Lesbian crime writer Claire McNab, a 'transplanted Aussie' now living in LA, is on a flying visit to Sydney to meet her fans, Katrina Fox reports.

"LA is the funniest place - it's everything you hear it is but multiplied a few times," Claire McNab laughs. The Australian writer, best known for her lesbian mystery novels, moved to somewhere "close to Beverly Hills" 12 years ago after she fell in love with an American woman and now teaches writing at UCLA.

The author of more than 50 published titles, including children's and self-help books, plays and text books, the former English teacher had her first mystery novel Lessons in Murder published in 1988, featuring lesbian detective inspector Carol Ashton who has since attained celebrity status among lesbian crime fiction fans, with the 16th in the series appearing in 2004. Two other series involving lesbian protagonists are also well underway - Australian Security & Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) agent Denise Cleever's undercover exploits began in 1999, and McNab's newest character, Australian private investigator Kylie Kendall who lives in LA, introduces humour into her writing "She's from the outback and she's a sort of Crocodile Dundee in female form," McNab says. "The fish out of water thing is very funny and the series is written as a comedy. I don't have to send LA up, I just say it as it is and it's hilarious."

Each of McNab's characters is drawn from people she's known in her life, and she admires different qualities in each of them. "I've been friends with Carol since she leapt into existence in the late 80s," she says. "She's the ultimate cool professional and I admire her attitude towards her job. Denise can kill people with her bare hands and I've always admired that. She is something I am too - she's extremely patriotic and the reason she works with ASIO and works underground is because she says 'it's not fashionable but I love my country and want to protect it' and I feel the same way. Kylie has my sense of humour."

So, which one of them would she date? "Oh Carol, absolutely!" McNab laughs. "When I created her she wasn't the main character in the book I wrote, but the moment she walked onto the stage and started talking, I thought 'what a woman'. I've always had a great weakness for blondes."

While she enjoys writing across several genres, McNab says she particularly enjoys writing for her own audience. "I am very proud to be a lesbian writer and to be identified with that," she says. "One of these days I'm going to try writing about a transsexual because I've met so many of them and I think it's so fascinating to change from one gender to another."

She also loves writing humour and we can expect to see more of this, both in the Kylie Kendall series (the fourth, The Dingo Dilemma, will be published December 2006) and a new comedy romance called Writing My Love, which Australian readers will probably see next year. "It's about a rather bad lesbian romance writer and she's fallen in love with her editor and decides to use the same initials as the editor in the book she's writing so subliminally it will seep into the editor's mind that this is the person she should be falling in love with and off she goes," McNab explains.

For those new to McNab's work, each crime fiction book stands alone and can be read out of series, and die-hard fans can rest assured that there's plenty more to come. "I'm not going anywhere," she says.

www.clairemcnab.com

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