Blog posts
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Three of the top four bestsellers in the Amazon ebook Organised Crime chart this morning are crime writers with The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company – namely my DCI Jack Harris boxset at Number One, the brilliant Ray Clark, second, and the much-admired Pete Brassett fourth. You can check them out by going to…
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New Writing North has named the 25 writers who are joining England’s largest and longest-running writer development programme. The charity, which is based in Newcastle and is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, works to develop creative writing and reading in the North of England. It believes that ‘writing talent is everywhere, but that…
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Writing can be a lonely experience, especially if you are an aspiring writer finding your way and beset by questions. Are you doing it correctly? How do you know you are doing it properly? Who do you ask if you suspect that you’re not doing it properly? Maybe you would benefit from bringing in some…
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Picture: Kirkcudbright by John Smith Crime fiction author John Dean has written before about the importance of a strong sense of place for crime fiction writers and reflecting that theme is the success of the website www.tripfiction.com, which allows readers to track down books by searching for favourite places rather than favourite authors. The result…
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Joffe Books, which recently bought publisher The Book Folks, has continued its relaunch of John Dean’s popular Detective Chief Inspector John Blizzard crime fiction series. The relaunch of A Flicker in the Night, which tells how the detective and his team try to track down a deadly arsonist, includes a new cover for the ebook…
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The origins of fictional characters has always fascinated me, particularly the extent to which many creators draw on real people as a starting point. I talk to a lot of authors and many of them freely admit that some of their major characters are partly taken from real life. I have no problem with that…
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So how does an author cope with beginning work on a new novel, when they are confronted by the dreaded blank page? As he starts work on his new book, crime writer John Dean relies on a tried and trusted process. If you are an aspiring writer, you may find his description of the process…
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Author Malcolm Beadle’s new novella Koki can now be acquired on Amazon Kindle Unlimited. The novella, which tells the story of a Vietnam War sniper who paints his face as a clown before he goes hunting his VietCong victims in the jungle, is available to purchase in ebook Kindle and paperback format on the book’s…
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Here’s a salutary lesson for all those writers who, like me, would ideally prefer to use plenty of description to describe places in their writing. Think of a tree in a park. Done it? I am pretty confident that you will have and that, even though you were only asked a millisecond ago, you can…
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Death List has become the sixth DCI John Blizzard crime novel by John Dean to be given the Joffe Books relaunch treatment, including a distinctive new cover for the ebook. Joffe Books recently took over publisher The Book Folks and has embarked on a major campaign to breathe new life into the backlists of many…
John Dean - Crime Writer 