Anne Buist is the Chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, based at Austin Health, and has over 35 years clinical and research experience in perinatal psychiatry including being director of mother-baby units for much of this time. She continues to work with Protective Services and the legal system in cases of abuse, kidnapping, infanticide and murder.
Medea’s Curse is her first psychological thriller, was published in UK in 2016. The second in the Natalie King series, Dangerous to Know was released on April 2016 in Australia and March 2017 in UK. Third in the series, This I Would Kill For was released in Australia February 1st 2018 and UK in July. The fourth in the series, Locked Ward was out in January 2023, and a stand alone psychological thriller The Long Shadow was published in May 2020.
Two Steps Forward, (a story of starting again) co-written with Graeme Simsion was released October 2nd 2017 in Australia, and in Canada, UK, USA, Holland and Israel in 2018 (Estonia, Germany in 2019) and the sequel is Two Steps Onward, is set on the Chemin d’Assise and the Via Francigena, between Cluny and Rome.
The current project, The Menzies Mental Health series is a set in a mental health facility, co-authored with Graeme Simsion and is published by Hachette. The Glass House is set in an acute psychiatry ward, The Oasis in a community mental health clinic and The General Hospital in consultation liaison psychiatry.
Photo: Lachlan Woods. Makeup: Sylvia Ura
Contact: anneebuist@gmail.com
Also on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/annebuistauthor
Why fiction?
I have published widely in my field of perinatal psychiatry, including a text book (now out of print) and over 100 journal articles. As Director of the beyondblue postnatal depression program I was passionate (and remain so) about early screening to ensure women had an opportunity to get help early so that their transition to motherhood is as smooth and pleasurable as possible, and that the outcomes for them and their children are optimised. Part of this program also attempted to combat the issue of stigma: a vast majority of women with PND want and love their child and endeavour to be the best parent they can be. Often their high expectations contribute to their depression – because they aren’t “perfect”. Fortunately, there is not such thing and even if there was, it wouldn’t be good for their children!
Medea’s Curse is not their story.
I started to write MC as nonfiction, to help people understand from the inside why some of the fatal tragedies involving children occur. But I quickly discovered that because I could not use the cases I had consulted on – for both reasons of confidentiality and because I did not want to put these families through yet more pain – that fiction was going to be a far better way to explore the issues raised in these cases. In addition it enabled me to show a little of what it is that psychiatrists actually do.
I have long been an avid reader – since devouring all of Enid Blyton at eight, progressing to Agatha Christie in my teens. I read 2-3 books a week, a mix of psychological thrillers and crime, and a smattering of Booker and Pulitzer prize winners or those short listed that grab me.
I finished my first “book” at fifteen (having written hundreds of first paragraphs from age eight) – I still have it. Hilarious! Enough said.
On my first wedding anniversary my husband and I said the five things each that we wanted to do in the next five years. One of mine was to write a novel. The next year when I said the same thing (having not picked up a pen) he said : do it or forget it.
Like many would be authors I was afraid of rejection. But my husband’s words tapped into something deeper: even more I hated the idea of getting to old age and saying ‘I could have’. Trying and failing was a better option than never having tried.
“Kate and Cathie” about a psychiatry registrar whose own abuse history started to surface got a good review from the manuscript assessment service…and several rejections from publishers. It’s on the shelf. My shelf – no one elses! But I incorporated it into the plot of This I Would Kill For .
“Voluntary Act”, about boundaries and power, and specifically about why psychiatrists shouldn’t have relationships with their patients, attracted an agent and got to the last phase at Random House. Its rejection coincided with an offer of and Associate Professorship, so I took this and devoted the next ten or so years to perinatal psychiatry.
During a sabbatical and long service leave 2010-2011 I wrote an erotic romance under a pseudonym for fun – and it got accepted. I published two more full length novels with Siren Bookstrand and six novellas. This got me the 10,000 hours you need to get skilled in something, though I still have a lot to learn. I found the romance genre too restricting, but it gave me a wonderful opportunity to practice plot. I also had a number of short stories published and short listed for prizes.
Most of my writing is using what I know; personality and why people do what they do. But that said, I had a lot of fun co-authoring a midlife reinvention (subplot romantic comedy) with my husband (Two Steps Forward and Two Steps Onward) but then we did a lot of walking so we know hat too! In The Glass House, and sequels, The Oasis and The General Hospital, I draw on my thirty five years in the mental health system and the many wonderful people I have worked with – both staff and patients (and their families).
annebuistauthor 
Hey Annie….you’re the first blogger I’ve ever followed. Great stuff.
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I would like to see Voluntary Act get out as its topic is under-addressed, important, and worth exploring!
Cathy from Chicago
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Agreed – but its 153,00 words – I think back when I write it books muct have been a lot longer – these days no more than about 90,000. It would need a lot of editing…but I may yet get around to it!
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Hello Annie and Graeme, as an innocent passer-by in the Devonport Book Store, I was happy to witness your arrival and encounter with Tim and the staff there. My voyeur nature demanded further enquiry. Congratulations to you both for your partnership and careers and I look forward to reading at least Two Steps. I hope your Tas trip has been a success both personally and in some sense spiritually. Kind Regards, Peter
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Hope you enjoy! Tassie was wonderful.
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Hello Anne. You sound a little like me, or maybe the other way around. As an aspiring author and very recently retired social worker, private practice EAP and trauma consultant, with many years of my career spent across the mental health and trans-cultural service sector, as well as multiple other strings to my ‘bow’… I too have been halted by duty of care and confidentiality considerations, to utilising fascinating and highly educative life stories. I was reading before Kindergarten ( no doubt due to my mother being the teacher!), sponge-like absorbed, yes, all of Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie too and any other book I could ‘inhale’! By age 10 I had read every book in the childrens section of my local library ( and quite a few from the adult section that I could smuggle out ) whereupon the Librarian then provided me with a ‘Permission Note’ to take to the Children’s Librarian at ‘The Big Library’ in Hobart, stating, with poorly masked exasperation; ” This child has exhausted all reading material here. Kindly provide her access to your collection.” Clearly, I’d exhausted her too. In Primary School I never stopped writing stories and was told; ‘This might be your vocation’, but I was then determined to be an utterly fabulous- and famous – actress and singer – Of Course!
Life took various twists and turns and somehow I ended up in the above profession / career. { Probably something to do with my father being a Holocaust survivor. A cliche I know ) 40 years later, whilst my interest in other’s stories never fades, I have finally decided to write my own. Embarking on my Memoirs however, has been a challenge as I find myself, decades later than you! circling around drafts and re-draftes of various chapters. I also found I had to ‘unlearn’ unconscious academic structuring in the way I approach my writing – and consciously lean into ‘free-flow’ which is where the poetry and symmetry ‘lives’. I wonder, did you find this?
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Hi Lin thank goodness for Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie! I struggled to get into the mode for writing journals but it was much easier going back to fiction – probably because I read more of it than I do journal articles! Good luck with your memoir,
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Thank Anne
Nice to focus on being Creative. Am also setting up a Silk Painting Studio to get back to even more creativity from the past, having allowed professional commitments to be overly consuming. Now taking my own advice to many others about a Work / Life Balance!
Good luck with all your endeavours also.
Regards,
Lin Monash
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I have ‘read’ everything I can get on audiobook by you and/or your husband, and I love it all, but I am especially grateful for the Menzies Mental Health series. I wish ALL of your writing were on audio. I cannot read the Medea stuff because of how it relates to my family of origin (whom I escaped early-ish in life,) but I am genuinely looking forward to reading all of your non-crime fiction that is not available on audio as soon as I recover from a severe chronic case of autistic burnout. It is really giving me something to look forward to. Thank you sincerely for your fiction about mental health, gender variance, and Autistics. It has helped me immeasurably in too many ways to list. Truly.
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