I’ve spent the last four days engrossed in the crime writing festival that is Noirwich – book readings, author interviews, workshops and more in the wonderful City of Literature that is Norwich, UK.
Headlines
- Packed house for Lee Child at sponsors Jarrolds
- Andy McNab gets out of engagement by headbutting his windscreen en route (we understand he is out of casualty, but concussed)
- Kevin Dutton soldiers on and helps everyone calculate their psychopath rating
- Ann Cleeve reveals Vera TV rights acquired due to purchase of book from Oxfam
- Ruth Ware wows audience with tales of forthcoming hen party murder In A Dark Dark Wood
- Killer Women survive interrogation by misogynist, and reveal universal hatred of plotting
- Elly Griffiths reveals her true name and the nature of her plotting
- Elizabeth Haynes praises NaNoWriMo for the push to write her novels in a month
- Paul Johnstone reminds us that crime writing began in the Bible, and that in this genre, anything goes.
Whew! It was really exhausting, and my mind is whirling with all the great ideas and suggestions, and just gathering in and sifting the different approaches taken by these great writers. I do have some notes for each session, but you’d be better nipping over to the Writers Centre Norwich website for the videos of most of the sessions.
I’m really grateful to Elly Griffiths for a great talk (which answered those questions I mentioned on Saturday), and insights into her writing, the methods she uses (husband is an archaeologist – helpful with that palaeontology stuff!), and the hints on the story arc. I think she was delighted to hear I was aghast at her closing line in The House at Sea’s End! Not only did she sign my copy of book 7 (since the others are on my Kindle) but she agreed to a photo – thank you to the kind person who took it for me!
I’d also like to thank the WCN staff member who I met previously at the Nature Writing course – a chance remark as we parted left me thinking, hmmm… a murder in a nature writing course… I’m working on it.
TackleTBR update, day 8
What I read at the weekend: The King’s Sword
Number of pages read: c. 42 (now at 72%)
Weekend’s finished books: er…
Total number of finished books: 3
Finished books: The House at Sea’s End, Jungle Land, Rounding the Mark (reviews here)
Books removed from TBR so far: 3
Books added to wishlist during Noirwich: 7
Weekend’s new books acquired: 6 (2 already on list, 2 freebies from Dead Good books, 4 from Waterstones)
Net reduction from TBR list: minus 8
Moral: do not go to Noirwich if you want to reduce your TBR list.
Hi Jemima – sounds like you certainly had an amazing amount of input and lots of interesting fun … the sessions must have had everyone wondering where the murderer was. Elly is lucky to have an archaelogist husband … all kinds of fascinating stuff .. cheers Hilary
It was a great time. The festival is certainly building, and the Dragon Hall, which is WCN’s new home is an amazing place to hold it in!
That does sound great! Wish I’d been there 🙂
Love the Tackle TBR update, too. I finished 3 books over the weekend. None were on my TBR list :p
Just make sure that when you finally come over, you come over at the right time!
Wow! You’ve been busy. Sounds ace, the festival.
You must come to next year’s!
Too right.
What a great event! Great to get jazzed every once in a while. We have Bourchercon here in a couple of weeks – a similar four day event with Kathy Reichs in the guest. Sisters in Crime is doing most of the work.
Have fun! I want to read all about it. 🙂