Domestic Noir – crime that’s close to home by Alice CastleDomestic noir is not new. Ever since the first performance of Medea in 431 BC, or Mrs Bluebeard’s first peek into that forbidden chamber, women have been confronting horrible truths close to home. The...
Pauline Rowson’s latest novel Dangerous Cargo could be yours free – Severn House Publishers have 5 ebooks to give away in a prize draw competition. Dangerous Cargo by Pauline Rowson is t...
The People’s Book Prize closes on Sunday 10th July – check out the TV interview via the link and read the blog below and maybe go and vote for BK Duncan and her book Foul Trade! Interview...
Seth Lynch and The Paris RipperThe piece is about my book The Paris Ripper, which is due out on Feb 18th. Seth Lynch lives in Wiltshire with his partner and their two daughters. He works as a database administrator and his spare ti...
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...
‘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...
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...
SJI Holiday- Do you really need a writers’ platform?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...
The Debut Dagger Dream – SJI HollidayYou 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...
I’d always toyed with the idea of writing a book set in my hometown. Haddington, East Lothian is reasonably small. The population ripples around 9,000, but it always felt like much, much less. It’s an...
SJI Holliday -From Crime Reader to Crime Writer: How I Got HereOne of the first things I did when I got my book deal was to join the CWA, so it’s a great honour for me to be writing here as May’s author of the month. I’m still very much one of t...
Welcome to Alex Shaw, our featured author for March. In this, his first post for the CRA, we wanted to get to know a little bit more about him. How did you start writing? It was 1996 and I was livi...
There has to be enough of one whose selling ‘blurb’ and ‘shout line’ will persuade the casual browser that they are about to enter another world real enough to make them forget their own moorings. Thi...
Featured Author Friday – Sally SpeddingLast week we had a great post from our Featured Author, Sally Spedding, but I know you want to know a little bit more about her….. My crime chillers explore the darkest sides of people and place...
Settings to Die For – Sally SpeddingIt has always been a particular setting which has fired the engine of my beginning either a new crime chiller or short story. A setting that hits my heart. Some have been discovered quite by accident,...
As with most genres, the most important character in crime fiction is the hero. This is usually a detective – amateur or professional – who solves the crimes. Writers intending to write a series must...
Rules for Detective Stories – David BecklerMonsignor Ronald Knox came up with 10 rules of detective fiction as a preface to Best Detective Stories of 1928-29: 1) The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must n...
The 12 Suspects of Christmas: The SolutionPreviously in this periodical, the author put before you a Yuletide conundrum and now begs your indulgence to present her elegant solution… It was the second day of the Year of Our Lord 1896, wh...
Christmas, 1895. The Old Manor House had been in the D’Argent family for generations and, as was traditional for the season, they always invited their closest family and friends to dine w...
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