The name’s Monaghan, Jason Monaghan. Conference Season morphs into Crime Reading Month and I was off around Yorkshire talking at library events. First stop was Wakefield, with panel sessions in the main library and useful chats with fellow writers out in the lobby where several of us set up stalls. Curiously for a crime writing event the biggest level of interest was in Glint of Light on Broken Glass.
After West Yorkshire, it was the turn of East Yorkshire and a drive out towards the coast on a sunny June day. At Wellerby Library just outside Hull I gave a solo talk to an enthusiastic group of local readers, choosing to talk about problems that needed to be overcome in writing my mysteries. This included keeping the police out of the plot of the Jeffrey Flint books, which I’ve blogged about before, and making the facsist threat real in the Room Z series.
Straight after the morning talk it was on the road again to Bridlington where I had a pleasant hour on the beach eating my sandwiches. At Bridlington North Library I reprised the talk, with some tweaks and of course a different set of questions to field. One zinger was whether I had ever discovered something in my research that was too sensitive to include in a novel.
While in Wakefield I bumped into fellow speaker Sam Lee Howe who nudged me into attending the Sykehouse International Film and Writing Festival at the end of the month. This was something different, in that it mixed indie film makers with crime, horror and sci fi authors. Other than panel sessions there was a continuous screening of films, of which the stand out for me was ‘Tapped’, an urban thriller about a pair of neurofdivergent kids tangled up with a local gang. The judges gave it a host of awards during the Gala dinner.
Held at Owston Hall the food was a notch above the catering often encountered at such events. It was a glittering occasion where we humble writers got to rub shoulders with actors, producers and dress designers. Very swish.
And that’s it for another month at the sharp end of crime writing. Regardless of how we’re experiencing one of the hottest Junes ever, I’m not putting the penguin suit away just yet. Coming up this week it’s the CWA Daggers Awards; more glamour, more awards and more crime.
Leave a Reply