Case Files 41
Case Files issue 41 – out soon!
Case Files is an ezine that profiles new or forthcoming novels from members of the Crime Writers’ Association.
Subscribing is free – and it lets you discover which contributors in the forthcoming issue are behind these weird facts and odd confessions…
- I was run over by my own car (and used the experience to have the same thing happen to a character in one of my novels)!
- When I lived in a canal house in Sweden, the Crown Prince (now King Carl Gustav) moored his yacht under my window. He came to dinner with my landlady, but I never got to dance with him…
- I own autographs of some famous Hollywood stars from the golden age of Hollywood, and also from Vera Lynn and Petula Clark.
- English is my fourth language chronologically, but having now worked in it for over 25 years, it’s the best of the five I speak.
- I learned self-defence after receiving death-threats in the course of my work as a photojournalist. (I am pretty handy at MacGyver-ing weapons out of everyday household objects.)
- Walking about town in my lunch hour, I saw that a secretarial agency was advertising for girls to work in America – and so ended up living and working in Manhattan at the age of nineteen.
- The sword I use to defend/decorate my house has a steel blade 3ft long and 1 ½ inches wide, forged in Obdurman, Sudan and sheathed in leather sewn with white pearls.
- I got married in an old asylum and then lived with my husband in a haunted house, but I’m still too scared to watch Paranormal Activity!
- As a very young girl I sailed out to Egypt on the Empire Windrush.
- I won Writing Magazine’s Crime Short Competition with my first ever short story. There was a cash prize but I spent it all on getting to the prize-giving ceremony in Harrogate!
- Twice, I have acted with Hollywood A-lister Paul Bettany: once as Hermia to his Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and once as Cecily to his Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest. I am barely 5ft tall. Paul…isn’t.
- I was once dragged kicking and screaming from my seat in the audience of The Winslow Boy to go on stage and replace an actress who had just been taken ill.
- I keep a letter from Steven Spielberg in my purse reminding me “never to lose the intensity and passion for your art.” It’s carried me through many dark nights of the soul!
To get a free copy of Case Files delivered direct to your inbox, simply join the CRA today.
It’s easy, just enter your details below to receive the bimonthly Case Files, monthly newsletters and occasional snippets. We promise your details will not be shared with any third party.
Chris Simms, Editor, Case Files.
