William’s Comments (group member since Apr 13, 2019)

William’s comments from the Devon Book Club group.

Hello - thanks Ian for letting me share this.

I'm starting a new crime series set in Devon and launching the first at Pavilions, Teignmouth on July 2nd at 6.30pm for a 7pm start. Orlando Murrin will be there discussing the book with me and my publisher is stumping up a glass of fizz.

Local online bookseller Gumshoe Books will be there and it would be great to see some of you too. It's free but you have to book online at bit.ly/redshore

Just to say that across the border there's a crime book festival this weekend if nobody else has mentioned it: Lyme Crime starts on 23 June. https://www.lymecrime.co.uk

To keep the crime week ticking over... crime books I've read recently that I really rated: The Recovery of Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel; MW Craven's Tilly & Poe series; Jane Casey's The Cutting Place; Abir Mukherjee's A Rising Man/Sam Wyndham series; Sarah Vaughan's Anatomy of a Scandal; John Lincoln's Fade To Grey; Lesley Thomson's Death of a Mermaid.

I’ll come along on Monday... hopefully meet some of you on Twitter.

... and tomorrow - Tuesday - on my Facebook, I'm hopefully interviewing Ann Cleeves at 4pm, technology allowing; her new series is based in North Devon.

There's an online book festival: Stay At Home Book Festival here stayathomefest.wordpress.com/

They're streaming Devon writer Jane Corry today - Friday - at 7pm here - talking about how to write bestselling thrillers: https://tinyurl.com/qqpshu6

Ley wrote: "Thanks for supporting the Library's online offer. We also have magazines through RB Digital and a specialist e-audio book service through Borrowbox. We all have to work from home at the moment but ..."

Hey Ley... Thanks for that. I'm doing a series of Facebook Live broadcasts and have been talking to indie bookshops and writers, but also plan to speak to some librarians ... because I don't think enough people know about Borrowbox and other digital offers. I'm looking for librarians to come on and just chat in a fairly informal way... I've got someone from Cambridgeshire libraries coming on (they get to talk to Ann Cleeves, who's also agreed to be a guest). Would Devon Libraries also be interested in chatting at some point?

Oh... thanks so much.

I'm hosting a series of conversations on my facebook page, facebook.com/williamshawwriter. I'm interested in finding out any groups who are doing book stuff in a positive way because of coronavirus. If anyone hears of anything interesting, please let me know.

Please don't worry. It's kind of an essential service you're doing.

Susan Wilkins

I’ve a new paperback out in Feb and a new hardback in May - crime fiction - and though I am originally from Devon and have a place near Bishopsteignton I’ve never done any book events there. I do things all the time pretty much everywhere else in the UK but I’d love to do some stuff around those parts.

Do any writers or readers have any suggestions of people or places I could give a nudge to?

I enjoy real places - both as a reader and a writer. I think the knowledge that a place is real affects the reader's imagination differently, and I think it can be easier to imagine it if you know it exists, even if you haven't been there. I set my most recent books in Dungeness, but A Book of Scars is set mostly at a real farm near Kingsteignton.

Mindful of the fact that this place isn't really for authors to sell their own wares, my book Salt Lane is about a series crimes that happens around people trafficking and exploitation of migrant labour, though the migrants are very much unseen or just glimpsed in it. When writing it I found Refugee Tales quite interesting as an attempt at mixing biography and fiction around telling stories that often the migrants couldn't tell for themselves, and Hsiao-Hung Pai's Chinese Whispers very chilling.

... Born in Newton Abbot, spend quite a bit of time in Bishopsteignton now. Read a lot of crime fiction.