Zoe Sharp and Priscilla Masters

Two crime writers who are friends of mine have published books recently, and I'd like to give each of them a mention. I've known Priscilla Masters for more than a decade now, and have fond memories of sharing a number of library events with her, two in Lancashire and one in the West Midlands. She's a very entertaining speaker, and though I didn't know her well that time we did our first gig together, she instantly put me at my ease. It's great fun appearing with her, because she is so good at keeping an audience interested and amused. Most recently, she was a very popular after dinner speaker at the St Hilda's conference in August.

Her latest novel, published by Severn House, is The Final Curtain. It's another entry in the long-running series featuring DI Joanna Piercy, and opens with her return to work after her honeymoon. As usual, the Staffordshire setting adds a realistic and appealing background to a story which opens with some apparently insignificant complaints from a woman who used to appear in a television soap opera. A review on the back cover compares Cilla with her friend and mine, Kate Ellis, and I think it's a good comparison.

Cilla works within the field of the police procedural and whodunit, whereas Zoe Sharp is more often associated with the thriller genre, in view of the success of her books about Charlie Fox, who is definitely someone you mess with at your peril. Zoe's another entertaining speaker, whose fields of expertise cover such diverse subjects as guns, motor bikes, and photography.

Zoe has also become something of a guru in the field of self-publishing, and she's brought out her latest, The Blood Whisperer (excellent title, wish I'd thought of it first!) via the imprint of Murderati Ink. The book is available as an ebook, but having received a trade paperback edition, I am pleased to confirm that it's attractively produced (not something that can always be taken for granted with these ventures.) This book is Zoe's first stand-alone thriller, and introduces London crime scene specialist Kelly Jacks. Zoe's a pacy writer (her short stories, one or two of which I've included in anthologies I've edited, are also very entertaining), and I'm confident this intriguing change of direction will further expand her considerable fan base.

Crimefest 2013 - part one

I've just returned from Crimefest 2013 in Bristol, a terrific event as usual. In fact, I feel that Crimefest is getting better each year. I know a number of people who told me they wanted to attend but were too late to book a place, and this is a sign of the convention's increasing popularity. It really does strike a nice balance between providing opportunities to socialise and providing panels, interviews and other events of genuine interest. There was a lot going on, and not for the first time I found myself, on leaving, amazed that I'd been so busy yet had still not managed to have a chat with a number of friends and fellow attendees. Next time!

I was lucky enough to be involved with three separate panels, two of them as participating moderator, and the first of these was Forgotten Authors, an event which is now a regular feature of the first afternoon of Crimefest. My fellow panellists were all very knowledgable and enthusiastic about books of the past. Moderating a group comprising John Curran (who chose two of my favourites, Dorothy Bowers and Patrick Quentin, to talk about) , Ruth Dudley Edwards (who chose two more, Cyril Hare and Edmund Crispin), Zoe Sharp and Adrian Magson was the easiest job in the world. The only snag with Forgotten Authors is that there is so much to talk about, we really need several hours. But the room was packed out, and people left with many suggestions about old books to seek out. There's always a feelgood factor about this panel, a sign of the rise in appreciation of books that vanished from the shelves years ago which remain worth reading to this day. I'm pleased to say the organisers have asked me to moderate the same panel again next year.

After a short break it was time for the annual pub quiz. I joined a team which included John, Zoe, Kate Ellis and my former editor at Hodder, Kate Lyall Grant. But it's also good to meet people for the first time, and these included the highly successful American author, Dorothy Cannell, with whom I was also due to be on another panel (at which she came up with an idea which fascinated me, and which I'll talk about in another Crimefest post.) We lost that knowledgeable crime fan Mike Linane to Ali Karim's team on the next table, but also joining us was Alexandra Benedict. There are two novelists called Alexandra Benedict, and so our colleague is published as A.K. Benedict. It turned out she is not only a Cambridge graduate who has written a highly successful debut, but also a composer of music for film and television, a singer and an expert on the ghost story. One website bio says she "writes words and music in a red-walled room filled with mannequins, teapots and the severed head of a ventriloquist's dummy." So really she ought to be a character in a book as well.

Anyway, it was an extremely convivial group and we called ourselves the Forgetful Authors. (In a surreal twist, this anticipated my forgetting the following day to post a Friday Forgotten Book for the first time in ages - you did notice, didn't you?) The quiz was closely contested and we finished up tying with Ali's team. The first tiebreaker question didn't separate the teams, but the next one enabled us to win the day, and collect some very nice prizes, including box sets of Sherlock, about which more soon.) Great fun, and I'll continue the Crimefest Chronicles tomorrow. If I don't forget, that is....

Flash Fiction and Crimefest

Sarah Hilary has asked me to mention on this blog a venture connected with this year's Crimefest, to be held in Bristol at the end of May. As regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of Crimefest and have attended each year since its inception. The panels are good, but in many ways the greatest strength of this very friendly event is the social side. There's a great deal of mingling between authors and fans, and speaking as an author who is also a fan, I find that very enjoyable indeed.

The Flashbang competition, is open to people who are not established writers (pity, I've recently developed a taste for writing flash fiction myself!). The aim is to write a story in 150 words or less,and Sarah tells me that this year the judge will be that splendid crime writer Zoe Sharp. Zoe, incidentally, is one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject of e-publishing, and has entered that area with her customary zest and effectiveness. She's also, among other things, a highly talented photographer and I well remember a cold day in Ilkley when Murder Squad did  a photo shoot with her. I'm sure she'll be a very fair judge.

Flash fiction has gained in popularity due to the internet, I think. A short-short story is ideally suited to online publication, and there are some very good examples around. I haven't actually seen a conventional print anthology of flash crime fiction, but there may well be some around that I haven't caught up with.

Writing a very short story, say of less than 1000 words, might seem easy, but brevity demands concentration, and I'm not sure writing a really good flash fiction story is much easier than writing a good short poem. One short-short that I did have published conventionally a few years ago, as Sarah reminded me, was a story called InDex, which gave me a lot of pleasure. I hope lots of people will give the competition a go..

Specific Gravity

Round-robin mysteries have featured several times on this blog, and I’ve mentioned that I find them rather fascinating. I shall have more news before long of an interesting reprint that I’m involved with, but in the meantime, I’m delighted to say that the first collaborative mystery that I’ve been involved with is now available.

It came into existence through an initiative of the lovely people who run the  Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Fiction Festival at Harrogate each year. This has become a major event for fans, and regularly features a host of international best-sellers. So I was extremely gratified when the organisers invited me to take part in writing a chapter of Specific Gravity, a mystery broadly (and in many ways, distantly) in the tradition of The Floating Admiral.

The story was to be started and finished by Stuart MacBride, who has become a superstar of the contemporary crime novel. Other contributors were to be Laura Wilson, Natasha Cooper, Martyn Waites, Allan Guthrie, Ann Cleeves, Charlie Williams, Zoe Sharp and Dreda Say Mitchell. Very good company to be in!

This joint enterprise was all about having fun, and I approached it in that spirit. There was no advance planning – each writer did their own thing. I wrote in a different style from usual, and really enjoyed writing my chapter. But then the project went very quiet for a long time, as consideration was given as to how to promote it. Now, at last, it’s emerged – and at long last, when I get a spare moment, I shall finally find out what happened in the story after I did my bit!  

If you fancy seeing what we all made of the project, take a look at Specific Gravity . Incidentally, having enjoyed contributing this one, I’m now involved with another round-robin project, though this one will be very different. More about that in the fullness of time...

Harrogate

I’ve attended the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival at Harrogate since its early days, and it’s invariably an entertaining event, enhanced by the fact that Harrogate in July is a very pleasant place to be. This year, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to arrive there until Saturday lunch-time, but despite that I had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

One of the great things about crime conventions is the chance they offer both to catch up with old friends and to make new ones; also, I tend to find, there may be one or two people whom one has bumped into briefly for years, but whom one manages to get to know rather better, and that’s always rewarding. I enjoyed lunch with a few friends from the CWA’s Northern Chapter, and during the day I came across Alanna Knight, a prolific Scottish crime writer who with her late husband Alistair was a stalwart of many CWA events. I’ve not seen her for two or three years and it was good to see her in fine form. I don’t think I’ve mentioned her work on this blog before, an omission I ought to repair. Her historical mysteries are well worth a look.

Needless to say, the Saturday night quiz was a highlight. I joined up with a team which rejoiced in the name of the BP Complaints Department. It included Zoe Sharp, and her husband Andy, Russell from Waterstones, Chris Ewan and L.C. Tyler. Some of the questions were really tough – a round on the subject of writers’ dogs had me baffled, for instance – but we did manage to come second. A real team effort, and very good company. Seeing Len Tyler was a bonus, as I’m reading his latest book at the moment, and he kindly inscribed it for me. A review will appear here in due course.

Among other nice things, Janet O’Kane, whom I’d previously only encountered via the blogosphere, came over to say hello. I hope that readers of blogs who encounter blog writers at conventions and other events will, equally, not be too bashful to introduce themselves. I’m sure that other writers, just like me, really value these personal contacts.

Harrogate

I had a lot of fun at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, and as usual the combination of socialising and crime fiction-related activities made the hours fly by all too quickly.

For me, the event got off to a brisk start as I presented a session on ‘Legalese’ as part of the Creative Thursday session for aspiring crime novelists. Zoe Sharp, ably assisted by husband Andy, had presented a very popular session on self-defence, just before lunch, and the morning’s topics had also included crime scene investigation, so I did wonder if my 45 minutes on legal stuff would see the audience nodding off or checking their watches. But they became very engaged, and a fascinating range of questions showed how seriously and intelligently they took their craft.

I’d prepared hand-outs for attendees to take away, which offered an outline of some of the detail of the law as it applies to writers, and in the session itself I focused on telling stories about writers who have become caught up in litigation. I hoped this would prove entertaining, but I couldn’t be sure in advance whether this was the best approach. Fortunately, the feedback was very positive, and if I ever did something similar in the future, I think I’d use the same type of format.

What struck me throughout was the cool professionalism of the team that runs the Festival. I once organised a week-end social get-together in Knutsford for northern crime writers, and even that relatively small event proved quite challenging to organise. It must be extremely stressful to run a complex Festival, because hitches are utterly inevitable, but I thought that Sharon Canavar, Erica Morris and their colleagues did a great job, as usual. They have the knack of remaining pleasant and seeming unflappable whatever the circumstances. This is no mean achievement, and it adds considerably to the enjoyability of the occasion for all the writers and readers who attend.

Off to Harrogate

I’m heading off to Harrogate this morning to take part in the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (for those of you unfamiliar with it, Theakstons Old Peculier is a type of beer; Theakstons the brewers sponsor the Festival.)

Today is ‘Creative Thursday’, when there are writing workshops given by a variety of authors including Mark Billingham, Zoe Sharp and me My topic is ‘Legalese’ (typecasting, I’m afraid.) On Saturday, I’ve been asked to host a table at the Readers’ Dinner; the entertainment will be a murder mystery event written by Ann Cleeves and featuring a cast of suspects including Natasha Cooper. It should be fun. There is also to be a quiz, and Ali Karim has already invited me to join his team, which includes fellow blogger Rhian from ‘It’s a Crime’.

Harrogate is a splendid town, and one of the great pleasures of the Festival is simply the socialising, the chance to meet old friends and make new ones. I’m really looking forward to it.

For my loyal and much appreciated readers, blog posts will continue while I am away, but I shall probably leave discussion of the Festival until it’s over and I’ve had time to reflect on what will, I hope, be a memorable few days.

An evening with Murder Squad

I’ve mentioned Murder Squad several times in this blog. It’s a group of seven Northern crime writers, founded by Margaret Murphy, and last Thursday evening, six of us (Chaz Brenchley, who is unwell, was the absentee) met up at the house of Cath Stainclife in Manchester.

It’s not easy for seven people who live in various different parts of the north to get together in the same place at the same time. In fact, the last time we were all together was three years ago, when another crime writer, Zoe Sharp, took the above photograph – at an Ilkley hotel, where a CWA lunch was taking place.

Since Murder Squad was founded, many good things have happened to its members. For instance, Cath has turned Blue Murder into a successful tv series, and Ann Cleeves has won the CWA Gold Dagger. Margaret is now the CWA chair, and I won the CWA Short Story Dagger last year. Together with Chaz, Stuart Pawson and John Baker, we’ve produced brochures, newsletters, performance events, a website, a CD, and an anthology of short stories.

But times remain tough in publishing, and Murder Squad is still a great support network for all of us. We discussed plans for the future – including ideas to celebrate our tenth anniversary next year. More information in due course.