National Crime Fiction Week

Image: Alan Cleaver

I was rather disappointed to see not a single Scot among the shortlist of best young crime writers from the CWA’s inaugural National Crime Fiction Week awards. All the finalists were English or Welsh, which I hope isn’t an indication that “tartan noir” is on the droop. Mind you, if it is, that leaves the way wide open for me (he says with an evil smirk) although probably not in the “young” category.

Some of my readers might like to know that although STELLA was a paranormal suspense novella, as will be its successor, BACCARA BURNING, my full length novels and the one other novella I have on the go are all crime related. GATECRASH, SLICK, GREENER IS THE GRASS and even BLOOD TIES (an unfinished Lennox novel) are all crime, the latter a true piece of crime fiction in that it is a detective story. The rest revolve around the criminals as opposed to the coppers chasing them, which is an angle that comes quite naturally to me I find. Except for Lennox; he’s an enigma.

With all my short fiction now out I was amazed to receive a rejection from a top end magazine so quickly after they received it. Three days for a magazine that claims to receive thousands of submissions each month, and can so only use half of 1% in any given year? I think not. I suspect this one is closed off and the piece wasn’t even read. The good thing about it was the speed I turned the submission around and got it back out to another suitable market (by suitable I mean the kind of fiction it publishes) within minutes.

While I was in the software that I use for managing my submissions, I accidentally submitted a few more poems to some magazines. I’ve got a fair few out to competitions and poetry rags just now, such is the ease of the whole process I can simply fire them out when they are ready or when I see a magazine that speaks to me; I simply add it into the software and fire off the sub.

I began work on the final draft of GREENER IS THE GRASS. It’s very exciting. I reckon it won’t take too long to work through the printed manuscript, collecting errors, typos and making notes as I go. In the first chapter alone I’ve taken out several large chunks; a bunch of unnecessary sentences that were harder to spot on the screen but somehow jump out more easily from the page. And I’ve got a couple of markets in mind for this one already so the quicker the better.

This Thursday will see the publication of this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival programme. With Catherine Lockerbie gone and the new guy in, I hope the festival doesn’t lose any of its appeal. It wouldn’t be the same without that special something, that wee bit of magic that makes August in Charlotte Square such a special time. And I certainly hope they don’t change the format too much, not too quickly anyway.

If you’re an e-book fan, then you might be interested to know that my book, STELLA, is now available to purchase from Kindle. Click here to buy a copy of STELLA, the Kindle Edition, priced $5.29.

Gail Galbraith Photography is offering portrait shoots for £25 (knocked down from £40) if you book before 31st August 2014 and you use the word “Leith” in your query. For that you get a 1 hour session in her new studio in Leith, 1 free 8×6 print, an online gallery to show off to friends and family and where images can be purchase direct from, and all images from the shoot on a free low-resolution CD. (Subject to max of 4 people per session; each additional person is £5 each). You can contact Gail at gail@gailgalbraith.co.uk and view her website at: www.gailgalbraith.co.uk

That’s all for me just now. Peace out!