who she can trust.
"I used to be very intimidated by writing female characters," says Fox, "In my early books, I had four manuscripts before Hades which were all rejected by everyone, the female characters were either sex kittens or total bimbos or very masculine."
Candice Fox will be in conversation with local librarian and crime writer L.J.M. Owen at Muse on Sunday, August 21, from 3-4pm. $10 includes a glass of wine/soft drink. musecanberra.com.au
