books
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Best-selling crime writer John Dean has posted his latest blog, which is aimed both at helping emerging writers learning their craft and giving readers an insight into the way an author balances writing for fans of a series with the needs of new readers. You can read the article here and it is also on
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Best-selling crime writer John Dean has considered the challenges in writing Point of View in his latest article to help aspiring writers. You can read it here or drop into the Handy Hints sections of this website which has many such pieces. This article has also been added to Handy Hints – Characters where it
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This is why I do not like, nor trust, Artificial Intelligence (AI). I am at the age when dementia becomes a consideration – my father died with it – so I have been somewhat concerned over recent weeks and months to return to the previous day’s writing on my laptop for a quick refresh before
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John Dean talks about the challenges presented by his new novel My latest crime novel has just been published and I don’t think that I have looked forward to the appearance in print of one of my titles with such anticipation for a long time. The reason is that Murder in the Pennines (published by
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I feel that it is time to address a subject which I have avoided for far too long and yet is, by far, the most important challenge that today’s writers face. I am talking about running out of teabags. No, seriously, I am referring to AI, of course. Let me be clear right from the
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Hunted by Abir Mukherjee has won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2025, which was presented by Harrogate International Festivals on the opening night of the recent Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. Hunted is a thriller set in London and the US in the final week of a toxic presidential campaign,
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No Age to Die’s Kindle version has been given a new cover as part of the relaunch of John Dean’s popular DCI Blizzard series of crime novels by Joffe Books after it recently took over the publisher The Book Folks. In the novel, number nine in the series, a dangerous felon is released from prison
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Are you an aspiring writer summoning up the courage to finally send off your beloved manuscript to a publisher or agent but suddenly assailed by crippling doubts? In fact, the envelope bearing the print-out has been sitting on the kitchen table for a week or your finger is continuing to hover, paralysed, over the keyboard’s
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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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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
John Dean - Crime Writer 