Nice to have you here, at these exact coordinates. I’m Dime, and this is the place where you can find out all my secrets.
(Boringly, I don’t have any secrets. Sigh. So lame.)
But if I did have secrets, they would be here. And there is a bunch of other stuff–book stuff, which is my favourtite kind of stuff. Enjoy!
My debut novel, Crime Writer, was shortlisted for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, the Davitt Award for Best Crime Books by Australian Women and the People’s Choice Award Queensland Book of the Year Award.
It’s sequels Two Timer and Third Person are out now, and Fourth Horseman is coming soon.
“Gripping”—Kirkus
“Such an original and absorbing novel…A wonderful debut; an absolute pleasure to read.”
—City Hub Sydney
“I devoured this story in two days.”
—Others Magazine
“A breathlessly fast paced book…terrifically written…An excellent read.”—Sydney Arts Guide
“Fresh and original…one of my favourite new authors.”
—The Record
“Equal parts detective thriller and meta giggle-fest…impeccably literary; beautifully written and self-aware. I’ve never read anything like it. This is an extraordinarily good and challenging debut.”—3D Radio
“A refreshing change that kept me guessing from start to finish.”
—1079Life Radio
“…will explode away the cobwebs of other formulaic offerings and detonate a desire to play around in their world with a second reading.”—Reviews By Judith
“I couldn’t put it down!”
—98Five FM
“This book will leave you on the edge of your seat until the very end!”—Roses and Reviews, Instagram Reviewer
“Truth be told I have never read a book like this one or a crime/suspense book in my life. Yet this book it’s also a lot more than just crime and suspense, it’s also funny and heart warming.”—Likes&Candles, Instagram Reviewer
“WOW. Sometimes debut novels can just stun you and this is one of them!…Pure genius!”
—Bless Their Hearts Mom
“This was a five-star read, I couldn’t put it down!”
—Jo Linsdell, Youtube Reviewer
In real life she’s meant to be planning a wedding to adorable billionaire Daniel Bradley, but Evie is seriously snarled in the sixteenth book of her successful crime series. In fact, her protagonists are becoming almost impossible to wrangle: one is volatile after a messy divorce, and the other has that heated look in his blue eyes again. They’re both sick of being written. And frankly they’re getting a little…physical. Evie is beginning to wonder if she’s ever going to finish Book Sixteen and get them back into fiction where they belong.
But when a disturbingly familiar homicide surfaces in the city papers, it seems as if other, darker characters might have crossed the fiction-frontier too. In which case, Evie is in a lot of real-life trouble.
If she is going to survive it, Evie must face her own worst fears, and learn that real love can be the best way of writing her own story.
But can she change the ending?
Full of high-octane adventure and dry humour, this novel is perfect for readers who love their crime stories set in a world that bends the rules.
If Stephanie Plum was a crime author, or Jack Reacher was a romcom…
This book has:
⭐️ Magical Realism – the FMC can see her characters while she’s writing them
⭐️ Good guys + Bad guys – NYPD Detectives + Serial Killer
⭐️ Friends to Lovers
⭐️ Slow Burn – little to no spice
⭐️ HEA
She isn’t planning to write anything fictional for a while, especially not the screenplay she just started. That’s because her two most beloved characters, NYPD detectives Jay Ryan and Carolyn Harding are part of reality now, and her closest friends.
And she wants to keep it that way.
But when a murder victim is found in Central Park, Evie realises she’s made a mistake somehow, and unleashed her own brand of fictional havoc on the real world-again. Not to mention that there’s a new character on the loose: handsome mystery man Chris Murray, a brilliant thief with an equally brilliant smile and possibly a heart of gold. Is he involved in the murder?
To chase down answers from Murray, Evie must dive headfirst (literally) into his story, which turns out to be a lot more dangerous than she anticipated. There’s a good chance she might not make it out alive.
Will she be able to redeem her mistakes, or will she end up losing everything that matters most?
Not only has she become the official nemesis of a bona fide supervillain, but she has a broken heart, and broken hearts are dumb. Broken hearts put a twist on the way a person sees reality, and that can be dangerous.
The good news is, Evie still has some friends in the real world, not to mention her two favourite people, Detective Carolyn Harding and international thief Will Fraser. That makes five people on Team Evie, plus a talking dog (don’t ask).
Weirdly, Carolyn also wants to bring along some guy with amnesia they found in a hospital in Paris. Why, Evie has no idea. Sure, he’s handsome, but handsomeness doesn’t exactly save lives.
And saving lives is pretty necessary, these days. Will Evie manage to track down the mastermind behind the Luma Virus, and his creepy cult, to explode his hideous plans? Or will her skewed perspective be her undoing?
Dime Sheppard is a writer and former barista, waitress, Spanish teacher, vineyard labourer, bilingual interpreter, marketing manager and production assistant (among other things). She has lived in Scotland, New Zealand and Argentina, has a degree in English literature, and also spent seven years working for an NGO, mostly in South America. This means she has diverse skills: she can string a sentence together, and she can also pee in the desert while fending off a baby goat, cook a delicious meal for thirty people with little more than potatoes and oregano, dig a bogged truck out of metre-deep mud with a broken teacup, and shower in cold water in the dead of winter without a murmur.*
She currently resides in Australia, the land of perfect beach days. She loves reading, swimming, and action movies. She’s pretty convinced she will one day achieve a press handstand, and believes in the Curly Girl Method. She loves to laugh and never squashes spiders unless they’re venomous.
* Okay fine. There was murmuring.
COME FIND ME!
TikTok – @dimesheppard
Instagram – @dimesheppard
YouTube – @dimesheppard
Australian Book Lovers Ep#66
Sunday Spotlight 99.9Live FM
Talking Aussie Books
If you want to get in touch, feel free to shoot me a message on social media.
