The real Rev Richard Coles An excellent early play by Tom Stoppard was called ‘The Real Inspector Hound’. This was a clever spoof on Agatha Christie style-dramas. Last week I gave you a ‘spoof’ version of the interview with the Rev Richard Coles. Now here’s an non-AI version. The interview by Dean Catherine Ogle in Winchester Cathedral on 22 June covered Richard Coles' life –  in a pop group, as a gay vicar, in the media at the BBC, and now as an author.   Richard and Dean Catherine first met when she was the Vicar of Huddersfield and he was sent on placement to her church as ..read more

Cosy v grisly How can you craft a novel that blends cosy crime writing with a more grisly murder plot? The words of best-selling author Reverend Richard Coles provide valuable insight. In a recent show which I attended in Winchester Cathedral, he commented that “there’s nothing cosy about murder because it affects everyone concerned.”  This statement has made author Fallon Howth (aka Howe and Keith) think, especially in drafting our latest crime mystery in the Montgomery Murder Mysteries series. In this the bodies of a mother and daughter are discovered in woods near two warring UK viney ..read more

Peculier crime This weekend, 20-23 July, I’m off to Harrogate to take part in the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. This is the 20th anniversary but will mark my first visit to the Yorkshire event.  The venue is an old haunt of Agatha Christie’s, the Old Swan Hotel. There I’m hoping to rub shoulders with the UK’s leading agents, editors and publishers. Especially agents as I seek to advance the publishing prospects of ‘Slim Chance’, the cosy crime thriller I have co-athored with Sylvia Howe under the pen-name of Fallon Howth. The festival will be chaired by Vasee ..read more

Are you sitting comfortably? The Literary / Book festival season is in full swing – and here you will find a festival of festivals. The most famous festival of all at Hay finished on Sunday 4 June. If you missed Hay, well, hey there, you can catch up by buying the Hay Player for £15 for a year. hayfestival.org/hayplayer For me, the most interesting conversation of the week was the hour-long chat between former Foreign Secretary David Milliband and Cambridge Professors David Runciman and Helen Thompson about ‘The American Century” – encompassing the life of Henry Kissinger who was born on ..read more

A big difference for me between writing fiction and non-fiction is that the start and the finish of a book are easier than when writing a report or an article. In non-fiction it may be simpler to write the bulk of the text and then turn to the all-important intro, conclusion and headline. In my current experience of co-authoring a crime thriller, we have made strong sketches of the plot, including who is murdered and where that takes place, and the main characters. So far, some 75% of the 24 chapters are in first draft. We have even started the ending, although the final wrap up is in note fo ..read more

“That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought outright But a lie which is part a truth is harder to fight." (Tennyson, The Grandmother, 1859) What makes the English language so fascinating and frustrating is how hard it can be to define simple words. For example, the two words on everyone’s lips right now are: LIE and TRUTH. But what do they mean to you? How do you define them? In the Oxford English dictionary, Lie (noun) is defined as “an intentionally false statement”. That is simple enough, but the understanding of the word becomes stretched when you look at the synonyms for lie ..read more

Howlers or Fowlers? Polemicist Rod Liddle flexed his muscles on 15 May in his Sunday Times column against the grammar hooligans who beat up the English language with their misuse / overuse of words or phrases. In last Sunday’s letters page the paper headlined readers’ responses under the heading ‘Grammar as a contact sport’. The problem is that grammar glitches are not a contact sport, but accrue gradually over the years, so that what was once misuse becomes adopted into the system. Sometimes new uses of words and grammar benefit English – and languages are always evolving. Liddle’s ire was ..read more

Paula Hawkins was the most interesting and famous author on The Times crime writing course which I attended for six Fridays in February and March. She is renowned for her bestseller The Girl on a Train, published in January 2015. This debut thriller became one of the top five fiction hardbacks since records began, and has sold 23 million copies worldwide, in over 50 countries and in 50 languages. Paula Hawkins worked as a journalist for 15 years before she was commissioned to write four rom coms under a pseudonym. Only one enjoyed modest success and she decided that her interests lay in psycho ..read more

Of all the tips and recommendations for writing the most effective communications in English, the idea of simplicity wears the crown. Keep it simple stupid. KISS. Yet this is also one of the hardest tasks for writers. Yes, we might revel in the indulgence of wordy Falstaffian prose, but simply written novels, reports, websites, emails and promotions carry the greatest weight and have the biggest impact. As an exercise, you are advised to try writing a piece of text without any adverbs at all and as few adjectives as possible. Let your vivid nouns and active verbs do the work. It was Victor ..read more

A course for would-be crime writers has produced some familiar tips and some new ones. They are valuable for all authors, not just novelists or non-fiction writers, so here a some of them. The course was organised by The Times and featured six crime writers who each had a two-hour slot on Fridays in February and March to give the benefits of their wisdom and their experience. You can find out more about them online if you search for their websites. The first speaker was Jill Dawson, the author of 11 books and a well-known mentor – Gold Dust who discussed her enjoyable book ‘The Crime Writer ..read more