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I'm still recovering from the exhausting, but fruitful Festival of Writing 2015 and having now sent off my manuscript to the 3 agents there who wanted to see it, I can return to this blog...
There was an extremely useful panel discussion about writing crime fiction with agents, Phil Patterson from Marjacq Scripts and Euan Thorneycroft from AM Heath, Claire McGowan, writer and lecturer and Alison Hennessey, Senior Crime Editor at Harvill Secker, who publishes my very favourite author in translation, Jo Nesbo.
A stream of well regarded crime writers dead and alive were mentioned and my pen could hardly keep up: R.D. Wingfield (who died in 2007 and wrote the DI Jack Frost crime fiction series); Paula Hawkins who wrote the highly successful The Girl on the Train, which has been made into a film not yet released; Gillian Flynn who wrote Gone Girl and Dark Places, Sophie Hannah who has a string of successes to her name, CL Taylor who wrote The Lie and The Accident, Emma Healey who wrote Elizabeth is Missing and Helen Fitzgerald who wrote Dead Lovely and at least 10 adult and young adult thrillers. The message was clearly read and learn! (Or read 'em and weep!)
I heard that police procedurals are great, if you have an interesting main character that people will want to go on reading about, but they are hard to write without having a clichéd troubled hard drinking lonely policeman at their core. Alison Hennessey was interested in what people wanted to say in their books, rather than the crime solving per se. She wanted to be introduced to an unfamiliar world and to learn things she hadn't known before. For her the writing needed to be high calibre, intellectual.
They all decided that there was an appetite for Gothic thrillers and that ghost stories are great, but they don't see enough of them- or well written ones.
To be continued...
There was an extremely useful panel discussion about writing crime fiction with agents, Phil Patterson from Marjacq Scripts and Euan Thorneycroft from AM Heath, Claire McGowan, writer and lecturer and Alison Hennessey, Senior Crime Editor at Harvill Secker, who publishes my very favourite author in translation, Jo Nesbo.
A stream of well regarded crime writers dead and alive were mentioned and my pen could hardly keep up: R.D. Wingfield (who died in 2007 and wrote the DI Jack Frost crime fiction series); Paula Hawkins who wrote the highly successful The Girl on the Train, which has been made into a film not yet released; Gillian Flynn who wrote Gone Girl and Dark Places, Sophie Hannah who has a string of successes to her name, CL Taylor who wrote The Lie and The Accident, Emma Healey who wrote Elizabeth is Missing and Helen Fitzgerald who wrote Dead Lovely and at least 10 adult and young adult thrillers. The message was clearly read and learn! (Or read 'em and weep!)
I heard that police procedurals are great, if you have an interesting main character that people will want to go on reading about, but they are hard to write without having a clichéd troubled hard drinking lonely policeman at their core. Alison Hennessey was interested in what people wanted to say in their books, rather than the crime solving per se. She wanted to be introduced to an unfamiliar world and to learn things she hadn't known before. For her the writing needed to be high calibre, intellectual.
They all decided that there was an appetite for Gothic thrillers and that ghost stories are great, but they don't see enough of them- or well written ones.
To be continued...
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