J J Marsh - Love me, love my character

It’s my great pleasure to welcome back crime writer J J Marsh. We met a while ago in a distanced way on Facebook – the two of us belong to the Alliance of Independent Authors – but when she and I were both selected as indie Editor’s Choices in prestigious UK publishing trade magazine ‘The […]

Lucienne Boyce – Love me, love my character

Lucienne Boyce has published two historical novels, To The Fair Land (2012) and Bloodie Bones: A Dan Foster Mystery (2015). She published The Bristol Suffragettes (non-fiction) in 2013. She is currently working on the second Dan Foster Mystery and the biography of a suffragette with Bristol connections. She is a steering committee member of the […]

Ruth Downie - Love me, love my character

Today, I’m delighted to welcome Ruth Downie back to the Roma Nova writing world. She’s talked before about historic truth and donkey poo, and wrote a poignant account ‘from below’ at the court of Boudica as part of A Year of Ravens. Of course, Roma Novans know her as the name on the endorsement for […]

Writing crime in Harrogate

“Harrogate” – that’s what the regulars call the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. After three days, I call it exhausting, energising, exhilarating. It was my second conference in July and I took the travelling easy. No point killing yourself before you get to Murder Central for the weekend!

With fellow scribe David […]

Charroux LitFest - total buzz

Charroux may be a tiny town in the middle of la France profonde, but these last few days it has been buzzing with local, national and international noise. Noise? Yes, the noise of authors talking, writers of every stripe discussing craft, poets and musicians entertaining and provoking us and playwrights dramatising. We learnt, stared in […]