Beau Death – Peter Lovesey on his new novelA wrecking ball swings into the roof of an old house near Bath. The people watching are in for a shock. When the dust clears, a skeleton is revealed sitting in the loft dressed in eighteenth century c...
WRITING THE MUSIC AND COMPOSING THE PLOT by Sarah RayneMusic has very often been a catalyst for me in the creating of a plot, and it seems to have found its way into a good many of my books. There’s the eerie death lament, ‘Thaisa’s Song’ in The Bell Towe...
CWA Debut Dagger Competition Now OpenThe Crime Writers’ Association have opened their popular Debut Dagger competition for 2018. The competition is for the opening of a crime novel and any writer who has never had a traditional publishin...
Making the Amazon/Kindle Top 50 Bestseller List! by Faith MartinLike a lot of my fellow authors, I’ve been writing for many years now, solidly producing books (that were mostly published in hardback) and just feeling happy and relatively chuffed with myself to get...
How I drew my own cartoons – and why it gave me the idea for a cozy mystery, by Peter BartramSometimes it’s really hard to trace where the idea for a book first originated. But here’s one example. I went to a school which first opened its doors to pupils in 1614 – two years before...
CBS Reality premieres original crime series, Written in BloodRC Bridgestock, Mark Billingham and other authors have their work featured, while best-selling author Simon Toyne hosts. Written in Blood airs every Sunday at 10pm from 3 September, exclusively on CBS...
Give My Regards to Uncle Stalin by Fiona Veitch SmithA recent review of the second book in my Poppy Denby Investigates series, The Kill Fee, has made me laugh. The reader’s main gripe was that in her opinion my characterisation of communists was too ‘po...
Review CWA Dagger-Shortlisted TitlesDid you know that the CWA have set up a website where people can leave reviews of the shortlisted books for the CWA Daggers 2017? http://daggerreads.co.uk/readers/ No prizes I’m afraid, but as it’s mo...
Is Originality Overrated? By Rafe McGregorI came across Richard Bradford’s excellent Crime Fiction: A Very Short Introduction at the end of last year, while preparing a syllabus for a creative writing module. I was disappointed but not surpr...
My Writing Space by Mike JecksMichael Jecks is the well-known author of many, mostly historical crime novels. ‘It is a bit of a shock to realise that I’ve been a professional author for 23 years, now. I’ve published 4...
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