OnLymeCrime

This weekend I should have been in Lyme Regis for the inaugural Lyme Crime festival. Sadly, COVID-19 put paid to that, but unlike most similar events, the estimable Paddy Magrane and his team decided that the show must go on (virtually).

I think it worked really well. Of course there's no substitute for being physically present at a festival, but the panels ran really smoothly over Zoom, and it was great that people were able to tune in from all over.

I was part of two events (one for What She Saw Last Night with Susi Holliday, one for Hunted with Tony Kent), and you can watch them both here.

I guess that's one advantage over live in person festivals - anyone in the world can 'attend' a panel, months after it's happened.

First up on Thursday, an encore version of the Train Noir tour Susi and I embarked on last Autumn. We talked about our train-themed mysteries and why night trains are so popular in crime fiction.


Then on Saturday morning, Tony Kent and I discussed our new action thrillers, and talked about the mechanics of a thriller in Setting the Pace. This one was live, so we were getting questions from the viewing audience, which worked pretty well.



There are over a dozen panels available to watch again at the Lyme Crime YouTube page, so head over there, subscribe, and experience a book festival from the comfort of your living room.

Noireland and Crimefest

On the road!

I'm looking forward to a couple of festivals over the spring. I'll be at Crimefest in Bristol as usual, and delighted to be going to Noireland in Belfast for the first time - hope to see some of you at one of these.


Noireland
Sunday 10 March | 9:30am

Twenty-First Century Bonds

James Bond has endured as one of the great icons of the thriller genre but how has he influenced modern thrillers and what are the challenges of writing about Secret Service agents for 21st century audiences? James Swallow is the bestselling author of Nomad, whose MI6 agent, Marc Dane, is more comfortable behind the computer than punching bad guys. Asia Mackay’s Secret Service assassin, Lex Tyler, is just returning from maternity leave, determined to prove she’s still up for the job . . . just as long as she can find her Glock under the pile of nappies. And Douglas Lindsay introduces us to DI Ben Westphall, an ex-MI6 agent with a knack for getting into people’s heads. Moderated by Mason Cross.

Tickets and weekend passes available from the festival website



Crimefest
Saturday 11 May | 12:50pm

Missing: Characters Who Aren’t There Anymore

• Mason Cross
• M.J. Ford
• Cara Hunter
• S.W. Williams
• Participating Moderator: Steve Mosby

Tickets and weekend passes available from the festival website

Bloody Scotland 2016

Some pics from Bloody Scotland 2016 I've been meaning to post...

As usual, it was a great weekend, and I think this could have been the best year yet. It was nice to spend time with fellow authors, meet readers and bloggers and see some great panels.

Event highlights included Ian Rankin, Chris Brookmyre, Stuart Neville and Craig Robertson and many more. One of the best things about the weekend was finally getting to see Mark Billingham and My Darling Clementine's performance of The Other Half - a mixture of spoken word and music. As a fan of both crime and country music it was right up my street.

My own panel was a hell of a lot of fun. (Not) Born in the USA featured myself, Steve Cavanagh and GJ Brown being interrogated by Catriona Macpherson about being Brits who set our thrillers stateside. We covered a lot of ground, from how much of ourselves is in our characters, to the impact the presidential election could have on telling stories in the US, to the logic behind picking pseudonyms at the start of the alphabet.

Looking forward to next year already - big thanks to the team at Bloody Scotland who make it run so smoothly.

Encounters, Bloody Scotland and some great reviews

It's not long now until the gore-drenched staple of the literary year that is Bloody Scotland - my event is on Sunday 11 September and I'm appearing with Steve Cavanagh and GJ Brown on a fake Americans panel, which should be a lot of fun. Book tickets here, and you can win signed books from all of us by retweeting this link:

Follow & RT this tweet to win signed copies of latest from @MasonCrossBooks @GoJaBrown & @SSCav ahead of their event https://t.co/OBO4lfljGn

— Bloody Scotland (@BloodyScotland) August 17, 2016

I'm pleased to say I'm back at the fantastic Encounters Festival this year on 26 October at Coatbridge Library. Find out more about how to get your free tickets on the festival website, and check out lots of other great author events including fellow crime peeps Marnie Riches, Matt Bendoris, Sophie Hannah, Martina Cole, Theresa Talbot and Tim Weaver.

Speaking of library events, I've updated my Live Literature page over at Scottish Book Trust. If you live in Scotland, your library can book me to come and talk through this excellent scheme, so let them know about it if you would like me to visit a library near you.

As always, check the Events page on my website for new dates.

You still have until Sunday to win a signed copy of The Killing Season - all you have to do to be in with a chance is sign up to the Mason Cross Readers Club:

Join the Mason Cross Readers Club

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The Time to Kill seems to be doing pretty well, and I suddenly seem to have a big backlog of lovely reviews to link to. See below for a taste, click through to read the full reviews:

Grab This Book says:

An action adventure (and a chase story) across the USA which kept me gripped as I read. A five star thrill-fest.

Adventures in Crime Fiction Land was lukewarm about The Samaritan but finds The Time to Kill more to his liking:

The Time to Kill is a roller coaster ride of tension, a great read that touches on geo-political issues and the war on terrorism while delivering a darn good yarn. On the basis of this and book 1 (book 2 just not being my cup of tea, though as I say, there was nothing wrong with the writing) Mason Cross is certainly somebody who's writing I will watch out for.

Meanwhile, The Crime Warp comes up with a brand new suggestion of who could play Carter Blake in the movie:

Action packed and sensitive - a James Bond type book for the 2000's (Maybe if Idris Elba doesn't get the 007 role he could play Carter Blake?- just saying).

Tweet me, Idris, we'll do lunch.

Going down under, Readings picks The Time to Kill for its best new crime reads in August:

I really love picking up a special-ops-type thriller like Cross’s The Time to Kill – they’re always so supremely satisfying. Someone’s usually died in a dramatic, sneaky fashion by the end of the prologue, there’s usually travel to all kinds of international countries (or at least their bars/hotel rooms/abandoned warehouses), the main character knows how to handle themselves, someone gets their comeuppance, people slam phones down in anger – you get it, and you love it too.

Stuff says:

If you've come across either of his first two thrillers, you will know this writer is a keeper. If not, put him on your list.

Also in the Antipodes, the radio station Newstalk ZB's resident book reviewer gives Blake's latest adventure a big thumbs up. Fans of Kiwi accents like myself will want to listen to the link in full:

The story starts to really race and it's very cleverly constructed with a dual narrative ... people that like Lee Child and Jack Reacher would probably really enjoy this.

The Morning Star calls it "a superior example of the chase thriller" and goes on to say:

[Blake's] former employers are coming after him, the truce he made with them when he left no longer in force. But they trained him well and he’s not going to be easy to kill. There’s all the set-piece action you could hope for.

If those reviews make you want to read more, the novel is available from all good bookshops - go here to buy in your chosen format. If you enjoy it, taking a moment to write an Amazon or Goodreads reviews is a big help.

That's all for now... see you in Stirling?

*Meaningful pause* I have a train to catch.

I've boarded a train bound for Harrogate, and am looking forward to my first trip to the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. I'll be hosting a table at the author dinner on Saturday, and generally mingling all weekend, so if you're headed to Yorkshire, I hope to see you there.

In the meantime, here's a few more cuttings - click through to read the full reviews and check out these fine blogs.

Hopefully my journey will be less eventful than the one Carter Blake takes in The Time to Kill...

Douglas Skelton posts his review along with notices for Matt Bendoris and TF Muir:

"The previous two books in the series gave us little hints to Blake’s past, nothing much, just little nods and winks, but this time it comes raging back to haunt him. If the past is a foreign country, Blake’s past is one the government would not advise travellers to visit ... I’m a sucker for thrillers on trains. From ‘The Lady Vanishes’ through to ‘Breakheart Pass’ and, my personal favourite, ‘Narrow Margin’, there’s nothing more exciting than riding the rail and pitting your hero against the bad guys. And Cross does it incredibly well."

Civilian Reader reviews the first two books in the series - can't wait to hear the verdict on the third:

"Put simply, The Samaritan is superb. My favourite new thriller series, long may it continue! A must-read for all fans of thrillers and gripping fiction. Both of these novels are very highly recommended."


Lastly, Crime Thriller Girl selects The Time to Kill as one of her top 10 summer reads - be sure to check out the rest of the top 10!

"THE TIME TO KILL is an adrenaline rush from the first page to the last. Packed with stunning set-piece action sequences, and an emotional punch as you discover more of the rather mysterious Blake’s backstory, this cinematic action thriller is like reading Reacher crossed with Bourne plus added fabulousness."

Bloody Scotland - (Not) Born in the USA

The Bloody Scotland 2016 programme is launched today and I'm delighted to be appearing at this awesome festival for the third time.

I'm on with my Orion partner in crime Steve Cavanagh and also GJ Brown at the following event:

(Not) Born in the USA

Sunday 11 September from 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm | £7.50/£6.50

Despite being two Scots and a Northern Irishman, G. J. Brown, Steve Cavanagh and Mason Cross chose to set their crime novels in the good old US of A. Their pacy, high-octane thrillers are straight off the Hollywood playbook but have they really earned their stars and stripes? California-based Scot Catriona McPherson will find out if they can tell their APB from their BOLO. 


It should be a blast, and as a big Springsteen fan, I approve of the title.

You can book tickets for our event here, and don't forget to check out the full programme for lots of other great crime writing events and panels.

Remember to check out the events page on my website for upcoming dates - before we get to Bloody Scotland I have a couple of library events, #ScotLitFest, and of course the launch of The Time to Kill. And most of these are free, so you have no excuse not to come and heckle me at some point this summer.

Inside Job: Aye Write panel

Just a quick reminder to say I'll be moderating the Inside Job panel at Glasgow's Aye Write Book Festival, in the wonderfully grand surroundings of the Mitchell Library.

The panel features two ex-police officers and one ex-parole officer talking about how their real-life experience has influence their crime writing. It's my first time in the questioner's chair, and I'm excited about it - you can get tickets on the Aye Write website or at the door - check out the events page for more details.

The event kicks off at 6pm - hope to see you there!

See you at CrimeFest

The old events calendar is starting to fill up nicely. I'm booked in for a few different 2015 festivals and events, but some of them I'm not allowed to announce yet.

I am both allowed and delighted, however, to announce that I'll be back at CrimeFest this year.

I'll be taking part in two panels: It’s A Dangerous Life: Thrillers From Psychology To Action, along with Sabine Durrant, Paul Hardisty and Rebecca Whitney (with participating moderator Stav Sherez), and Psychopaths: Not Very Nice, Or Just Misunderstood? with James Carol, Clare Donoghue, Stuart Neville and Caro Ramsay, and moderated by yours truly.

I'm really excited to be back at CrimeFest, where I had a fantastic time last year (yes, even taking into account Criminal Mastermind), and I know this year will be great.

CrimeFest takes place in Bristol from 14 - 17 May, and you can book day or weekend passes on the festival website. It's an excellent weekend whether you're an author (published or not) or a reader.

Aye Write

Just updated events to announce the panel I'm chairing at Aye Write - Glasgow's annual book festival. Details as follows:

Denzil Meyrick, Mari Hannah & RJ Mitchell: Inside Job – Police and Probation Officers turn to Crime

22nd Apr 2015  •  6:00PM - 7:00PM  •  Mitchell Library

Three authors who had experience working in the British Justice system before turning their hands to crime fiction discuss their work

They do say when setting out to write a book you should "Write what you know’". The three authors on this crime panel all had experience working in the British Justice system before turning their hands to crime fiction.

Denzil Meyrick, author of 'Whisky From Small Glasses' and RJ Mitchell, 'Parallel Lines', were both police officers while Mari Hannah, author of the DCI Kate Daniels series ('Killing for Keeps' the most recent) worked for many years as a probation officer before she was injured on duty and took up writing.

Chaired by Mason Cross.

***
Tickets are £9 plus booking fee, available from the festival website. Looking forward to this one a lot, as it will be my first time chairing one as opposed to being one of the panellists.

I'm also excited to be at Aye Write as an author for the first time and taking part in a great festival in the beautiful Edwardian surroundings of Glasgow's Mitchell Library (where I've actually done quite a lot of writing in the past).

Bloody Scotland again

Having attended Bloody Scotland as a member of the crime-reading public this time last year, I was delighted to be invited to be part of an author panel this time around.

The weekend got off to a well-lubricated start with a drinks reception hosted by Stirling Council at the old town hospital. After that, we headed down the hill (Stirling is big on hills) to see the opening event: Chris Brookmyre and Denise Mina, who had a lively and free-flowing conversation onstage about everything from their latest work to the referendum that had taken place the previous day. Ah yes, the referendum - after the frenzied debate of the past few weeks, it was nice to spend the weekend in a bubble where people were more interested in talking about books and where to go for the next drink.

Saturday dawned and I managed to finish the second of my co-panelist's books before my event at lunchtime. After being briefly delayed by a quartet of Elvises dressed as janitors...

...(did I really just type that sentence?) I found myself sharing a stage with two other debut authors: Eva Dolan (Long Way Home) and Hania Allen (Jack in the Box). Although I think we suffered a little from being scheduled opposite the Scottish vs English crime writers football match (Scotland won convincingly), we had a pretty good-sized crowd.

We discussed a wide range of topics, from why women read more crime fiction than men, to how we come up with the characters, to how we got published. It was really interesting that the three of us had followed quite similar routes: failing to find a publisher for our first novels, experimenting with self-pubbing through Amazon, and eventually getting a deal with a traditional publisher. It could be a giant coincidence, or perhaps this is the way it happens in the 21st century. Either way: a great advertisement for not giving up at the first hurdle.

With my panel out of the way, I headed down to The Murder Room - Orion Crime's popup presence alongside Waterstones in Stirling's Albert Halls. It was great to see POD paperbacks of some of the classic noir titles Orion has been bringing back as eBooks (everything from Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male to Robert Bloch's Psycho) and to be inveigled into being photographed in a really crap John D Macdonald related pun. On the other hand, they also had gorgeous samplers of The Samaritan, alongside the new Denise Mina and Anthony Horowitz books (it was awesome being mentioned in the same breath and on the same banner as these bestsellers). 

I stuck around for the big Saturday evening event: Ian Rankin interviewing Kathy Reichs, and as a big fan of both, it was great to hear them talk shop for an hour. I particularly liked hearing about the different approaches they had to TV adaptations of their work, with Reichs exec-producing and consulting on Bones and Rankin having taken a more hands-off (to date, at least) approach to Rebus.

After dinner at a pretty good Italian place, I headed to the bar in the Highland Hotel and had some interesting conversations, including one where a few of us came up for a pitch for a romantic cat detective mystery. Late night chats in the bar are one of my favourite things about book festivals, although I think I might leave it to others to execute that particular idea.

After signing some copies of Killing Season at the Stirling branch of Waterstones, Sunday at Bloody Scotland got going with some multi-hyphenates: journo-turned-author Craig Robertson interviewing actor-turned-author John Gordon Sinclair and footballer-turned-author Arild Stavrum. I was particularly inspired by JGS's example of building a writing shed at the bottom of the garden, complete with electricity, a burglar alarm and a beer fridge.

After that, I saw Alexandra Sokoloff, Gordon Brown and James Oswald discussing the supernatural in crime novels, and a rumination about the nature of evil. I rounded the weekend off with Ian Rankin, solo this time, speaking about his career to date, his year off, and his next book.

In a competitive field, I'd have to say Bloody Scotland was narrowly my favourite festival next year. Looking forward to hitting the circuit next year with a new book.

Edinburgh

Last Thursday saw my first (and hopefully not only) engagement at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where I was appearing with the Norwegian author Thomas Enger at an event titled Crime Fiction With a Twist.

Although I’m still very much a newbie author, I had a few events under my belt going in: a couple of appearances at Waterstones, CrimeFest in Bristol, and a few smaller talks to book clubs. Despite this, I was getting a little nervous as the date approached and I started to realise just how much of a big deal the Edinburgh Book Festival is.

By some estimates, it’s the world’s largest literary festival, with over 900 authors attending over two and a bit weeks. There’s certainly an impressive and truly international roster, from George RR Martin to JK Rowling. So it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that I entered the festival on the evening of my event and checked in at the author’s yurt.

A word about the yurt: it is the coolest VIP area I’ve ever seen (in my admittedly limited experience of such rarefied environments). It’s a network of interconnecting Bedouin-style tents lined with vivid carpets and soft furnishings on which to sprawl and read a book or tap away on your laptop. There’s a wood-burning stove. There’s free food, wine and whisky. There’s relatively famous people wandering about. Most mystifyingly of all, there’s no bouncer kicking me out for being an intruder.

I’d infiltrated the yurt a few days before in the company of fellow criminal masterminds Douglas Skelton and Mark Leggatt following the Crime Writers Association lunch, so I’d managed to get over the impostor syndrome a little bit by the time I visited again. I met up with the event moderator, the Scotsman’s Susan Mansfield, and we had a chat about the event format and in what order everything would happen. We were briefly interrupted while I was taken for a photocall. Which actually was a photocall. One word: bizarre. I had to stand looking moody and interesting while half a dozen shutterbugs snapped me from every conceivable angle, politely yelling for me to look at their lens. It felt like an elaborate joke.

Mildly shaken by the experience of momentarily becoming a Kardashian, I returned to the yurt to find Thomas Enger had arrived along with his editor at Faber. I’d read Thomas’s latest book, Scarred, earlier in the week and liked it a lot. I’m looking forward to checking out the earlier books in his Henning Juul series. We were introduced, had a quick chat, and flipped a coin to see who would have to read from their book first. I won, so Thomas was on first.

A couple of minutes before 7pm, one of the event people materialised to fit us up with mics, and we were led to the Baillie Gifford Corner Theatre promptly at the start time. Did I mention Edinburgh operates like a very polite, incredibly friendly totalitarian regime? It makes clockwork itself look slow and inefficient.

Susan introduced us and, as per the coin-toss, Thomas went first. About three seconds after he started speaking, I realised I’d made a big mistake by going last, because I was going to have to follow him. His opening gambit was to tell the audience about his lead character, conjuring up the nightmare scenario of flames and death that begins Juul’s journey in the books. Once the room was holding its collective breath waiting for what came next, he read an early passage from his latest book.

My turn. Gulp. I knew I couldn’t match the drama of Thomas’s opening address, so I picked one of the most notorious scenes from The Killing Season to read: a short sequence from Elaine Banner’s point of view that ends with a somewhat grisly punchline.

Susan introduced both of us with some very nice praise and then kicked off the questions by asking us about our respective protagonists and our experiences of writing the books. The two novels are of quite different styles, so she did a great job of coming up with interesting topics that were applicable to both of us. There was an interesting discussion about political subtexts. Neither of us set out to make political points in our books, but both of us agreed that the subject matter does a lot to dictate the underlying themes.

The audience questions were great too. So far I’ve been very lucky with every single event I’ve done in that there’s never been an awkward silence before the first question. This time proved no different, with people chipping in immediately with questions for Thomas, for me and for both of us.

One of the questions that seems to come up a lot (and did again here) is about plotting. People always seem to be interested in whether you plan everything in advance or make it up as you go along. The answer for me (and I’d guess the majority of writers, if they’re honest) is “a bit of both”. I need to have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen in a book before I start, but I know I’ll change a lot in the process of writing the book itself. In particular, my endings tend to develop a lot once I have the weight of a book behind me. Good material for a blog post sometime soon, now I think of it…

By the way, nobody in attendance seemed to know what the twist in 'Crime Fiction With a Twist' was, so perhaps that in itself was the twist - eat your heart out, M Night Shyamalan.

The event flew by, and before I knew it, it was time to wind up and head over to the festival bookshop for a signing. It was great to meet some members of the audience, some of whom had read the book already and kindly said they were going cast their vote for me in the festival First Book Award [yeah – that is a shameless enticement for you to do likewise, if you would be so good].

After that, it was yurt time again for some post-event unwinding. I caught up with some friends, chatted to Lin Anderson fresh from her Society of Authors event, and probably drank a little too much of the complimentary whisky.

All in all, a very cool first festival experience. Next up: Bloody Scotland.
 

Edinburgh

I'm delighted to say I'll be appearing as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival this August. Details as follows:


***

Thursday 21 August | 7pm
Mason Cross & Thomas Enger

Crime Fiction with a Twist
Baillie Gifford Corner Theatre,
£7.00 [£5.00]

The latest super-talented Scandinavian to make an international mark, Thomas Enger has chosen the perfect moment to write about murder and political scandal in Oslo in his third Henning Juul novel, Scarred. Glasgow’s Mason Cross builds his debut, The Killing Season, around a tale of the FBI, the ‘Chicago Sniper’ and a new kind of investigator who goes by the name of Carter Blake.


Full programme available from www.edbookfest.co.uk, tickets on sale 24 June

***


I'm really excited to be part of the world's biggest book and writing festival - it's a fantastic boost for a new author like me, and I can't wait to meet some of the other guests in the legendary writers' yurt.

Another cool thing is that all debut novelists are eligible for the festival's First Book Award. The book which receives the most votes from readers wins, and better still - anyone who casts a vote will be entered into a draw to win all 43 books on the list!

So if you've read and enjoyed The Killing Season, I'd really appreciate it if you'd vote for me! You can vote online via this form on the festival website, or by filling out a card at the festival.

Bloody hell...

I'm very pleased to announce I'll be doing a panel at Bloody Scotland this year.

I'll be appearing with Eva Dolan and Hania Allen at 1:30pm on Saturday September 20 in the McClaren Suite of the Stirling Highland Hotel. We're all relative newbies, so I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about.

You can browse the full programme online now - there's a fantastic lineup including Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs, Tony Parsons, John Gordon Sinclair, Louise Welsh and Sophie Hannah, plus the usual welcome suspects like Mark Billingham, Denise Mina, Chris Brookmyre, Craig Robertson and Alex Gray.

I had a great time as a paying customer last year, and am looking forward to being a part of what is a fantastic festival for the first time this year.

CrimeFest - Part 2: 2 Fest 2 Furious

This is part 2 of my hazy recollections of CrimeFest 2014. If you haven't read it yet, you may want to check out part 1 first. If, on the other hand, you enjoy elliptical non-linear narratives, you should be fine starting here.

Saturday

Another early morning panel, but another great lineup of co-panellists to compensate.

Meg Gardiner did a great job moderating the panel on Name Your Price: The Hired Gun, featuring yours truly along with Hanna Jameson (Girl Seven), Mark Allen Smith (The Confessor) and John Gordon Sinclair (Blood Whispers), whose name may be familiar to some outside of crime writing.

we make a very thoughtful-looking panel here I think

We'd been gathered together, as the name suggests, because we specialise in protagonists who work on their own and have moral codes ranging from grey to pitch black. Lots of stimulating discussion about the ethics of vigilantism and the perks of writing a character who operates outside of the system. Everyone else on the panel was at least on their second book, but they were all gentle with the newbie, which was much appreciated.

John Gordon Sinclair probed me about Blake's 'black, white or grey' classification system for prospective jobs, and even tweeted the following later on:

@MasonCrossBooks straight to the top of my reading pile. My only purchase at crimefest bookshop yesterday. pic.twitter.com/bMubi6BU7j
— John GordonSinclair (@Jgs_x) May 18, 2014

...which was very nice of him, and I'm pleased he was intrigued enough to pick it up. Or maybe it was just the fact that as a fellow Glaswegian I was the only one whose accent he understood. I'd planned to read his anyway, and hopefully I'll make it along to his event in Glasgow in a couple of weeks, so maybe now we can compare notes.

After the panel, I caught up with Crime Thriller Girl for an interview following on from her fantastic review of The Killing Season earlier in the month. I can't remember every question we covered (hey - it was the morning), but there were some good ones I hadn't heard before. Discussion ranged from my favourite book to how and when I write, to who should play Carter Blake if there's ever a movie. I wouldn't dream of spoiling the interview by revealing the answers to any of these questions here. I did, however, reveal my nerdy attachment to Excel and PowerPoint as novel planning tools.

I walked back to the hotel for a quick rest and to do a bit of studying for my specialist subject on Criminal Mastermind the following day, then headed back to the convention hotel to hang out in the bar before seeing Mark Billingham in his guest of honour slot. Billingham was great value as always, and his new book sounds great. I've heard the anecdote of him stalking David Morrissey to play Thorne before, but it's a great story. And probably, as Craig Robertson said when I suggested following his example, the only time in history that approach has ever worked.

Having said that, if Hugh Jackman is reading this, drop me an email.

I caught up with Angela from Orion and Helen Giltrow again at our table at the gala dinner, and was also introduced to AK Benedict, whose supernatural thriller The Beauty of Murder has been on my to-read list for a while. The food was just okay this time, but the company was brilliant again, and we conversed about everything from the recent James Bond audiobooks to Eminem. Also the surprising number of great Keanu Reeves movies. There's more than you probably think...

Sunday 

I took advantage of my only day without an early panel to stay in bed a little later. If I'd known the full horror of what was to come, I might never have left the bed...

Okay that's putting it a bit strongly, but only a bit. A lot of regular CrimeFest-goers had been warning me that Criminal Mastermind was brutal, but until I was sitting in that black swivel chair being interrogated by Maxim Jakubowski, I didn't know what brutal was.

Courtesy of photographer / question-setter Ali Karim

I was on with three other writers: previous Mastermind champ Paul Johnston, who chose Dashiell Hammett as his specialist subject; Kate Ellis, who chose Josephine Tey; and Susan Moody who picked one of my favourite authors: Raymond Chandler. Needless to say, all three were lovely. I've yet to meet a crime writer I dislike, actually, at this or any other event I've been to.

Round one (specialists subjects) actually went pretty well for me. Fellow Reacher Creature Ali Karim had been in charge of setting the questions, so I knew I had to bring my A-game. I scored 9 points with 2 passes on Lee Child and the Jack Reacher novels, putting me into second place behind Paul. But that's when the trouble started. Because there was a round two. A general crime round.

Now, I'm reasonably well-read and retain useless information pretty easily, but these questions were tough. As I sat there racking up pass after pass after pass and shedding flop-sweat like a garden sprinkler, I actually started to worry that the powers that be were going to kick me out of being a crime writer for my base ignorance. It wasn't so much that I didn't know any of the answers, it was that I couldn't even make an educated guess at any of the answers.

The buzzer went, and Maxim had started so he'd finish, and thank God, it was a question I knew the answer to: the full names of the husband and wife team that make up Nicci French. Round over: 1 point and about a hundred million passes.

The only consolation is that everybody else found the general round fiendishly tough as well (with the exception of Paul, who managed to extend his lead handily). When the scores were totalled, the three non-winners were very close together. I tied for second-place with Kate, but was knocked down to third as she had accumulated less passes than me. Paul Johnston has my respect and awe for triumphing in his second Criminal Mastermind. As for me? Once is definitely enough.

I had a much-needed drink in the bar, caught up with Craig Robertson and Ali Karim, waved at Chris Carter and met Neil Broadfoot and James Oswald for the first time. I also chatted to Katherine Armstrong from Faber and discovered that we'd both been to the same university and that Faber publish Thomas Enger, who I'm going to be doing an event with later this year. She kindly sent me a copy of one of Thomas's books and also the debut novel of one of her authors... who happens to be one John Gordon Sinclair. Synchronicity is nice.

Thinking about it in the sun, holding a frosty pint, I realised that the greatest thing about CrimeFest is that for a whole weekend, it had been impossible not to get into interesting conversations with interesting people: writers, readers, bloggers, editors, publicists, agents. About books and publishing, of course, but also about movies, music, politics, sport, Keanu Reeves, the UK witness protection program, and all kinds of common interests besides. I learned tons and met some new friends, and I even got a few people to read my book. A worthwhile if occasionally humbling experience.

CrimeFest - Part 1

I had an awesome time at my first CrimeFest.

Wait... is it CrimeFest or just Crimefest? Let's go with CrimeFest, because I like camel case.

Anyway, I met lots of cool people, consumed more beer than I've managed in the rest of the year put together, and even flogged a copy of The Killing Season to a star of stage and screen. This is going to be a mammoth post for me, so I'm going to split it into two parts. The first one will cover Thursday and Friday, the second Saturday and Sunday.

Thursday

I flew down from Glasgow on Thursday afternoon, having to brave the airport bus link (seriously, how is it 2014 and we don't have a rail link to Scotland's major airport, or buses that take debit cards for that matter?). After a short delay, the flight down to Bristol was uneventful and smooth, which is just as well because I'm the world's worst flyer. After checking into my hotel (the Radisson Blu, very nice) and making fists with my toes on the carpet...

one for the Die Hard fans

 ...I made my way across the canal to the Bristol Marriot, venue for CrimeFest, and quickly located familiar faces Craig Robertson, Michael J Malone, Douglas Skelton and Ali Karim. It was great to relax with a beer, chat to familiar faces and meet some new ones.

The Bristol Marriot

I said hi to Mark Billingham, who'd given me some great advice when I was struggling with writing the second Carter Blake book, and then someone introduced me to Barry Forshaw, who was kind enough to say my book had something of a critical buzz around it. I also met Jake Kerridge of the Telegraph, the man in charge of my panel the following day. I took it easy on the bar, and headed back to my hotel around 12:30 for an earlyish night, because I was on at 9am the following day.

Friday

I hauled myself out of bed and got ready for the panel with several cups of coffee. I was amused later to see Lucy Santos of the CWA had tweeted that I was looking bright and breezy.

Jake Kerridge was moderating my panel (the second of three over the weekend) on Debut Authors: An Infusion of Fresh Blood, and I was on with four other newbies: M.J. Arlidge (Eenie Meenie), Kate Griffin (Kitty Beck and the Music Hall Murders), Colette McBeth (Precious Thing) and Jake Woodhouse (After the Silence). I quickly remembered that the best and worst thing about these book festivals is you end up with tons of new novels you want to read. I genuinely wanted to read all of these books after hearing their authors talk about them, but probably Kate's most of all, because I'm a sucker for Victorian-era mystery.

Of all of us, Jake Woodhouse and I were probably the freshest of the fresh blood, with our debuts coming out within a day of each other at the end of last month. It was great to chat to the others and hear about their backgrounds, their journeys to publication and their experiences of being published for the first time. I think I managed to be reasonably lucid for a non-morning person, and I talked a bit about getting an agent and thinking about the commercial appeal of my book. Jake (moderator Jake that is) got a big laugh from the audience when he read the current FAQ section from my website out in full:

Q: Do you have a lot of material for the FAQ section?      

A: Not as yet, no.

Which reminded me I really need to update that now I'm getting actual questions.

 

After the panel there was a signing, during which I managed to write the wrong date while signing a copy of The Killing Season. The gentleman concerned was incredibly understanding, and magnanimously suggested the mistake just made his copy unique. I've been known to use this excuse myself: the Japanese call it a wabi: a tiny flaw that emphasises the individuality of the piece. Note to self: keep a calendar nearby at all times.

I visited the Foyles festival bookshop and was pleased to see a familiar cover on display...

the hardback version too!

Sorry, I'll get over taking pics of my book in bookshops someday. Perhaps. Okay, probably not gonna happen.

I settled back to be in the audience for another couple of panels after that: one on Death in High Heels: Women as Victims and another on The Modern Thriller. The first one was a heated but very well-behaved debate about the prevalence of young pretty women as victims in crime fiction and what it says about society (and readers of thrillers, I suppose). I was particularly interested to discover that the typical reader for books that feature young female victims is, perhaps surprisingly, young females. The panel on modern thrillers was also lively, with an eye-opening anecdote from Simon Kernick about being briefly kidnapped as a teen.

After that I caught up with an old friend for lunch and then headed back to the bar at the Marriott. On the way, my editor tweeted that I had been reviewed in the Daily Mail - my first review in a national newspaper, and thankfully they liked it.

The usual suspects were at the bar of course, and the supernaturally-organised Angela McMahon from Orion had arrived and introduced me to fellow debut Orion author Helen Giltrow - whose book The Distance has just been published - and Harry Bingham, who is more established than either of us, with a whole series of DC Fiona Griffiths novels. We went to dinner at the nearby Hotel du Vin where we spent a few hours over great food and wine and conversation. Again, it's always fascinating to note the similarities and the differences between how other authors approach writing a book. Also brilliant to talk to Angela about the exciting life of a publicist and just how many Ian Rankin enquiries she has to field on your average day even when he's taking a year off.

I would have loved to head back to the bar after dinner, but I had another 9am panel the next day.

Come back tomorrow to find out all about the Hired Guns panel and my bruising encounter with a certain black leather swivel chair in part 2...

See you in Bristol...

This weekend, I'm looking forward to my first trip to a book festival where I'm actually on the bill.

CrimeFest is the one of the biggest events in the UK crime calendar, and is listed by the Guardian and Independent as one of the world's best crime-writing festivals

This year there's a great lineup featuring Mark Billingham as guest of honour, and I can't wait to see some of the friends I've made already on the scene as well as some new faces.

If you're going to be in Bristol, you have not one but three chances to see yours truly on a panel:


Debut Authors: An Infusion of Fresh Blood Friday 16 May | 9:00am - 9:50am
Moderated by Jake Kerridge, featuring M.J. Arlidge, Mason Cross, Kate Griffin, Colette McBeth, Jake Woodhouse


Name Your Price: The Hired Gun
Saturday 17 May | 9:00am - 9:50am
Moderated by Meg Gardiner, featuring Mason Cross, Hanna Jameson, John Gordon Sinclair and Mark Allen Smith


Criminal Mastermind
Sunday 18 May | 1:00pm- 1:50pm
Quiz Master Maxim Jakubowski, featuring authors and specialist subjects: Mason Cross (Lee Child), Kate Ellis (Josephine Tey), Paul Johnston (Dashiell Hammett), Susan Moody (Raymond Chandler)

If you're going to be there, please come up and say hello. Outside of the above times, I'm likely to be in the bar.

Ninety-six days

I had intended to blog on Monday to mark the point when it was exactly 100 days until The Killing Season is published on April 24th. Lots of things got in the way this week, so instead I'm going to mark the all-important 96 day point.

There are lots of things to keep me busy over that time. I'm currently doing the rewrite on the second Carter Blake book. Once I've finished that and sent it back to my editor, I think I'll blog about the experience of writing a sequel, and the unique challenges of writing That Difficult Second Novel.

The website is up and running now, and although it's fairly sparse at the moment it means I have somewhere to add news and events in the run-up to the end of April. Talking (typing?) of which, I've already been asked to come to a couple of crime and literary festivals, which will be fantastic. I'll post the details here and on the events page when everything's finalised, but for now I can say I'll definitely be in Bristol for CrimeFest in May. Looking forward to catching up with some of the readers and authors I've already met and saying hello to some new ones.

My editor got in touch yesterday to say that, several months after Orion put in the request, we've been granted permission to use a couple of Paul Simon lyrics in the book. I'd resigned myself to doing without and had stripped them out of the final version, but I'm happy to be able to include them after all. I've always liked song lyrics in crime fiction, I think that (used sparingly), they can really add something to a book. On more than one occasion, I've bought an album because I liked the way an artist's words were sampled in a novel. Which I think is a pretty sensible argument for allowing portions of songs to be used by authors free under fair use, but I guess this is where I differ with the record industry.

The final exciting thing on the horizon is unrelated to the book. After well over ten years of intermittently submitting short stories and having them politely rejected, I've sold my first story to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It's not a Carter Blake story, and in fact it's a story I only submitted on a whim, really not thinking it would get anywhere. Not for the first time I've realised that I have no idea what's going to work and what isn't. Just goes to show it's always worth throwing your hat in the ring, and that it pays to be persistent.

Long before I ever tried to write a full-length novel, my ambition was to sell a story to one of the big mystery magazines. EQMM has published so many legends from Agatha Christie to Stanley Ellin to Stephen King to Michael Connelly, and it's daunting (in a good way) to think I'll be joining that list.

When I know which issue it's going to be published in, I'll post the details here. It's beyond cool to be selected for a magazine with such a storied history, and I can't wait to see the story beneath one of those fantastic old-school pulp covers. Maybe even one a little like this classic:

Bloody Scotland

I've been working flat out on the latest draft of the new Carter Blake book (the one that comes after The Killing Season), so I haven't had time to blog about my trip to Bloody Scotland. It was a lot of fun, and I even managed to get some writing done in between talks and beers. I've been to a few one-off events at literary festivals before, but this was my first full-blown crime writing festival.

It's a pretty new festival, in only its second year, but is already attracting attendees and big-name writers in droves. The first thing that really struck me was how well organised it was. Teams of volunteers on hand to direct you to the correct suite in the correct venue, talks that started and finished perfectly on time, well-ordered signings. Generally the operation seemed to work like a well-oiled AK47.

The second thing that struck me was how... integrated the whole thing felt. In a good way. There was no real attempt at demarcation between rank and file paying customers and the talent. Big-name authors were milling about the venues and buying drinks in the bar. There was no velvet rope separating the readers from the writers. Which was just as well, because almost everybody I met was both. I met a lot of cool people, both fans and authors, and got some great ideas and advice.

The centrepiece of the festival was the Scottish Crime Novel of the Year dinner on Saturday night. The guest authors were sprinkled liberally around the tables, so that everyone had a 'name' writer at the table. I got Craig Robertson, and took full advantage of the fact by interrogating him about the best way to be a working crime writer. Craig gave me some great advice and told me that as a writer with an agent and a book deal, I'm now eligible to join the Crime Writers Association. By coincidence, I had recently picked up Craig's Cold Grave, which has now moved to the next slot on my to-read list.

I went along to see my fellow Orion author Denise Mina talking about her experiences working for DC Comics, and particularly adapting Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for the medium. Denise was great as always (intimidatingly great - she could pretty much give up the writing and get paid for going around the world giving interesting talks), and it was interesting to hear about the process of adapting a novel into the graphic medium and the importance of being nice to artists. Interestingly, the crowd was mostly crime readers rather than comic readers, and Denise had to explain to them the age-old split between Marvel and DC fans. I've actually never really been firmly on one side or the other, and I can't understand people that refuse to read a book purely based on which company publishes it, but there you go. If you push me, I guess I'm a Marvel guy, but I like Batman better than any Marvel character.

Mark Billingham and Stuart Neville teamed up for a great event called Masters of the Dark, and the topics ranged from the pros and cons of killing off a series character to real-life policing anecdotes that would sound ridiculous if you tried to put them in a work of fiction. As someone once said, just because it happened doesn't mean it's believeable.

I went along to see Craig Robertson (along with Chris Carter this time) for a fascinating talk on serial killers, both fictional and real. It was great timing for me, as I'm currently finishing off a serial killer novel, and it was both comforting and alarming to discover there are other people who sit around all day thinking up ingenious ways to get away with murder. I'd love to read a medical thesis someday on the crossover between serial killers and crime fiction authors.

The festival closed with the main attraction: Lee Child. I've been a massive fan of Lee's since I picked up my first Reacher book a few years ago, and he didn't disappoint in person. He covered a lot of ground onstage, from his own life story to the deceptive heights of Hollywood stars. As a writer, I was particularly interested in what he had to say about the genesis of Reacher, and how so much of what is fundamental about the character (his lack of a supporting cast, freedom from a drinking problem, his approach to laundry, even his name) came about as a reaction to a lot of the existing conventions in crime fiction. He also gave us a glimpse into Reacher's future, and at an eventual end-point to the series.

I stuck around for the signing and got to meet Lee in person. He was friendly, approachable and cool, like most of the thriller authors I've met. I got him to sign Never Go Back for my wife, who's also a big Reacher fan (she had stayed at home with the kids to let me go to the festival, so I thought she really deserved it).

After that, I got back in the car and headed home to get back to work on book two. Killing Season will have been out for a few months this time next year, so it would be nice to come back to the festival as a published author, as well as a fan.