The unusual crime writing life of Tara Moss

Longtime readers of the blog will know that I have a somewhat bizarre fascination with Australian bestselling crime writer Tara Moss. She’s a model! You can download semi-hot pictures off of her website! She has her very own TV show! And her books are, like, fem-jep on acid or something! Anyway, forgive the somewhat breathless tone but it seems to have come back after reading Alexandra Gill’s profile of the author in today’s Globe and Mail, where Moss – in Canada to promote book #2 in the Makkede Vanderwal series, SPLIT – reveals the one special aid she has in writing her books:

[Moss] has an Australian Wildlife licence for her two non-venomous pet

snakes. Gomez, a 2.3-metre Diamond python, and Thing, a baby Black

Headed python, apparently spend a lot of time with Moss at her desk.

“They’re the perfect writing companions,” Moss says. “They kind of

slink around you and hug you and hang out. I highly recommend them.

They’re even better than a cat. They never scratch.”

Gomez, unfortunately, has a mischievous tendency of knocking books

off her shelves. “It’s hysterical,” she says. “He’ll turn around and

look at me, like he knows what he’s done, and then quietly go back into

the bookcase. They have real personalities. They just mask it better

because they don’t have many expressions.

“Seriously,” she continues. “Gomez is very shy. If I pick him up

when someone is around, he’ll stick his head in my armpit and try to

hide. I find it very ironic, because the other person in the room is

usually a lot more fearful of him. I suppose I like that about snakes.

They’re very misunderstood.”

Misunderstood. Yeah….