Blog posts
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Caption: Best-selling crime novelist Richard Osman sighing books at Capital Crime and Chris Brookmyre appearing at Bloody Scotland Dates have been announced for the return of two popular annual crime writing festivals in 2026. Capital Crime will stage its next three-day festival between Thursday 18 June-Saturday 20 June 2026, when more than 100 authors and…
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The third novel by crime writer David L Haigh, who lives in Dumfries and Galloway, has been published and you can read my thoughts on it in the Reviews section.
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NielsenIQ BookData and GfK Entertainment have released their international data for book sales in the first eight months of 2025, and it reveals a mixed picture. Eleven out of 19 territories reported revenue growth, often accompanied by significant price increases, with crime fiction performing particularly well. The authors of the report say that international book…
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There is still plenty of time for authors to enter one of the world’s most exciting prizes for unpublished writers.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 An international competition, it is open to any unpublished writer in the world…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,…
John Dean - Crime Writer 