It’s now just under a week to go to Crimefest. This is always a highspot in my calendar. Four days of catching up with old crime writing friends and making new ones, with all the delicious agony of deciding which panels to attend – always the ones you really want to go to are on at the same time.
And then I’m conducting one-to-one assessments of the first three thousand words of an unpublished crime novel plus synopsis from some of the hopeful new crime novelists who have signed up for the Crime Writing Day. I’m in the middle of reading their submissions and making the assessments. I need also to catch up with the four authors on the CrimeFest panel I’m moderating: The Unprofessionals: When Your Character Isn’t Qualified to Solve Crimes. This is a subject I’m well acquainted with since I am now into a third crime series using an unprofessional sleuth. It should be a no holds barred panel with Frances Brody, Nev Fountain, Kate Griffin and David Thorne. They all sound delightful writers.
So it will be a busy four days. However, for a time it looked as though I wasn’t going to get there. Three weeks ago I was about to embark on the denouement of my current novel, A Fatal Freedom, for The Mystery Press, featuring American Ursula Grandison involved in Edwardian London. Then disaster struck. A careless step in my kitchen left me on the floor in agony with a fractured hip. Three hours later I was in Yeovil General Hospital being given a new one. I got a friend to bring in my laptop and hoped to work after I came round from the anaesthetic. Not a chance, mind fogged, ceaseless round of exercises, incidents. Back home after a week or so, same thing.
However, I can now manage well enough to be driven up to Bristol and CrimeFest. My great friend, fellow writer Susan Moody (do catch her crime novels for Severn House) is coming over from France and we shall have a great time.
CrimeFest is a writer’s paradise. Run with low key but great efficiency by Myles Allfrey, Donna Moore and Adrian Muller, and taking place in the stylish and comfortable Marriott Hotel, the atmosphere is wonderfully welcoming. There will be just under 150 writers and some 200 fans, publishers, agents, and so on. Everyone mixes happily. For new crime writers, and those hoping to become crime writers, CrimeFest is a must. It offers exposure, discussion, contacts, and a veritable cornucopia of wise words from established writers. I remember last year sitting entranced while Robert Goddard spoke about how he writes his amazingly twisty and involving best sellers. And to Lee Child talking about Jack Reacher.
This year there is a crime writing day with M R Hall and William Ryan providing a workshop on Constructing Character and Plot, preceded by a session on How to Self Publish in ebook and print; and one on Agents and Editors with top literary agencies DHH and Darley Anderson and publishers Quercus and Headline.
Personally I’m very much looking forward to catching up with some old friends such as Simon Brett, this year’s Diamond Dagger recipient; Ruth Dudley Edwards, an historian and biographer who also writes a scintillating series of crime novels ripping off the establishment; and Andrew Taylor, who produces compelling historical crime.
My other task at CrimeFest will be to announce the CWA International Dagger Short List on Friday evening. I’m the Chairman of the Judging Panel and this year some sixty books translated from fourteen different languages have been submitted for the award. They have made interesting reading.
It will be a fun-packed four days and I’m so delighted a fractured hip is not making me miss it. And then it will be back home to finish A Fatal Freedom.