Crimefest Bristol
May 18th, 2009 by adminI had the pleasure of visiting Crimefest in Bristol last week. It was my first crime conference so I was a little unsure what to expect, but what I found were scores of crime fans (a number had flown in specially from the US) and crime writers (both British and foreign) with a smattering of agents, editors and critics thrown in for good measure. The event - held at the very comfortable Marriott Royal - was extremely well organised, with two writer panels running concurrently almost every hour during the day and social events scheduled for the evenings. If you’ve never been to one of these events, I highly recommend it. It’s a great opportunity to meet writers in an informal setting (ie in the bar), and the panel discussions cover crime writing in all its many guises, from gory to cosy and all points in between.
There were a few familiar faces there, and it was great for me to talk informally to other crime writers about the business of writing and to catch up with some insider gossip (very interesting - too interesting, in fact, to repeat here - sorry…). I had a discussion over dinner with Simon Kernick, Paul Johnston, Declan Hughes and Stephen Booth over the optimum length for a book, and was surprised to discover mine are shorter than many. Should I make them longer? I’m happy to hear your views! Stephen is from this neck of the woods - or at least he sets his books here in the Peak District, and in fact he’s made a murder scene out of an ancient site only half a mile from our house…
Back at the grindstone, the second draft of book four is progressing well. The paperback of ‘The Taint of Midas’ was published last week (you can’t miss it in the bookshops - its cover’s a wonderful yellow) whilst ‘The Doctor of Thessaly’ comes out early in July. I’m still waiting for the Doctor to appear on Amazon, but if you’d like to pre-order, it’s available on Waterstone’s website, and Borders. Just don’t read the blurb too closely; whoever wrote it (not me!) seems unaware that Thessaly is not an island of my imagination, but a real part of Greece, similar to an English county. Don’t go looking for the town of Morfi on the map, though - it isn’t there…