30th April 2018
When people hear that I’m a crime writer, the question they ask most often is: where do you get your ideas from? I guess I’m not alone among crime writers in finding that’s the numbe...
30th April 2018
Have you ever been caught daydreaming? Missed your stop on the bus because your mind was miles away? Been hauled up for staring out of the classroom window as a child? If so, you probably learnt that...
28th March 2018
For me, stories begin with images more often than not. Sometimes they’re grainy, but more often visceral and clear. Blood Will Be Born started in this way and was written on and off between 2014 and 2...
28th March 2018
William Burton McCormick Flash fiction is not a genre that often allows room for substantial flashbacks, backstory or large degrees of introspection. When writers do include these elements, they must...
28th March 2018
Karen is author of The Detective Lavender Mysteries. I first came across Stephen Lavender, a Principal Officer with the Bow Street Police Office while researching one of Northumberland’s biggest robbe...
27th February 2018
‘There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.’ Terry Pratchett One of...
12th February 2018
It’s time to admit that I enjoy going against the grain. Until now I’ve been best known as a graphic novelist, and I’ve had my share of success; a couple of New York Times bestsellers, some critical a...
18th December 2017
The Crime Writers’ Association are once again running the prestigious Margery Allingham Short Story Competition in 2018. The international competition is for an unpublished story in under 3,500 words...
15th December 2017
Lea O’Harra on her new novel, the third in the Inspector Inoue mystery series, published by Endeavour Press, and the themes and concerns that underpin it. Fujikawa, a small town in rural, western Japa...
29th November 2017
I wanted to write a crime novel set in Belgrade for a long time as it’s a fascinating city and perfect for Balkan Noir. I’ve also loved two Serbian women, my son is half Serbian and I lived in Belgrad...
28th November 2017
Sandra Bullock called 911 after an intruder broke into her house. Brook Shields was stalked for years by an obsessive fan. A woman threatened to cut Catherine-Zeta Jones into pieces and feed her to a...
27th November 2017
88° North has an unusual premise, since the heroine, Nadia, has radiation sickness from her last encounter with her nemesis, Salamander. She’s been given weeks to live. She could go to an exotic islan...
8th November 2017
Have you heard about the new competition the CWA has launched? It’s open to everyone, and all you have to do is write a review of any of the titles that contended for the 2017 CWA Daggers and po...
31st October 2017
A 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...
31st October 2017
Music 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...
18th October 2017
The 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...
18th October 2017
Like 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...
18th September 2017
Sometimes 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...
18th September 2017
RC 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...
14th September 2017
A 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...