OK, it was not without its occasional moments of drama, like the time I was accidentally locked into the building one night and had to climb out of an upper-storey window and then scramble across rooftops to freedom. Or the time, one week into a new job, when the boss said, “Right, we’re off on holiday next week. If the bailiffs arrive while we’re away don’t let them take anything…”

But generally, the biggest no-nos were arriving late or sneaking off early. People didn’t even leave their desks to have a smoke. In fact, I used to work sandwiched between two people who both chain-smoked and would leave cigarettes burning in their ashtrays while they nipped out on some errand. They didn’t take kindly to me stubbing out the ciggies in their absence. My excuse was if I had to smoke passively while they were around, then I was damned if I was going to do it while they weren’t.

My, how things have changed. (Eeh, I remember when all this were fields, etc.)

And when I set up in business on my own as a freelance photojournalist back in 1988 my word processor was an Amstrad 9512 that had no internal memory and required the insertion of a Start-of-Day disk to remember what it was in the mornings.

If there was a mouse anywhere near it, it would have looked like this:

I was pretty technologically advanced by owning a computer at all, I can tell you! Not to mention my Motorola brick mobile phone. (Groovy, man.)

Distractions were simpler in those days. They involved staring out of the window:

And a game of solitaire meant shuffling the deck before you began:

Early computer games were not exactly Fortnite:

But now we’re overwhelmed with daily distractions. If it wasn’t for rapidly encroaching deadlines, I could spend so long getting side-tracked every day that I could practically walk like a crab:

But that can sometimes be a good thing, and I thought I’d share with you some of my favourite time-wasting sites:

They Fight Crime!
“He’s an immortal guerrilla boxer on the wrong side of the law. She’s a mistrustful tomboy former first lady who dreams of becoming Elvis. They fight crime!” Random pairings to get your imagination going.

Internet Movie DataBase
Always on my favourites’ list for when I want to know obscure facts. For instance, did you know that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director of The Tourist is 6’ 8¾”?

I’m hopeless at crosswords, but Sudoku, I can’t leave alone. The link goes to my favourite online version.

So help me out here—or sink me deeper—what procrastination aids do you use to while away the, erm, I mean to help you concentrate while you’re mulling over a storyline?

This week’s Word of the Week is hamartia, meaning a fatal flaw. From the Greek hamartánein, meaning to miss the mark or to err. It is most associated with Greek tragedy and refers to flaws or defects of character which bring about the downfall of a hero. It can also refer to random accidents beyond the hero’s control, with devastating consequences.
(Readers may decide for themselves which is the more apt interpretation in light of this week’s dramatic turn of events in UK politics.)
You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

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The reason for actually taking a day away from my computer keyboard may sound like a strange one, although they reckon people do things as a hobby that you could not possibly pay them enough to do as a job.

I shall be attending the Dubarry British Eventing Horse Trials, being held at Eland Lodge at Draycott-in-the-Clay, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. Not competing, I hasten to add, nor as a spectator. Instead, I’ll be fence judging on the cross-country phase of the event.

Well, I did say it might sound like a slightly strange way to spend a Sunday, but each to their own.

It’s a very long time since I actually took part in any kind of equestrian event, but I still enjoy watching the combination of bravery and skill demanded by eventing at any level. And it’s very satisfying to know I’m one of the large number of small cogs that help the day run smoothly.

It’s a nice theory, anyway.

Safety First
The main reason you have fence judges for a cross-country event is for safety. We are there to ensure the course is clear of spectators when the next rider approaches our obstacle, and to be immediately on hand if anything goes awry.

The last time I was doing this, I managed to catch two loose horses who’d dumped their riders. One had been attempting the fence before, and one the fence after. We also ended up summoning the paramedics—always on stand-by at competitions like this—for a fallen rider, and making sure she was clear of the course as soon as it was decided she was OK to move.

Horse riding, it has to be said, is one of the most dangerous pastimes you can indulge in, along with skiing and motorcycling. What does it say about me that I’ve been known to do all three? (Not simultaneously.) Even with the advent of body armour and air jackets for riders these days, it’s still a risky thing to do. For those who haven’t come across one before, an air jacket looks like a waistcoat, but as soon as rider and horse are separated, an air canister triggers so it explodes into a very tight life jacket around the rider’s ribcage, and prevents the ribs being crushed in a rotational fall.

Direction and speed
The fence judges are also there, of course, to make sure that each competitor attempts the correct fence, takes the correct route if the obstacle has several parts, and doesn’t incur any penalties.

Because cross country fences, unlike show jumps, are semi-permanent obstacles, you cannot easily alter the size of them between classes, so there are often several fences of differing heights in the same spot. If the rider has walked the course beforehand, they should know which one they need to aim for. If they need a memory jogger, the fence numbers are colour-coded for each class. But there are plenty who still get it wrong.

Jumping the wrong fence, and not going back to correct the mistake by jumping the right one, results in elimination from the event.

To stop people galloping madly at big cross-country fences in an attempt to finish the course fastest, there is an optimum time. Most riders will try to get as close to this as possible. Going too fast will not only exhaust the horse, but for every second in excess of 15 seconds under the optimum time, the rider scores 0.4 penalties. The same penalties per second are scored for every second over the optimum time.

Refusals
By its nature, a cross-country course is a test of horse and rider. Often fences will be very narrow, and must be jumped between the flags. If the rider catches a flag with their foot, for instance, and knocks it over, it’s up to the fence judges to decide if a genuine attempt was made to jump the obstacle, or whether it should count as a run-out, scoring 20 penalties, and requiring the rider to re-present to the fence.

A second stop at the same obstacle scores 40 penalties. Three stops and you’re out, unless it’s a novice event, and then they tend to let you keep going, as long as you don’t hold up the competitors coming along behind you at timed intervals.

In the smaller and more novice classes, there can be a bit of dithering before a fence. This often happens where the landing side is much lower than the take-off side, or when jumping into water, if the horse isn’t very experienced.

Providing the horse doesn’t take a step back with any foot, and the rider doesn’t circle away, even jumping from a standstill may still result in a clear. It’s not to be recommended, though, and it will make it very difficult to meet that optimum time, which relies on a reasonable forward pace.

Of course, if we have the typical British weather—ie, downpour—it can make the ground fairly treacherous. Fortunately, many of Eland’s fences have all-weather take-off and landing areas, so even if it chucks it down, that’s one less thing to worry about.

At one time, cross-country fences were fixed timber, and hitting one had nasty results. These days, they have come up with frangible pins, which allow the fence to partially collapse—enough, hopefully, for the horse to recover its balance without incident.

So, think of me today, with whistle (for clearing a path), stopwatch (in case someone is held on the course, so we can time their stop and re-start delay), radio, and clipboard. I shall also have bug spray, sun cream, a rain jacket, and a folding chair.

For their part, Eland provides all their event volunteers with breakfast, a packed lunch, and supper at the end of the day, as well as flasks of tea and coffee, and—if it’s a fine day—even the occasional ice cream.

How have you been spending your Sunday?

This week’s Word of the Week is nudiustertian, meaning the day before yesterday. It comes from the Latin nudius tertius—today is the third day. Coined by Nathaniel Ward (1578-1652) in his work, The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America of 1647.

Events
I was delighted to be interviewed this week by fellow crime author Dawn Brookes for her podcast series The All Things Books Show. Catch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/NFxEm4KHGaY.

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post Take a Fence appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

We talked about my role as Toastrix at this year’s event, about the role of panel moderator, and explored my crime thriller portfolio, which (as well as a couple of standalone novels and a feast of short stories) comprises:

Charlie Fox Series
This features ex-Special Forces turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox—a prequel and thirteen titles to date. Charlie Fox is often likened to Jack Reacher, with a similar brand of high-octane action. Lee Child himself described Charlie Fox as “real, true, and authentic.”

Lakes Thriller Series
More recently, I have published the first two books in my new Lakes Thriller Series, featuring CSI Grace McColl and Detective Nick Weston. Described as “a remarkable combination of police procedural and psychological thriller“, the series is set in the beautiful English Lake District, a World Heritage Site, near to where I have my home.

Blake & Byron Series
He’s a career copper at a personal and professional crossroads. She’s a con artist who came up from the streets and has survived by her wits. What happens when their lives collide? Mind-blowing suspense thriller, The Last Time She Died, is the first in this brand-new thriller series.

The post High Octane Thrillers & Female Leads appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

The good guys usually win out in the end.

In real life, sadly, that doesn’t happen nearly often enough. And it seems all the sadder when something terrible happens and, as the story unfolds, you realise that it could have been so easily prevented, if links had been made, and procedures followed.

Gracie Spinks
In April 2020, twenty-three-year-old Gracie Spinks started working at an eCommerce company in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Her supervisor there was a man called Michael Sellers.

Thirty-five-year-old Sellers quickly became “infatuated” with Gracie, according to her mother, Alison Heaton, and pestered her to go out with him. Gracie was apparently not interested in a relationship, but was worried about how to tell Sellers to go away when he was technically her boss. Eventually, she agreed to a meal, but had to block him after enduring endless messages and phone calls, as well as him constantly asking work colleagues where Gracie was, and what she was doing.

In early 2021, Gracie went to see to her horse at the field in Duckmanton, five miles away from her home, only to find Sellers sitting in his car waiting for her. The car was the same model as one belonging to Gracie’s brother, which she had once remarked about liking.

Scared by this development, Gracie reported Sellers to the company they both worked for. The company suspended Sellers and advised Gracie to go to the police.

He said, she said.
The police came to see Gracie at home and took a statement, telling her they would then be going to see Sellers to instruct him to leave her alone. But, according to Gracie’s parents, they later learned that when the police went to Sellers’ home, he told them he was in a relationship with Gracie.

It appears that despite the conflicting statements, nobody came back to Gracie for clarification. This seems outrageous to me. If I reported my car as having been stolen, and the police caught a bloke driving it, who said he’d borrowed the car with my consent, surely the police would ask me for an explanation? Or would they simply take him at his word?

At the very least, telling Gracie what Sellers claimed would have given her additional warning of his obsessional behaviour.

This was not the only missed opportunity to warn Gracie of the dangers that lay ahead.

‘Don’t Lie!’
Around the end of April 2021, Anna White and her partner were walking past the field where Gracie kept her horse when they found a backpack-type bag. When they examined the contents, Ms White immediately handed the bag to the police. “It was obvious that it was going to be used to kill someone.”

Contents of Michael Sellers’ backpack.
Photo courtesy of Ms White.

The bag contained several large knives, a hammer, and a small axe, as well as Viagra and a note saying ‘DON’T LIE!’ The weapons were all new—so new, in fact, that the credit card receipt for them was also in the bag.

The receipt should have led the police straight to the household of Michael Sellers.

Instead, the police indicated to Ms White that the bag was probably going to be put into Lost Property. “I was gobsmacked.”

By coincidence, Ms White’s daughter also worked for the same company as Gracie, and said that Sellers was known as “Creepy Mike” by various female employees.

Had the police spoken to Sellers’ work, they would have discovered his pattern of stalking behaviours with other female members of staff.

Had the bag of weapons been connected with Sellers, he might have been stopped before he could escalate his obsession with Gracie.

Had Gracie’s family been told about the bag and its contents, her parents say they would have made sure she never went to see to her horse unaccompanied.

No Happy Ending
Instead, in June 2021, Gracie was discovered in the paddock with her horse, dying of a stab wound to the neck that was so severe it had severed her cervical spine as well as both her carotid artery and her jugular vein. A man, believed to be Sellers, was seen running away.

Shortly afterwards, Sellers himself was found dead nearby.

Derbyshire Police referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and announced it was appointing a stalking coordinator.

Gracie’s parents began a campaign for Gracie’s Law, to ask the government to provide additional resources to police for officers to deal specifically with stalking complaints. By January this year, they had gained a hundred and five thousand signatures to a petition in support.

The matter was debated in Westminster in January, led by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi. “It can’t go on like this. The government must now recognise that we have an epidemic on our hands.

“If you are mugged or burgled you are not asked to provide evidence, but if you are a victim of stalking you are, the onus is put on the victim.”

Fine words, but can Gracie’s Law now galvanise the police to be more effective in the fight against violence to women?

Richard Spinks and daughter Gracie.
Her parents are now campaigning for Gracie’s Law.

This week’s Word of the Week is animadvert, meaning to pass criticism on, or to speak out against, from the Latin advertere, to notice or take cognisance of, or to blame or punish, and animus, the mind.

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post Cause of Death: Stalking appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

Want to go somewhere you can cuddle a hedgehog while you sip your cappuccino? You need to go to the Harry establishment in the Roppongi district. Feel the urge to pick up a penguin while you, er, pick up a Penguin**? Then the Penguin Bar at Ikebukuro is the place for you.

And if it’s the world of Lewis Carroll you crave, take a trip down the rabbit hole at the Alice in Fantasy Book restaurant in Kubukicho, Shinjuku.

But in April this year, a new themed café opened in the Koenji neighbourhood. The Manuscript Writing Café is run by Tykuya Kawai, who is also a technical writer. It is intended not only to give writers, artists, editors and proofreaders somewhere to work, but as much encouragement as they feel they need to get on with it.

The small café is open afternoon through evening from 1pm to 7pm. It is situated inside a recording and broadcasting studio—Koenji Sankakuchitai—so is open only when the studio itself isn’t in use.

Patrons may book one of the ten seats available if they are actively working on a writing project, but this can be anything from a novel to a manga storyboard. The only other requirement is that you must state what you aim to achieve while you’re there, and how long you think it will take you.

Kawai charges by time—150 Japanese yen for the first thirty minutes ($1.18/£0.93) and 300 yen per hour after that. For that, you get an unlimited supply of tea or filter coffee, and chairs that do not encourage a relaxed slouch. On the technical side, the café provides high-speed wi-fi, a range of docks and chargers, and even cooling stands so your laptop won’t overheat, even if your brain begins to fry.

Customers are, apparently, not allowed to leave before the project is completed, and can request various levels of ‘encouragement’ from Kawai. This varies from just enquiring into progress at the end of the allotted session, to hovering behind the writer’s chair and, presumably, giving the occasional quiet tut. There is no music unless the writer puts on headphones, and the ambient noise from outside is enough, it seems, to provide a subtle stimulus.

I know many writers who do their best work in local cafés. There’s something about the background buzz that allows them to concentrate far better than being at home. Plus, being away from home means not being distracted by any one of a dozen different domestic tasks that are clearing their throats on the sidelines.

Personally, I like any working environment. If I’m at home, I’ll work at my desk, outside in the garden, with my feet up on the sofa (if I don’t get pinned down by a cat) or in bed. Last week, I had two appointments in a town about ten miles away that were just too far apart to leave me at a bit of a loose end between them, but not far enough to make it worthwhile making two trips.

I sat in the sunshine with a notebook, and made a decent amount of plotting progress.

What about you? Do you like the sound of the Manuscript Writing Café, or would it be your worst nightmare? The only drawback, as far as I can see, is the fact that it doesn’t actually serve food.

This week’s Word of the Week is cunctator, from Latin meaning delayer or procrastinator. It was applied as an agnomen or honorary surname to Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, a third-century Roman statesman and general. Fabius was a magistrate (censor), consul, and dictator of Rome, who faced Hannibal’s forces during the Second Punic War. His initial tactics of avoiding direct confrontation against a larger and more formidable foe gained him the title Cunctator, initially intended as an insult. However, his strategy of wearing down the enemy by attacking supply lines and by smaller skirmishes proved successful in the long run. Fabian tactics were later regarded with due respect.

**This phrase will not mean much to anyone who does not remember the UK TV advertising campaign for the chocolate-covered Penguin biscuit bar, which ran for years with the slogan, “P-p-p-pick up a Penguin!”

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post No Quitting Until the Work is Done! appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

During the event, I met Derbyshire author, Dawn Brookes, who told me that Lee Child’s comment, “If Jack Reacher were a woman, he would be my main character, Charlie Fox,” prompted her to do this enjoyable video interview for her YouTube show, High Octane Thrillers & Female Leads.

On Saturday evening, I attended the Gala Dinner where I was the official Toastmaster – or Toastrix. I was asked to deliver a five-minute speech prior to announcing the winners of the various Awards. I decided to theme it on language, and words, and the derivation of words. For all those of you who could not attend, here’s the gist of what I said on the night:

“Do you like the outfit? It’s the last word in Zoom-inspired lockdown chic. From the waist up, absolutely spiffing. From the waist down, who cares?

“It’s lovely to see so many of you face to face after all this time. And I support those of you who’ve chosen to remain masked. We are crime writers, after all.

“When Adrian first approached me about taking on this role for tonight, I was surprised to discover that this is the first time CrimeFest has ever had a female toastmaster. (And who knows, it may well yet be the last.)

He asked how I wanted to be referred to? Toastmistress made it sound like I was running a sub-Post Office, so I picked Toastrix.

“It brings to mind either a breakfast cereal of some kind, or a dominatrix. What, I wondered, is the male equivalent of that – perhaps a Dominator? Although, to me that’s a 1950s’ British motorcycle made by Norton.

“As a writer, I’ve always been fascinated by language and the derivation of words.

“Take the drinking of a toast to someone’s health, for instance. The word refers to dropping a piece of toasted or spiced bread into wine to soak up its acidity and improve the flavour. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff calls for a quart of wine and says ‘put a toast in it.’ Over time, the toast has become the person honoured by the ritual, rather than the bread itself, although I understand that submerging the honouree in wine is now optional.

“The word sincere comes from sculpting in marble. If a sculptor made a mistake, they would fill in the error with wax. Thus, if a statue was finished with no imperfections, it was sin cere – without wax.

“The word clue comes from Greek mythology – from the story of Theseus, who was trapped in the labyrinth of Knossos to be eaten by the Minotaur. Theseus escaped using a ball or clew of thread, given to him by Ariadne. He used the thread to mark his path out, and thus a clue is now a form of guidance.

“Many words have shifted from their original meanings.

“Oracle entered the caves at Delphi and inhaled the vapours, it was said that she became ‘enthusiastic’, which meant inspired or possessed by a god, rather than simply rather keen.

“And decimation means removal of a tenth, traditionally a punishment among disgraced Roman soldiers. Every ten men would draw lots and whoever got the short straw, the others had to beat him to death. A bit severe for the Territorials.

“My pet hate is the word feisty, which comes from Middle English and is often applied to my female protagonists, but actually means either a small yappy dog, or flatulent. So, a small, yappy, farting, dog. Not quite the effect I was aiming for.

“There have been numerous incidences where major companies have come up with product name that don’t quite work in the countries in which they’re intending to market them.

“Hence, General Motors attempting to sell a car in South America called the Nova. ‘No va,’ in Spanish means ‘doesn’t go’. And probably best not to mention about Rolls Royce trying to sell the Silver Mist in Germany.

“I understand that if you sidle into a store in Australia and ask for Durex, you may be offered it by the roll, as Durex is the brand name for Sellotape over there.

My personal favourite was an energy drink I came across in Japan, a kind of Gatorade / Lucozade type of thing, designed to replace electrolytes lost during exercise. It was called Pocari Sweat. Sounds delightful.

Language is gendered, however much we might prefer it not to be, and the gendered versions of words can have very different connotations attached to them.

Take landlord versus landlady. A landlord sounds like someone who runs a pub, but somehow, you’re more likely to find a landlady running a boarding house on the seafront in Morecambe.

“A bachelor is a young blade with trendy apartment. But the word Spinster brings to mind knitting and cats.

“Over the last few days in Bristol, we’ve seen many hen parties and stag weekends why is it a stag do, but a hen night? I suppose because you could hardly have a doe do or a cock night.

“I leave you with this last thought on words and their gendered forms. If someone considered to be outstanding in their field has mastery over their subject, then perhaps the feminine version should be mystery?”

And the terrible jokes I used between announcement of the CrimeFest Awards:

“Just to keep things moving, I will be interspersing our guests with literary jokes worthy of the Christmas cracker.”

“An author enquires with a publisher about their terms of submission. I’m sorry,’ he’s told. “Novels of suspense we accept only via an agent. And spy novels only via a double-agent.”

“I went to Waterstone’s today because it was a third off all titles. I bought THE LION, THE WITCH…”

“How many crime writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to screw the bulb almost all the way in, and the other to give it a surprising twist at the end.”

“Knock, knock”

“Who’s there?”

“To”

“To who?”

“It’s whom, actually…”

“Never leave alphabetti-spaghetti on the stove when you go out. It could spell disaster.”

“I bought my father a Kindle for Christmas. He still hasn’t finished it.”

“I’m reading a book at the moment about the world’s most secure bank vaults, but it’s really hard to get into.”

“I’ve just finished writing a thriller called I’M FEELING A CHILL FROM SOMEWHERE.

It’s just a first draft.”

“Never date an apostrophe. They’re so possessive.”

That’s all folks…

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post CrimeFest Toastrix 2022 appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

CrimeFest in Bristol was first organised in 2008 and has become a fixture on the crime writing calendar. This year I am lucky enough to be the Toastrix for the gala dinner and awards ceremony on Saturday evening, as well as moderating the Thriller panel on Friday afternoon, and the Indie Alternative panel on Sunday morning.

I confess to being a little nervous this time around, and not just because I’m the first female toastmaster they’ve ever had – no pressure, then. It will be my first attendance at a large-scale gathering since lockdown began in 2020. I rather think I’m out of the habit of being in crowds.

I’ve just come back from a trip to London, where I got through half my bodyweight in hand sanitiser, and wore a respirator mask on the Underground – to the obvious bemusement of most of the other passengers. But, just because the daily infection and death rates are no longer at the top of the headlines, it doesn’t actually mean Covid-19 has entirely gone away.

That aside, I am cautiously looking forward to getting out there again. I do actually enjoy going to conventions and festivals, and I know not everybody does.

My first ever convention experience
I went to my first one, in the US, almost by accident. This was way back when I was still working as a photojournalist. I had some car photoshoots lined up in Daytona Beach, Florida around Spring Break, and discovered an event called SleuthFest was the weekend after. It seemed rude not to go. I sought advice from Brit author Stephen Booth, who’d been to a lot of these things. He was encouraging, and got in touch with ex-pat author Meg Chittenden – once a Geordie (from the Northeast of England) who moved to Seattle, WA.

I arrived at Sleuthfest not quite knowing what to expect, only to be pounced on by Meg who said Stephen had asked her to look after me. What a welcome. I can’t think of a nicer person to have holding your hand at such a time. And for some years after this first meeting – as a sign of mutual affection – Meg and I would attempt to stab and strangle each other at other conventions all around the country. (Long story.)

Apart from Meg, and Rhys Bowen, I was the only Brit author at Sleuthfest that year. (And both those delightful ladies were US residents, so I’m not entirely sure they qualified.) It was pretty clear that I was a bit of a novelty item as far as the organisers were concerned. I can’t think of any other reason why they put me on probably the best panel of the event, alongside guest of honour, Robert B Parker, and SJ Rozan, Jonathan King, and the PJ Parrishes – top quality, award-winning, best-selling authors every last one of them.

And me.

I didn’t even have a US publisher at that point, and I realised part way through the introductions that nobody with any sense was going to be remotely interested in anything I had to say. So I did the only thing I could short of setting fire to the curtains. I kept it brief and made people laugh. And afterwards, I met the person who was to become my US editor.

So, since then I’ve been to many such festivals and conventions, and the subject of which ones my fellow authors were going to attend is a regular topic of discussion via Skype or Zoom calls.

The lure of the great outdoors
I remember the first time the annual ThrillerFest event was held in NYC. Some writers I knew at the time announced that they were keen to go because of its location, on the grounds that they could always slip out and explore the city while not actually taking part in a panel or a signing.

Now, a part of me could understand this completely. I love New York. But if you’re going to bother registering for a convention and staying in the expensive Midtown hotel in the middle of the high season, what’s the point in not being there half the time? And it’s not just NYC that exerts this pull. I remember asking one very well-known author at a Bouchercon what he’d been doing all day, only to discover he’d spent most of it off in a bowling alley, away from the convention hotel. Similarly, at a Left Coast Crime, one author I spoke to had spent the afternoon on his own at the cinema.

Am I missing something here?

It’s not like the best of the big players don’t hang out in the bar and chat. Lee Child is always approachable at these events, so is Jeffery Deaver, Harlan Coben, and Val McDermid. And surely, if you’re just starting out, then spending some time around the lobby, the book room, the bar, is a golden opportunity to mix and mingle not just with other authors, editors and reviewers, but readers and potential readers as well. The people who go to conventions are, almost by definition, the most enthusiastic. If they like your books they will buy lots of them and recommend them vociferously to all who cross their path. Why would you not want to meet and talk to them?

I remember meeting a best-selling Brit author at one of my first conventions who looked down his nose at me and asked if I was “just a reader?” At the time, of course, I smarted just a little bit that he didn’t recognise my name, but afterwards I thought, how can you phrase it like that? All those ‘just’ readers are the ones who’ve given you your success. And disappearing for half the convention when people may well have paid to attend solely because they saw your name on the program is cheating yourself as well as them.

Dos and Don’ts
Some years ago, I put together a list of Dos and Don’ts for convention-going for authors. As we haven’t been going to much of anything for a while, I thought I’d dust it off and go through it again. Here it is:

1. DO spend as much time as you can in the public areas – you never know who you might bump into. If you want to play the Greta Garbo card, stay at home. Or if you really want to see the host city, add a day or two onto the end. At least that way you don’t have to bother checking-out on Sunday morning.

2. DO have a cover-all greeting just in case you’re introduced to someone whose name you don’t recognise and you don’t want to cause offence. My personal favourite is to ask, “So, what are you working on at the moment?” This is equally appropriate whether the answer is, “Oh, Spielberg’s asked me to put together the screenplay of my latest gazillion best-seller.” Or, “Oh, no, no, I’m just a reader…”

3. DON’T, if someone asks the above question, give them a blow-by-blow account of your entire plot. The elevator pitch should be enough. If you’ve come up with something genuinely interesting, they’ll ask you to expand. If not, then simply telling them more about it will probably not help.

4. DON’T get totally rat-arsed in the bar every night. Yes, I know you’re there to enjoy yourself, but there are limits. This is a small industry. If you say or do something unforgivable, then being drunk is a very poor excuse.

5. DO make an effort to turn out for the early morning panels. Often the authors on them feel they’ve been handed the graveyard shift and it’s nice to give them a boost. And they don’t mind if you bring coffee and pastries!

6. DON’T, if you’ve been given one of the above panels, go out and do point #4, and then publicly complain that you’re not at your best. Those of us who’ve made the effort to come and hear you speak will feel insulted that you didn’t think we were worth staying sober for. And we’ll take our pastries away…

7. DO keep it short and sweet when you’re on a panel. Hogging the microphone, however witty you are, will not win you friends in the long run. Neither will starting every sentence with, “Well, mycharacter does this…”

8. DON’T ask for a panel assignment if you don’t enjoy public speaking. If you’re better one-to-one, then just follow point #1 instead. You’ll probably make a better impression that way.

9. DON’T, if you’re asked to moderate a panel, have any contact at all with your fellow panellists before the event. Don’t learn how to pronounce their names if there’s any doubt about it. Don’t forewarn them of any questions you intend to ask. Don’t meet up more than five minutes before the panel start time to discuss tactics, that would make it far too easy for them. Don’t run the biogs you intend to read out to the audience past the panellists beforehand – after all, all the info on their websites will be bang up to date, won’t it? Don’t forget it’s essential to ask at least one highly embarrassing question, one totally irrelevant question – such as a piece of mental arithmetic – read out the most inappropriate out-of-context segment of a sex scene, pretend to take a phone call, or bring members of the audience out for a bit of a chat on an unrelated subject.

Oh, hang on, have I got that wrong…? Not sure, because I’ve either been on, or been watching, panels where everything in point #9 has happened.

Any convention bloopers you’ve witnessed that you’d care to relate? Or any advice for those of us getting back out there?

My latest Word of the Week is hüzün. A Turkish word that expresses the gloomy feeling that things are in decline and will probably get only worse. Often used to describe a political situation. Nevertheless, perhaps we can take some comfort from the fact that if this occurs often enough for someone to have come up with a word for it, then we are not alone in our time of trouble.

Upcoming Events
CrimeFest, Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel, Broad Street, Bristol BS1 2EL
May 12 – 15 2022

Friday, May 13, 16:00 – 16:50
ITW: Thrilling For A Living
Alison Bruce
Dugald Bruce-Lockhart
Alex Shaw
Michael Stanley (Stanley Trollip)
Participating Moderator: Zoë Sharp

Saturday, May 14, 19:30
CrimeFest Awards Dinner
Toastrix: Zoë Sharp

Sunday, May 15, 09:30 – 10:20
The Indie Alternative
Dawn Brookes
Stephen Collier
Caroline Goldsworthy
Elizabeth Hill
James Mortain
Participating Moderator: Zoë Sharp

Sunday, May 15, 10:40 – 11:30
Toastrix: Zoë Sharp
Interviewer: Peter Guttridge

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post Conventional Behaviour appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

Can you imagine sitting down with your agent or editor, and explaining to them the idea for your next book? A courtroom drama that unfolds after a beautiful eighteen-year-old model is found murdered just yards from her front door after a night out with friends. She’s been stabbed seven times and brutally raped. The police question her boyfriend, but his DNA doesn’t match that found on the body and the case goes cold. Then, nine months later, a man is arrested after a scuffle in a pub. His DNA is taken as a matter of routine and fed into the system. Shortly afterwards, the police arrest him for the young model’s murder and he goes to trial. In court, his defence is that he found the teenager lying on the ground and assumed she was passed out drunk so he, “took advantage of the situation”, not realising she was dead until afterwards. Yes, you say, this is going to be his defence, under oath, in a court of law.

Or, what about a serial killer? There are oodles of them in fiction – far more than in real life. So, you decide to write a serial killer book. Your killer is going to murder five prostitutes in a single mid-sized English town over a forty-day period. One other woman is going to have a lucky escape when the killer is interrupted. But rather than have him totally baffling police with his forensically aware approach and meticulous planning, the crime-scene techs are going to lift a full DNA profile from three of the bodies, which he’s carelessly dumped in a nice dry spot rather than in water. Not only that, but they’re also going to match 177 clothing or textile fibres from the killer’s home to his victims.

The killer’s car is going to be seen kerb crawling the local red-light districts, and blood is found in the back of it. Oh, and naturally the police will already have his DNA on file after a minor robbery he committed five years previously. His defence in court? Our old friend coincidence. Yes, he did indeed frequent the red-light districts, and by amazing chance did indeed have sex with all the women in question, on the very day they disappeared, but everything else was one big fat coincidence. Or fifty of them, I believe it was, during one period of cross-examination by the prosecution.

So, no criminal masterminds at work here, then.

Tragically, both these cases are taken from real life. In 2008, Mark Dixie was convicted of the rape and murder of Sally Anne Bowman in Croydon, South London. He was sentenced to a minimum term of thirty-four years’ imprisonment – at the time, among the longest minimum term sentences for a single murder in the UK.

The same year, Steve Wright had a similar sentence passed for the murders of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Annette Nicholls, and Paula Clennell, all working in Ipswich, Suffolk. Both these men may well be very sad, twisted – even downright evil – individuals, but what makes them all the more pathetic is that they couldn’t be bothered to put any effort into planning and carrying out their crimes.

Our villains larger than life
In books, serial killers connect with their victims in some way – even if it’s only inside their sick little minds. They stalk them, photograph them, and create little shrines to them for the detective to uncover – usually illuminated by a single, swinging light bulb. As writers, we simply can’t rely on the same level of random chance, coincidence, and happenstance that seems to occur time and again in real life. We have to make our villains more – I hate to say it – larger than life.

More intelligent.

More human, even.

Some writers have said that whenever they’ve taken an aspect of real life and inserted it into a novel, that is always the part readers pick out as being the most unbelievable bit. I know if I presented either of the two scenarios above to my editor, she’d point out the plot holes and bat them right back at me. Must try harder.

So, my question is this. Are there times when you experience something, or see it on the news and say to yourself, “If I’d written that in a book, nobody would believe it…”? And how much coincidence and happenstance will or won’t you accept – both as a reader and a writer – in fiction?

This week’s Word of the Week is Torschlusspanik. A German word that is really without a direct English equivalent. It means, quite literally, gate-closing panic. The feeling that life’s opportunities are diminishing, and that you have failed to grasp them; that you are getting too old.

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post The Big Coincidence appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

So, I was intrigued to be recently re-reading Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brown and come across the section on dramatically improving your memory. Derren Brown, for those of you who are not aware of him, is part illusionist, part psychologist, and all showman. The Guardian newspaper described him as, “Clearly the best dinner-party guest in history – he’s either a balls-out con artist or the scariest man in Britain.” His various TV series over here have dumbfounded and entertained in equal measure, and while the rather knowing style of his book took a bit of getting used to, the information contained in it is just fascinating.

And why is this relevant here? Because, if I understand him correctly and extrapolate accordingly, fiction writers should have the best memories ever. Elephants should be as fickle goldfish compared to us lot.

Why? Because we exercise our imaginations on a regular basis.

Ye-es, it foxed me to begin with, but stick with me on this one, OK? And do give this a whirl. I tried the example in the book and was amazed that it worked flawlessly.

Making a list
You see, Brown claims that most people, given a list of twenty disparate, unconnected words, can recall about seven with any degree of accuracy. He gave such a list and suggested that you read it through, and then try and jot down as many as you can recall, in the same order. I took the liberty of substituting my own words. Or, rather, so I wasn’t subconsciously picking words that I might find easy to remember, I asked someone else to do provide the list for me. And here they are:

bicycle
cabriolet
fridge
rollercoaster
muckspreader
pincushion
blotter
hemlock
Shakespeare
thingamabob
nonagenarian
Rolex
Skyline
filter
cauliflower
grandfather
cuckoo
tortoise
carpet

So, having read through them, look away from the screen and try and write them down, in the same order they’re listed here. How did you do? If you got past seven, you’re Marvo the Memory Man and you don’t need to read any further. Put it aside for a bit, and then try again, without re-reading the list, but in reverse order this time. Ah, now that’s a stumper, isn’t it?

How it’s done
How it’s done, according to Brown’s method, is create a link from one word to the next by producing an image that connects the words. A vivid image, with smells and emotions attached to it. If the image is of something that stinks, sniff it. If it’s funny, find it so.

The more Daliesque and surreal, the better.

The elements need to interact in some way, and each little scene needs to be odd enough to be memorable. Some people, apparently, don’t like visualisation and claim not to be very good at it, but we’re writers, for heaven’s sake. We spend our days making stuff up – that’s what we do.

So, here’s my own list of connections between the above words:

bicycle/cabriolet 
A group of Edwardians in striped blazers and straw boater hats, riding along on their bicycles, very slow and stately, but in case of rain they all have cabriolet tops they can raise over their heads, with big curved hinges on the sides like an old-fashioned pram, and tassels along the front.

cabriolet/fridge
A nice little VW Cabriolet, gleaming in white, all colour-coded, and when you climb inside it’s still white like you’re sitting in your fridge, with wire racks and dairy products on the shelves and a light that comes on when you open the door. There’s a big bottle of milk strapped to the passenger seat. The air con keeps it frosty cold.

fridge/rollercoaster
You open the door of your fridge and a rollercoaster track unfurls out of the salad drawer, complete with screaming passengers, and goes careering round the kitchen, making it impossible to sneak down for a midnight snack without waking the entire street.

rollercoaster/muckspreader
The farmer next to the amusement park hates the people who ride the rollercoaster making all that racket, so he always drives his muckspreader along the hedge next to the bottom of the first drop, and sprays them all with cow manure as they hurtle past. Particularly nasty if you’ve got your mouth open as you go.

muckspreader/pincushion
Someone’s come up with a new way of recycling cow manure, which instead of being scattered is reformed inside the muckspreader into neat round pincushions, the size of pillows, which it deposits in a neat orderly row as the farmer drives his tractor through the local ladies’ sewing circle.

pincushion/blotter
The only trouble with the cowpat pincushions is when you stick a pin in them they let out a great cloud of stinking vapour and leak a nasty greeny fluid all over the place, which you have to soak up by putting a blotter under the pincushion wherever you go.

blotter/hemlock
An ingenious murderess decides to soak the blotter on her husband’s desk in hemlock, so he will be gradually poisoned as the hemlock leaches out and into his hands whenever he works late into the night.

hemlock/Shakespeare
The entire cast of a Shakespeare play toast each other with hemlock-laced glasses of wine, thus dying tragically at the end of the first act, not realising that the leading man is a method actor who has genuinely dosed them all with real poison.

Shakespeare/thingamabob
Will Shakespeare finds himself momentarily lost for words and invents a new one – thingamabob – which instantly becomes all the rage in Elizabethan England. Queen Elizabeth I instantly demands he produce one, by royal command, and he has to cobble something together or lose his head.

thingamabob/nonagenarian
Nonagenarian little old ladies can be easily identified by the fact that they’re each followed about by a thingamabob, which is a little bouncy squeaky thing, like a cross between a space hopper and a tribble, which won’t leave them alone. There they all are in the park, swatting at these troublesome thingamabobs with their umbrellas.

nonagenarian/Rolex
When anybody reaches the ripe old age of 90, their nonagenarian status is celebrated by awarding them a Rolex watch. The only trouble is, it’s a big garish one, plastered with diamonds, and the streets are filled with old folk dressed up in flashy watches and gold chains like gangster rappers.

Rolex/Skyline
All Nissan Skyline sports cars comes with a Rolex attached to the front of the bonnet so the driver can time themselves as they lap the Nürburgring in Germany. It’s also used as a means of handicapping the faster ones. The quicker you drive, the bigger watch you have to have, thus not only increasing drag, but also preventing the driver from seeing where they’re going, and slowing them down. At least they know exactly what time they crashed.

Skyline/filter
As a party trick, someone drives their Skyline around the inside of their filter coffee machine, like a fairground wall of death. Round and round they go, until they’re almost vertical up the sides, kicking up great rooster tails of coffee grounds and leaving tyre tracks in the paper filter.

filter/cauliflower
After heavy rain sluices cauliflowers into the drains, you have to insert big filters to stop them clogging everything up, otherwise they create the most awful stench of rotting vegetation.

cauliflower/grandfather
When your grandfather gets on a bit and loses his teeth, the only thing he can eat is mulched up very well-pureed cauliflower, which you have to cook for him in giant vats until it goes grey, and then put through a blender, at which point he packs it into his cheeks like a hamster. Grandfathers only have to be fed once a week using this method.

grandfather/cuckoo
Grandfathers are not acquired in the usual way, but introduced into the family nest like cuckoos, in the hopes that they’ll be cared for like the other family members. Of course, grandfathers can be bigger and more aggressive than other relatives, and often push them out of the nest using their Zimmer frames.

cuckoo/tortoise
Swiss cuckoo clocks are using tortoises instead of the more traditional birds to call the time. At the top of the hour the doors open and a tortoise emerges, very, very slowly, on the end of a spring. It can take these clocks several days to strike noon and midnight.

tortoise/carpet
To keep your tortoise warm in winter, you cover his shell in carpet, preferably shag pile, so there’s all these tortoises ambling about with multicoloured carpet stuck to their backs.

I have to say that Derren Brown’s own list – and the explanation of the links between the words – was probably much better and far more amusing than my own. But you get the idea. If anyone can come up with sillier or more vivid connections, please feel free. But let me know how you get on. Because, it’s rather nice to know that this fertile imagination we have can be put to other uses, isn’t it?

So, they were muckspreading in the field next to the garden last week, and Dido clearly has NO common sense!

This week’s Word of the Week is dunkelflaute, (pronounced “dun-kel-flout-er”), which is German for ‘dark doldrums’, but which has been adopted by the renewable energy industry for what happens to electricity output from solar panels when the sun doesn’t shine, or from wind turbines on a still day. It could also be applied to what happens to writers when inspiration fails and the words don’t flow. So much more expressive than plain old ‘writer’s block’.

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post Why have I come upstairs? appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..

Is crime fiction different when it is authored by women writers? How? In which ways?
And will female penned crime novels and short stories translate easily across cultures? Will Americans and Canadians read into British crime fiction the same ideas that the British author meant?

The answer according to the five years of research I have done for my new book “After Agatha: Women Write Crime” (Oldcastle Books) is yes. As long as the fiction is written by a woman.

The best starting point is the enduring and fascinating contradiction that women face both in Great Britain and also in the United States and Canada. This curious paradox is that women in all three countries who spend much of their real lives being terrorised by and afraid of male violence are nevertheless drawn to stories that luridly and frighteningly bring those fears to life.

Most women report that they are conditioned from their childhood to accept that there are men in the world, and what is worse there are men in THEIR world who want to beat them, batter them, hurt and damage them. Yet many of these same women whom I talked to not only persist but seem to enjoy reading novels in which other women are stalked, tortured, raped and even murdered often in such brutal detail it seems to be worse than lurid, it appears almost pornographic.

Not only did many mild mannered women tell me they read books like these but a separate segment of them said they enjoyed writing them.

These books are hugely popular. In the UK thriller and crime fiction has become our most popular literary genre accounting for one in three of all books sold. In 2017 according to the data company Nielsen Bookscan 18.7 million units of crime fiction were sold and today 2022 that figure is believed to be around 21 million. The output of crime books written by women rose during Covid and lockdown.

In the US the sales of crime and thriller fiction are second only to those of romance and erotica. In Canada mystery and crime books combined account for more than one hundred million dollars in sales each year. In each country women are driving the boom accounting for as much as 80 per cent of the market.

So why are women reading what they fear most?

My top theory is The Reassurance Theory. Women who are desperately afraid in their real lives most of the time are drawn to reading explicitly about those fears (and also writing about them) because it is one way of addressing those fears in a safe environment ie the world of fiction.

Also in many crime novels there is the next theory, the Safe Ending Thesis. In many crime novels the ending is very satisfactory as crimes are resolved, perpetrators are punished. Justice is generally done.

Women who are both vulnerable in fact but also feel vulnerable can then feel strengthened.

Readers can feel horror, tension, fear all the way through the book but somewhere in their minds is the knowledge that some part of the ending will feel ok.

Women readers could turn to books that are equally tense, sometimes more so, written by men but they don’t. They seek out books written by women.

Why do they do this? What is it in female authored crime books that sets them apart?

The most important element in women’s crime writing that makes them distinct and different from men’s writing is that these books show greater understanding and stronger insight into the minds of potential victims. There is also a greater desire in women to understand crime and the psychology behind it. In psychological thrillers it is often women who avenge the crimes and turn the tables swiftly even savagely on the perpetrators.

I asked all the crime writers I interviewed why they chose that particular genre to call their own.

Obviously one answer they all gave was the commercial one. Crime sells. It is either immediately published in paperback or goes into paperback soon after hardback publication. Crime fiction often whizzes to the top of the best seller lists so more and more people hear about it. These are the books on the front tables of Waterstones, Heffers and Blackwells so people who are not remotely interested in mysteries or thrillers see them and pick them up.

Mainly crime writers said that as possible crimes added to their own daily fears one way of coming to grips with these was to fictionalise them.

Interestingly several new women writers come from other professional groups such as the criminal justice system, where police officers, forensic scientists, probation officers and lawyers are also writing best selling crime books and finding their professional expertise can be employed skilfully in their new creative industry.

Many women writers from all three countries told me they have taken to crime in order to reflect on and make comments about the social and political landscapes they see around them. Finally many writers on this side of the pond and the other side have decided that crime fiction is a wonderful way to explore the significant issues facing all women today.

After Agatha: Women Write Crime
From Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith to Val McDermid and JK Rowling, After Agatha is an indispensable guide to women’s crime writing over the last century and an exploration of why women read crime.

Spanning the 1930s to present day, After Agatha charts the explosion in women’s crime writing and examines key developments on both sides of the Atlantic: from the women writers at the helm of the UK Golden Age and their American and Canadian counterparts fighting to be heard, to the 1980s experimental trio, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, who created the first female PIs, and the more recent emergence of forensic crime writing and domestic noir thrillers such as Gone Girl and Apple Tree Yard.

After Agatha examines the diversification of crime writing and highlights landmark women’s novels which featured the marginalised in society as centralised characters.

Cline also explores why women readers are drawn to the genre and seek out justice in crime fiction, in a world where violent crimes against women rarely have such resolution.

The book includes interviews with dozens of contemporary authors such as Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah, Tess Gerritsen and Kathy Reichs and features the work of hundreds of women crime and mystery writers. It is an essential read for crime fiction lovers.

‘Having read After Agatha, I found it a fascinating work of extraordinary breadth and scope, covering authors from the Golden Age to present day. Sally’s enthusiasm for her subject matter shines through. The conclusions she draws—supported by numerous interviewees—of women as crime writers, as the main protagonists of books written by women, and as the victims within crime fiction, make this compelling reading. This book richly deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone interested in the genre. My only minor complaint was that it would have been very useful to have a key to identify some of the famous signatures on the cover!’ ZS

You can read this blog, or comment, at Murder Is Everywhere

The post Why Women Read Crime appeared first on Zoë Sharp: Author of the Charlie Fox series and the Lakes Thriller series..