Where authors talk directly about their life, their books and many more things.
Whenever I’m engrossed in a ripping yarn of murder, mystery and mayhem, I love spotting the devices the writer has used to keep me turning the pages. My all-time favourite device is a spine-tingling heterotopia, where the characters are trapped in one place. I’ve long loved heterotopias, but only recently discovered that there’s a word …
Setting is vital to crime stories. As a child, I read Agatha Christie’s murders on the Nile and the Orient Express and in Mesopotamia, joining millions of readers who first experienced the world in crime novels. They didn’t just whet my appetite for travel, they also showed what life was like for Agatha Christie’s privileged …
I’m half way through writing my second novel and, despite the devastation around the world to our lives and our economies (and the cancellation of my debut book tour), I’m staying hopeful. I’m hopeful that there will be a medical cure for this terrible coronavirus, with the latest tactics focusing on testing existing drugs while …
I was determined that I would never fall in love again. In 2013, Igal, the man I was in love with, ended his life. I’d lost several other people in my life within a few years. Two and a half years later, I was still reminding myself every day of the pain of losing him. …
Two things happened to me in 2019. My first novel, Present Tense, was published, and I turned 70.[1] So, when Sisters in Crime suggested I blog about becoming a late-onset writer, I thought I should share lessons learned along the way. Based on limited experience (one book does not an expert make), here are ten …
Last year, I was house-hunting. I looked at a million houses and most of them were too small or pretty grotty. Then I looked at one house – also small and slightly grotty – and in the current tenants’ study there was a Scarlet Stiletto certificate on the wall. I resisted the temptation to read …
Jacqui, who is shortlisted in this year’s Scarlet Stiletto Awards and a winner of both a Scarlet Stiletto and a Silver Stiletto, reflects on the journey. The road to the Scarlet Stiletto Awards is a series of moments. The first moment is when you have a tickle of an idea. A thought, a word, an …
While I’ve been a little unfaithful (more than once), it’s fair to say that I’m in a committed relationship with crime. Crime novels, that is. The signs that I’d be a crime buff were there since adolescence. When my friends were off reading Babysitters’ Club, I preferred the company of Dr Kay Scarpetta. What’s not …
The biographer and the detective are not as far apart as you might imagine. This analogy has been made before, and there are much less generous ones. Famously, commentator, Janet Malcolm, likened the biographer to an ‘eavesdropper’, a ‘voyeur’, a ‘snoop’. Some times what I do feels uneasily close to these transgressive manifestations. Not literally, …
I’m a children’s educational writer by trade, but recently I’ve just released a crime-ish adult book, Life Before. People ask me how the two types of writing mesh together? Has being an educational writer been a help or a hindrance to writing for adults? My answer to that is that my background is probably more …