The Crime Warp's first birthday, The Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and a five book giveaway!

When I started writing this post I wasn’t quite sure how I would bring the three parts together seamlessly.  I think I’ve got it and hope you think so too.

I’ll start with our birthday (it was actually 29^th October, but it’s taken me a little longer than planned to get this post written) – The Crime Warp is one year old, and we’re all really chuffed with how well it’s taken off.  The Crime Warp now gets over a thousand hits a month and we believe that’s because we’ve kept to our aim of featuring the newest and best in contemporary crime fiction.  We’ve focused mainly on book reviews, but also had author interviews and occasional giveaway competition such as the signed David Baldacci novel The Hit  (and there’s another giveaway at the end of this post!).  What we’ve been surprised about is that over a third of our hits are from outside the UK.  Many are from the US and there are others from as far afield as Europe, the Far East and even Australasia.  Looking ahead, we’ll continue to bring you reviews and interviews as well as some occasional snippets of original crime writing.  We’re currently looking at how we could include some writing from blog readers too, so aspiring authors, watch this space.

Next, why the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival?  Well, it’s where all of us who contribute to The Crime Warp met and where we had the idea for the blog.  I wanted to write a bit about Harrogate to give you a flavour of the event and why we found it so enjoyable.  For aspiring crime writers, Creative Thursday is the kick off and this year featured writing heavyweights M R Hall, William Ryan and Henry Sutton.  As well as advice on characters and plotting there was a Q&A session with a forensic expert, allowing budding authors to test their ghoulish ideas for things like assault, arson, and dismemberment for technical accuracy.

The next two and a half days saw panel discussions, interviews and the infamous Quiz Night.  Mark Lawson was on form and his panel interviews were always worth listening to.  I won’t try and recount each session in detail because that would be dull, but there were some highlights that I think are worth talking about a little more.

Dead in Deutschland discussed what looks to be a new wave of crime writing that’s going to catch up with and perhaps overtake Scandi crime.  We’re already starting to see some German authors such as Nele Neuhaus and Jan Costin Wagner appearing in bookshops and if my experience of the Neuhaus book (Snow White Must Die) and writing by the late Jakob Arjouni is anything to go by, this is something to watch out for.  Listening to some of the authors in person talking about how “Krimis” have taken off in Germany showed how crime fiction is a truly international phenomenon, no matter which country it comes from. 

The link between crime fiction and what appears on our TV screens was a popular theme this year, with a panel that had Ann Cleeves and Brenda Blethyn, talking about how Vera moved from the printed page to TV.  It was also fun to see Brenda Blethyn in real life, who looks nothing like Vera, although in the current series, Vera does look less bedraggled than she did in the first one.  Another session saw Kate Atkinson, talking about her novels and how Jason Isaacs became the TV incarnation of Jackson Brodie.  It was fascinating listening to the process of creating a TV character, developing the setting and plots as well as the mechanics of day to day filming.  It’s all far more complicated process than I ever imagined and I found both sessions gave a new insight into the crafts of TV creation and characterisation from novels.

A panel that was immensely popular was Val McDermid in conversation with Sue Black, a Professor at Dundee University, who has over the years been an invaluable sounding board for McDermid as she tries to work out bizarre but believable ways of murderers doing even more unspeakable things to their victims.  Through a light hearted and genuinely amusing conversation, I found out about Black’s career, how she got to the top in in forensic science and her work with McDermid, including some of the more odd requests for forensic information (ugh!).  A poignant part of the conversation, which brought real life back into the room was Black talking about identifying the body of an apparent suicide found dead in an isolated spot.  Hearing of the painstaking investigation made me understand that the forensic profession has a real human side to it, focused on the victim, their families and helping them to get closure.

Sorry, I didn’t mean that to get too serious…anyway, to finish off on Harrogate; overall it’s a great experience.  If nothing else, it’s an opportunity to meet new people, as well as finding out lots about what’s new in crime writing, particularly new authors that are just getting known on the crime writing scene.  There are always lots of authors around and I’ve found they’re really approachable and nice people, whether you just want a book autographed, a photo taken with then or to chat about what you think of their latest book.   

This photo of Simon Kernick with two of the Crime Warp’s founders shows how approachable they are!

Finally, the competition giveaway.  The prize is a box of books – five paperbacks, some of which have been featured on The Crime Warp.   To win, identify whose legs are shown in the picture.  Do they belong to: 

a. Simon Kernick 

b. Val McDermid 

c. Brenda Blethyn

Just send an email to romancrimeblogger@gmail.com, with the name of the “owner” of the legs in the title.  The closing date is midnight on 29^th of November.  As always, the competition is open to all Crime Warp readers - it doesn’t matter which country you live in.  I’ll draw names at random over the last weekend in November and send the box out to the lucky Crime Warp winner the following week.  I'll also reply to everyone's email to let them know whether they've won the draw or not.

Good luck!

Romancrimeblogger

PS -  Nearly forgot - these are the books in the book box we're giving away!