Blog posts
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Joffe Books, which recently bought publisher The Book Folks, publisher of John Dean’s crime novels, has announced that it is relaunching his popular Detective Chief Inspector John Blizzard series, complete with new cover for the ebook versions. The stories include The Long Dead, which was the first to be published by The Book Folks and…
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In addition to the large amount of free material on my new website, there are also details of paid-for support services for writers, including those who self-publish their books and those who wish to ensure that their manuscript is the very best it can be when it is submitted to a publisher. Indeed, a number…
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I have lost count of the times an aspiring writer, and more experienced authors for that matter, talk about those moments in the writing process when they hit a brick wall and their novel grinds to a standstill and they simply do not know where to go next. How do you get going again? Well,…
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One of my friends, a very successful crime writer, contended that every word he wrote, every place he described, every character he devised, was entirely fictional, that he did not draw on real life in any way. I disagreed with him and, although I never had the debate with him, I heard of those…
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Good things come to they who wait, according to the old adage – and that is certainly true of author Malcolm Beadle, whose debut novella has taken twenty years to come to fruition. Malcolm, known as Mally, aged 65 and from Darlington, County Durham, has written Koki, which tells the story of an American sniper…
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My website has plenty of free guidance for aspiring writers in my Handy Hints pages and one of the sections deals with sense of place. As a writer, I am always inspired by a sense of place. Whether it be a gloomy city or a stunning hillside, a glass-strewn council estate or a majestic waterfall,…
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People who read my posts will know that I am fascinated by the mixture of planning and organic development that goes into writing What do I mean by organic development? Take a character in my latest DCI Jack Harris novel, which has just passed the 35,000 word mark. He was very much planned – I…
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The eagerly-awaited longlists for the crime-writing world’s premier awards have been announced. There are thirteen Dagger prizes organised by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA), honouring everything from the best novel and non-fiction work to best newcomer. I have a particular interest in the Dagger in the Library award because in my role as CWA libraries…
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Exciting news – the recently-published jack Harris boxset (The Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) has hit number one in several Amazon best-seller charts overnight, including British detective stories, organised crime and noir crime. Featuring the first nine Harris novels in kindle format for just 99p, the boxset of novels featuring the north Pennines investigator…
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Reviewer Lars Walker, of Brandywine Books, who some of you may be aware hasrecently been working his way through the DCI Jack Harris crime novels), has turned his attention to Thou Shalt Kill (The Book Folks, a Joffe Books imprint) What particularly interests Lars about the novel is the way that it deals with the…
John Dean - Crime Writer 