Authors Electric

There’s a saying isn’t there – about   knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing . But just how valuable is that nothing? I ran a writing science fiction workshop last week on a very wet and windy Saturday in North East Manchester. Now I don't write a lot of SF (far more crime these days), but given that a lot of the event was Dr Who -themed, with people in costumes, mask-making and a few props around, I suspect they booked me because of the Daemons DVD and anthology I was involved with. When I arrived, I was told that the workshop was fully booked and that the places had gone quickly. I was shown to a nice little room on a quiet corridor, I set up the tables, laid out some free books I’d acquired and waited for my delegates to arrive. A very nice chap turned up. An ex-EastEnders script-writer (yes, imposter syndrome started to kick in at this point), closely followed by another writer.  And nothing. We had a chat, liaised with the staff –...

Venue and reason for my murderous gathering... A gathering of assorted people intent on murder, in the spooky, beautiful old Lit and Phil library, on a wet snowy night - it could have been the start of a Golden Age crime novel, and who knows, several novels and stories may emerge from the twenty writers who attended my ‘Time for Crime’ Workshop as part of Newcastle Noir crime fiction festival. The old massively-carved tables had been arranged in a long line, as if some League of Assassins were expected. Some attendees had dabbled in crime fiction, and others were hesitating on the brink of villainy, as I assigned writing exercises to produce Chandleresque 'first lines' to grab the reader by the throat, then others to help create villains and to evolve detective protagonists who might become as famous as Vera, Lord Peter Wimsey or Jack Reacher. I was not slow to remind them of one of the joys of crime writing, revenge on school bullies, cheating exes and abusive bosses. ...