SERIES OR STANDALONE? – Sarah Ward
I’ve been reading crime fiction since I was a child. When I give talks at libraries I like to mention the authors that have influenced me as a writer. I always start off with Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Dre...
I’ve been reading crime fiction since I was a child. When I give talks at libraries I like to mention the authors that have influenced me as a writer. I always start off with Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Dre...
My debut novel In Bitter Chill deals with the kidnapping of two young girls in the 1970s. It’s a distressing subject but I never considered the topic to be off-limits partly because it’s based on a ne...
What’s so attractive about a cold landscape? There are numerous great writers who set their crime novels in the Mediterranean heat (Andrea Camilleri, Petros Markaris) or the humidity of the American d...
Crime fiction readers demand more sophisticated novels than the ones I read as a teenager. While the golden age mysteries that I devoured had complex plots full of twists and turns, the action was usu...
February 1947 was the coldest on record. Snow fell somewhere in the UK every day from January 22nd until mid March.There were fifteen foot snow drifts. Supplies had to be airlifted to villages and hou...
‘How’s the novel going?’ asked my husband. ‘Hard going,’ I said. ‘Why?’ ‘You know how when you’re writing something scholarly you have to decide what to...
Every other Tuesday we feature a publication from leading independent publisher Endeavour Press. The Apothecary’s House by Adrian Mathews (Download for FREE today 16.06.2015) Tell me more! When...
The Crime Writers’ Association are delighted to reveal the long listed authors for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger, the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. Th...
‘I draw from life – but I always pulp my acquaintance before serving them up. You would never recognise a pig in a sausage.’ I love this quotation from Fanny Trollope, mother of the...
It’s probably true to say that every fiction book intended for publication needs to be slotted into a specific genre. Some of these are very broad such as ‘crime fiction’ or ‘c...
I believe it was Agatha Christie who remarked that murder was a good occupation for a woman at home. What she might have added was that nevertheless it was important for that woman to get out of the h...
Crime Reading Month has started with a great post from Sarah Hilary. Over the next 30 days we have posts from some amazing crime writers – all members of the Crime Writers Association – in...
Inspiration for writing about crime takes many forms and, for me, it was my own family history that first drew me into the nineteenth century underworld. All families have skeletons in their genealogi...
National Crime Writing Month is a UK wide annual reading festival promoting the crime genre. It is a major initiative, coordinated by the CWA, a non-profit group dedicated to the promotion of the genr...
What is a Writers’ Platform? If you search online, you’ll find several definitions, some more complicated than others. But in basic terms, it is a group of things that you do to get your name noticed...
Looking back to my years in publishing, I sometimes wonder that I survived without feeling the blade of an axe in my head I knew my authors hated being edited nearly as much as I hated being caught be...
You know what it’s like… you spend years working on bits of novels, maybe some short stories, maybe you even finish a novel but it’s so bad you let it disappear into a file on your computer that you k...
A single event on a summer’s day, way back in 1975, changed my life for ever. I was fifteen and living in Melbourne, Australia, where my parents and I had emigrated the year before. I was kickin...
Eleven authors have been longlisted for the CWA 2015 Dagger in the Library award, thanks to your votes. The longlist was compiled by YOU right and we’re thrilled that so many of you stopped by to vote...
The CWA is excited to announce that the 2015 Diamond Dagger recipient Catherine Aird will be doing a series of appearances at this year’s Crime Fest. The acclaimed author, who follows in the footsteps...
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