More about the panels in tomorrow's post.
With Linda Regan, Lee Child, Alex Shaw, Lizzie Hayes.
Showing posts with label lee child. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lee child. Show all posts
Saturday, 16 May 2015
Friday, 20 December 2013
News
I was so excited to receive a blurb quote from the legendary Lee Child, creator of Jack Reacher, that I nearly forgot to send the manuscript for the second in my new Ian Peterson series off to my publisher! Lee wrote: 'Leigh Russell is one to watch.'
In more news today, FATAL ACT and ROAD CLOSED are both in the No Exit Press Christmas Drop Dead Price Offer -
http://www.oldcastlebooks.co.uk/news/drop-dead-xmas-prices-2/
Have a Happy and Healthy Christmas and a New Year that brings you all you wish for, and more!
In more news today, FATAL ACT and ROAD CLOSED are both in the No Exit Press Christmas Drop Dead Price Offer -
http://www.oldcastlebooks.co.uk/news/drop-dead-xmas-prices-2/
Have a Happy and Healthy Christmas and a New Year that brings you all you wish for, and more!
Thursday, 7 November 2013
News
It's time to write a news update on my blog and what a lot of news I have to share with you! I hardly know where to begin!
York
If we are connected on facebook you may have seen the photos I posted of our trip to York. We spent a wonderful two weeks in a beautiful flat overlooking the river, ate out far more than was good for us - well what can be better than chips and Champagne at Betty's? - and did a lot of sightseeing in York and the surrounding villages. We were fortunate to see the annual York Illuminations. We were also lucky with the weather - apart from the morning when the York Press sent a photographer to snap me outside the Minster. How shall I describe the result? It was great fun... but let's just say that my hair isn't exactly tidy at the best of times... The photo was certainly spooky, cleverly lit from below.
Of course I was there to work. There were book signings in York and Scarborough, a talk to a lovely audience at Scarborough Library, interviews with the press and on BBC radio. In addition to all that, I was able to research where Ian Peterson lives, and where the murderer and the victims live - and die... This was for the second book in my new Ian Peterson series, which is the first one set in York.
London
I may have mentioned that the lovely director of the Crime Writers Association offered me a golden ticket to the ITV Thriller Awards. Of course I said yes, even though it meant rushing back to London from York and back again the following day to talk at Scarborough Library. This was the first ITV award ceremony I have attended and it was really exciting. Everywhere I turned someone was offering champagne (it would have been rude to refuse!) and I met so many luminaries of page and screen I could name drop all night! Here are just a few, with apologies to the many I've left out. It's always a pleasure catching up with fellow crime writers Peter James, Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Anne Zoyrodi, Linda Stratmann, Maxim Jabukowski, and many others. Martina Cole was there, and Wilbur Smith, and a host of other writers. I felt like a film star meeting Nathaniel Parker (swoon!), the fabulously talented Dervla Kirwan, Rupert Penry Jones who is unbelievably even more gorgeous in the flesh than he is on screen, Amelia Bullmore, Bradley Walsh, Emily Fox.... like I said, I could name drop all night! It was such fun!
Translations
My books are already published in Italian (Mondadori), French (City Editions), and Turkish (Kassandra), and recently Harper Collins US acquired both my series which they are publishing at a rate of one a month. Just this week we had confirmation that another major publisher has acquired my titles, Bastei Lubbe of Gemany. So Geraldine Steel is spreading her wings internationally. Hopefully she will become as popular in the US as she is in the UK. The Miami Examiner describes her as 'one of the most interesting detectives of all time' so she has one fan in America at least! No wonder Book2Book trade journal have said Geraldine Steel is 'set to be the next big name in crime fiction'. Let's hope they're right!
Travel
As if all that wasn't excitement enough for one post, my diary for next year is filling up fast. I've accepted an invitation to spend two weeks teaching for the Writers Lab on Skyros, the most beautiful Greek island. I'll be speaking at a French literary festival in St Clementin, meeting my US publishers in New York, attending the Crime Writers Association conference in Guernsey, and going to a Writes Lab weekend on The Isle of Man, in addition to my UK commitments like CrimeFest and Harrogate Festival. It's going to be a busy year.
My books
The sixth Geraldine Steel, Fatal Act, will be available to download in December, and out in print in 2014. The second Ian Peterson is ready to be edited and proofread, and will be published in 2014. I'm now working on the seventh Geraldine Steel, which will be out as an ebook in December 2014.
York
If we are connected on facebook you may have seen the photos I posted of our trip to York. We spent a wonderful two weeks in a beautiful flat overlooking the river, ate out far more than was good for us - well what can be better than chips and Champagne at Betty's? - and did a lot of sightseeing in York and the surrounding villages. We were fortunate to see the annual York Illuminations. We were also lucky with the weather - apart from the morning when the York Press sent a photographer to snap me outside the Minster. How shall I describe the result? It was great fun... but let's just say that my hair isn't exactly tidy at the best of times... The photo was certainly spooky, cleverly lit from below.
Of course I was there to work. There were book signings in York and Scarborough, a talk to a lovely audience at Scarborough Library, interviews with the press and on BBC radio. In addition to all that, I was able to research where Ian Peterson lives, and where the murderer and the victims live - and die... This was for the second book in my new Ian Peterson series, which is the first one set in York.
London
I may have mentioned that the lovely director of the Crime Writers Association offered me a golden ticket to the ITV Thriller Awards. Of course I said yes, even though it meant rushing back to London from York and back again the following day to talk at Scarborough Library. This was the first ITV award ceremony I have attended and it was really exciting. Everywhere I turned someone was offering champagne (it would have been rude to refuse!) and I met so many luminaries of page and screen I could name drop all night! Here are just a few, with apologies to the many I've left out. It's always a pleasure catching up with fellow crime writers Peter James, Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Anne Zoyrodi, Linda Stratmann, Maxim Jabukowski, and many others. Martina Cole was there, and Wilbur Smith, and a host of other writers. I felt like a film star meeting Nathaniel Parker (swoon!), the fabulously talented Dervla Kirwan, Rupert Penry Jones who is unbelievably even more gorgeous in the flesh than he is on screen, Amelia Bullmore, Bradley Walsh, Emily Fox.... like I said, I could name drop all night! It was such fun!
Translations
My books are already published in Italian (Mondadori), French (City Editions), and Turkish (Kassandra), and recently Harper Collins US acquired both my series which they are publishing at a rate of one a month. Just this week we had confirmation that another major publisher has acquired my titles, Bastei Lubbe of Gemany. So Geraldine Steel is spreading her wings internationally. Hopefully she will become as popular in the US as she is in the UK. The Miami Examiner describes her as 'one of the most interesting detectives of all time' so she has one fan in America at least! No wonder Book2Book trade journal have said Geraldine Steel is 'set to be the next big name in crime fiction'. Let's hope they're right!
Travel
As if all that wasn't excitement enough for one post, my diary for next year is filling up fast. I've accepted an invitation to spend two weeks teaching for the Writers Lab on Skyros, the most beautiful Greek island. I'll be speaking at a French literary festival in St Clementin, meeting my US publishers in New York, attending the Crime Writers Association conference in Guernsey, and going to a Writes Lab weekend on The Isle of Man, in addition to my UK commitments like CrimeFest and Harrogate Festival. It's going to be a busy year.
My books
The sixth Geraldine Steel, Fatal Act, will be available to download in December, and out in print in 2014. The second Ian Peterson is ready to be edited and proofread, and will be published in 2014. I'm now working on the seventh Geraldine Steel, which will be out as an ebook in December 2014.
Friday, 29 June 2012
I'm back
In a shameful dereliction of my blog, I haven't posted here for... well, longer than I can remember. Now I'm back I really don't know where to begin. Meanwhile, I have been posting almost daily brief updates on facebook so please check it out. You'll find lots of photos of recent events at bookshops, and festivals, this year, including drinking champagne with Jeff Deaver, and catching up with fellow authors Lee Child and Peter James at CrimeFest https://www.facebook.com/leigh.russell.50
In other news, my wonderful publisher has secured a fabulous deal with an Italian publisher, and brought out a special limited edition hardback of Death Bed, signed and numbered. These are only available from my publisher directly so do check out the link which you can find on my website http://leighrussell.co.uk/
I've been busy visiting bookshops and libraries. It's so important to support them both. Last Saturday I visited Waterstones in Guildford to sign my books. This is apparently the busiest store in the entire chain. There I sat, watching a queue of women lining up to pay for 50 Shades of Grey. For all the ccriticism of this book, denigrated as a jazzed up Mills and Boon, it has been a sales phenomenon thanks to all the hype about 'mummy porn'. I said my title would have to be 50 Shades of Purple... But seriously, I have to admit it doesn't appeal to me. My publisher (who also hasn't read it) suggested (joking?) that I write an 'erotic crime' novel. You can read quite a few responses to that idea on facebook!
Oh well, I have to go. It's time to revise my WIP...
Thank you very much to all of you who have continued to
follow this blog even though I've been largely absent. I'll
try to do better!
In other news, my wonderful publisher has secured a fabulous deal with an Italian publisher, and brought out a special limited edition hardback of Death Bed, signed and numbered. These are only available from my publisher directly so do check out the link which you can find on my website http://leighrussell.co.uk/
I've been busy visiting bookshops and libraries. It's so important to support them both. Last Saturday I visited Waterstones in Guildford to sign my books. This is apparently the busiest store in the entire chain. There I sat, watching a queue of women lining up to pay for 50 Shades of Grey. For all the ccriticism of this book, denigrated as a jazzed up Mills and Boon, it has been a sales phenomenon thanks to all the hype about 'mummy porn'. I said my title would have to be 50 Shades of Purple... But seriously, I have to admit it doesn't appeal to me. My publisher (who also hasn't read it) suggested (joking?) that I write an 'erotic crime' novel. You can read quite a few responses to that idea on facebook!
Thank you very much to all of you who have continued to
follow this blog even though I've been largely absent. I'll
try to do better!
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Violence in crime fiction
There are fashions in crime fiction. Tastes change and trends are influenced by individual success stories, hit television series and popular films. A few years ago Lynda La Plante became very popular, with sales of her books boosted by Helen Mirren’s brilliant performance of Jane Tennison on television. Publishers were suddenly looking for police procedural novels. Then psychological thrillers became popular, with a movement away from ‘cosies’. Publishers wanted manuscripts to be ‘gritty’ and ‘edgy’. The depiction of violence in crime fiction became increasingly graphic, bordering on horror. As PD James wrote, “The physical act of killing a human being has an awesome and horrible fascination. All that flesh to dispose of, all that blood to be washed away.”
At one time crime authors seemed to be vying with one another to produce the most dramatic impact with scenes of violence. Reading a crime novel about severed body parts being discovered, I felt that one particular author had abandoned plausibility for the sake of shock tactics. This ruined the book for me. The very next week there was a case in the news of severed body parts found strewn over the countryside. Truth is often more extreme than fiction can dare to be. Readers of crime novels are looking for thrilling stories and love dramatic shocks, but the balance must be right. Too much violence can compromise the credibility of a book, and descriptions that are too extreme can be off putting.
Of course different readers like different degrees of violence. Within reason, how palatable it is depends entirely on personal taste. You might reasonably expect readers of the genre to anticipate some violence in a crime novel. Yet some readers are quite squeamish, steering away from violence. There’s no denying that cosies are enduringly popular. Look at the shelf space given to Agatha Christie in bookshops and libraries. At the same time, many crime readers relish guts and gore in their crime novels. “I do like a bit of blood,” readers frequently tell me, often adding words to the effect of, “aren’t I awful?” And many of the most successful crime writers give precise details about their victims’ injuries. Medically trained, Tess Gerritsen writes clinical descriptions of blood and guts which can be very graphic. Patricia Cornwell is another bestselling author who writes dispassionately about gore, having worked for a medical examiner before writing crime novels.
Violence can be an important technique for raising the stakes for readers. Think about Shakespeare’s dark tragedy Macbeth with its murders, treason, infanticide and genocide. Despite the killing of a king, and the reports of violent battles and bloody murders elsewhere, the most memorable and shocking moments in the play are the few scenes when characters are murdered on stage, in full view of the audience. Showing violence creates far more impact than reporting it. Creating violent characters does not mean authors are violent people. PD James says that people have expressed surprise that she writes about violent murders, she is such a nice lady. (No one has ever said that to me!) In fact, authors of crime fiction are notoriously nice. All the crime writers I have met have been generous and gentle people, from Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Jeffery Deaver, to aspiring writers struggling to complete their first crime novel.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question of how much violence should be included in a novel. Everyone draws their own line of what is acceptable, from Agatha Christie’s inoffensive intricate plots, to the bloody bodies in Tess Gerritsen.
At one time crime authors seemed to be vying with one another to produce the most dramatic impact with scenes of violence. Reading a crime novel about severed body parts being discovered, I felt that one particular author had abandoned plausibility for the sake of shock tactics. This ruined the book for me. The very next week there was a case in the news of severed body parts found strewn over the countryside. Truth is often more extreme than fiction can dare to be. Readers of crime novels are looking for thrilling stories and love dramatic shocks, but the balance must be right. Too much violence can compromise the credibility of a book, and descriptions that are too extreme can be off putting.
Of course different readers like different degrees of violence. Within reason, how palatable it is depends entirely on personal taste. You might reasonably expect readers of the genre to anticipate some violence in a crime novel. Yet some readers are quite squeamish, steering away from violence. There’s no denying that cosies are enduringly popular. Look at the shelf space given to Agatha Christie in bookshops and libraries. At the same time, many crime readers relish guts and gore in their crime novels. “I do like a bit of blood,” readers frequently tell me, often adding words to the effect of, “aren’t I awful?” And many of the most successful crime writers give precise details about their victims’ injuries. Medically trained, Tess Gerritsen writes clinical descriptions of blood and guts which can be very graphic. Patricia Cornwell is another bestselling author who writes dispassionately about gore, having worked for a medical examiner before writing crime novels.
Violence can be an important technique for raising the stakes for readers. Think about Shakespeare’s dark tragedy Macbeth with its murders, treason, infanticide and genocide. Despite the killing of a king, and the reports of violent battles and bloody murders elsewhere, the most memorable and shocking moments in the play are the few scenes when characters are murdered on stage, in full view of the audience. Showing violence creates far more impact than reporting it. Creating violent characters does not mean authors are violent people. PD James says that people have expressed surprise that she writes about violent murders, she is such a nice lady. (No one has ever said that to me!) In fact, authors of crime fiction are notoriously nice. All the crime writers I have met have been generous and gentle people, from Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Mark Billingham, Val McDermid and Jeffery Deaver, to aspiring writers struggling to complete their first crime novel.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question of how much violence should be included in a novel. Everyone draws their own line of what is acceptable, from Agatha Christie’s inoffensive intricate plots, to the bloody bodies in Tess Gerritsen.
Sunday, 5 February 2012
Why we read crime fiction
I was very pleased to receive an invitation from BBC 3 Counties Radio this week to discuss the popularity of crime fiction live on air. This was in response to a recent report from the library service that crime novels have overtaken romance as the most borrowed genre in 2011.
The 10 most popular authors on the list were crime writers, with James Patterson at number 1 and two of Lee Child’s titles in the top 10. Most of the authors live in the US, Ian Rankin being the only UK resident author in the top 10.
I had an earlier inkling of this when a Hertfordshire librarian kindly emailed me to let me know that I was the second most borrowed author at that library for 2011, second only to James Patterson.
The question the BBC presenter posed was why has crime fiction increased in popularity in recent times?
In Victorian times people were uneasily aware of high profile killers like Jack the Ripper. Equipped with little more than bicycles, whistles and good intentions, the police in those days were ineffective. Sherlock Holmes captured the public imagination as a precursor of superman as much as of Poirot and Rebus, because it was immensely reassuring to read about a detective guaranteed to outwit the evil villain. It still seems incredible that many people thought he really existed, but we believe what we want to believe.
In the wake of 9/11 and with growing problems of recession, we are increasingly conscious of the battle for survival, on a global and an individual level. Add to this the decline in religious belief, and it is hardly surprising that so many people are turning to crime fiction as an escape from an unjust world where very little seems to make any sense.
However disturbing crime novels are, we know some sort of moral order will be restored in the end. That is the reason for their appeal. The less the world around us makes sense, the more popular the genre is likely to become, as library borrowings demonstrate.
The 10 most popular authors on the list were crime writers, with James Patterson at number 1 and two of Lee Child’s titles in the top 10. Most of the authors live in the US, Ian Rankin being the only UK resident author in the top 10.
I had an earlier inkling of this when a Hertfordshire librarian kindly emailed me to let me know that I was the second most borrowed author at that library for 2011, second only to James Patterson.
The question the BBC presenter posed was why has crime fiction increased in popularity in recent times?
In Victorian times people were uneasily aware of high profile killers like Jack the Ripper. Equipped with little more than bicycles, whistles and good intentions, the police in those days were ineffective. Sherlock Holmes captured the public imagination as a precursor of superman as much as of Poirot and Rebus, because it was immensely reassuring to read about a detective guaranteed to outwit the evil villain. It still seems incredible that many people thought he really existed, but we believe what we want to believe.
In the wake of 9/11 and with growing problems of recession, we are increasingly conscious of the battle for survival, on a global and an individual level. Add to this the decline in religious belief, and it is hardly surprising that so many people are turning to crime fiction as an escape from an unjust world where very little seems to make any sense.
However disturbing crime novels are, we know some sort of moral order will be restored in the end. That is the reason for their appeal. The less the world around us makes sense, the more popular the genre is likely to become, as library borrowings demonstrate.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Harrogate International Crime Festival 2011
Here are a few photos we took.
Signing books for fans
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