Blog posts
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There is still plenty of time for authors to enter one of the world’s most exciting prizes for unpublished writers. The Emerging Author Dagger (formerly the Debut Dagger), is run by the UK-based Crime Writers’ Association and sponsored by Fiction Feedback Editorial Consultancy. An international competition, it is open to any unpublished writer in the world…
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Publisher Joffe Books has announced the winner of the Joffe Books Prize 2025, which has gone to T.L. Haseeb, for The Portrait Maker, the first in a new police procedural series featuring Amber Kash, a seasoned British Asian Detective Inspector in her forties. The author receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000…
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Book reviewer Lars Walker, of Brandywine Books.has has been working his way through the some of the DCI Jack Harris crime novels written by John Dean and published by The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company. Down to earth, perceptive and honest (he does not like everything the books do and does not mind saying…
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November 6 2025 Acclaimed screenwriter Russell T Davies will headline the Screenwriting Weekender 2026 event, the organisers have announced. New Writing North has confirmed that the event will take place in Newcastle’s Live Theatre from 6-8 February. Russell T Davies OBE is known for many celebrated pieces of work, including Queer as Folk, Doctor Who, It’s a…
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I am delighted that a review posted on Amazon UK on Friday October 31 (thank you, Ginger) praised as ‘outstanding’ the research in The Meek Shall Inherit, a DCI John Blizzard crime novel published by The Book Folks, a Joffe Books company. The review meant a lot because, for the first time in one of…
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The first Northern Writers’ Awards for 2026 – The Hachette Children’s Novel Awards and Young Writers’ Awards – are open for submissions. Debut writers of middle grade and early teen fiction can win £3,000 and a nine-month programme of mentoring and support from Hachette Children’s Group. The Young Writers’ Awards are also open for ages…
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Poet Kenneth Steven has a knack of picking fascinating subjects and giving them a distinctive treatment and his latest collection A Song Among The Stones adds to that reputation. Kenneth chose the story of 7th Century Irish hermit monks who left the island of Iona and dared to cross an unforgiving ocean to the wild,…
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The second crime novel by Castle Douglas writer David L Haigh has been published with the third in the series to be available in November (2025). Hooked By The Past, the second book in the series, is published by Ingle-Haigh and follows David’s debut crime novel Land Kill, which came out in February 2024. Ingle-Haigh…
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Ambitious emerging writers who are seeking to break into the world of crime fiction should always be keen to learn (as, might I humbly suggest, should those of us who are more experienced as well!) and that means eagerly pouncing on interviews with those who work in the industry, particularly those whose job is to…
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When you are an author writing novels for a series, the biggest challenge is keeping the narrative fresh. But how do you achieve that? The answer is by injecting energy into each story to avoid a sense that it’s ‘same old, same old’. One way to do that is to come up with a story…
