Val McDermid's Blog, page 16
June 12, 2015
UK reading habits an embarrassment, says Edinburgh book festival director…
The Guardian 11.06.2015
Nick Barley announces writers from 55 countries at festival will shake up Britain’s parochial readers and showcase Scotland as an outward-looking nation.
Scottish crime writer Val McDermid will be interviewed by Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.
The UK’s parochial reading habits are an embarrassment, according to the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Nick Barley has introduced his sixth and most globally ambitious programme, which includes authors from North and South Korea, as well as first minister Nicola Sturgeon interviewing her favourite Scottish crime writer, Val McDermid.
Describing the festival, which runs from 15 to 31 August in Edinburgh’s Charlotte square, as “the most international ever attempted in Britain”, Barley accepted that many names would not be familiar to a British audience. “But what I want to get across is that these people are megastars in their own countries,” he said.
June 7, 2015
There’s been a murder! Amateur sleuths invited to forensic course…
STV
5 June 2015 15:43 BST
Amateur detectives from around the world are being given the chance to help solve a murder mystery alongside one of the world’s leading forensic centres.
A new free, online course at Dundee University’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID), has been launched which takes its inspiration from a fictional crime novel.
Scenes and scenarios from author Val McDermid’s latest story will be recreated with students being asked to solve the mystery as the case unfolds over six weeks.
The new course, which is known as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), is open to anyone, free to take part in and is accessed online.
June 4, 2015
Authors gear up for Scots crime-writing festival…
Val McDermid is one of the star guests at this year’s Bloody Scotland festival.
Wednesday 4th June 2015
Read this article by BRIAN FERGUSON on The Scotsman website.
Picture: Neil Hanna
SCOTLAND’S annual crime-writing festival is to explore whether men or women are better placed to write about murder, the painstaking investigation to capture the man behind the World’s End murders and the real-life poisons deployed by Agatha Christie to kill off characters.
An all-women panel of writers will be discussing whether men and women write and read crime differently, what they think about violence, and whether they are equally subjected to it at Stirling’s Bloody Scotland event in September.
May 15, 2015
Ullapool delivers another book festival to cherish…
West Highland Free Press – 14 May 2015 by Michael Russell
Photograph: Charlie Hopkinson
MICHAEL RUSSELL attended – and was part of – this year’s Ullapool Book Festival. Here are just a few of the highlights…
Crime writer Val McDermid, arguably the top draw at this year’s Ullapool Book Festival, likened last week’s General Election result to the Reformation. Bringing the festival to a close, she said the “schism” that now divides an SNP-dominated anti-austerity Scotland from a uniformly-blue south of England really is on that scale.
“You have to wonder where we are going and how we get there,” McDermid added. “But that is one of the exciting things about being in Scotland right now. In England, people there are amazed at what has happened here because they don’t have the same sense of control over their lives or the same sense of political engagement. And it’s not just the chattering classes in Scotland who have this level of engagement — everyone is interested in it.”
McDermid, along with Ian Rankin, was the first to follow in William Mcilvanney’s bloody footprints (the creator of Laidlaw himself being a beneficiary of the revitalisation of the genre pioneered by PD James and Ruth Rendell). McDermid’s 28th novel, ‘The Skeleton Road’, starts with human remains discovered at the top of a Gothic tower in Edinburgh and, as is her wont, links recent events — in this case, the Balkan wars — with the dreaming spires of Oxford. Documenting social history is as important to her as creating gripping crime fiction.
May 3, 2015
Ruth Rendell
No one can equal Ruth Rendell’s range or accomplishment
Val McDermidCurrent British crime writing owes much to a writer who consistently showed that the genre can continually reinvent itself…
Ruth Rendell was deservedly the most decorated of British crime writers. Among her many distinctions were a clutch of Daggers (four gold, one silver and the diamond for a lifetime of achievement) and two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America who also gave her their Grandmaster Award. She was also garlanded with the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence.
April 29, 2015
Dead Good Reader Awards – Vote!
Dead Good Books launches the inaugural Dead Good Reader Awards.
The team behind crime community Dead Good Books have created six bespoke awards, which will be presented in Harrogate this July at the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival.
Each award was created in collaboration with the Dead Good Facebook community and celebrates a unique element in crime writing.
The awards will feature an online reader nomination process. Readers can nominate their favourite authors and books for the awards online through the Dead Good website. When the shortlist for each award has been selected, readers will be able to vote for their favourite with the final winners being selected through a 50% digital and public vote at the festival.
The culmination of the awards will be at a special event on Friday 17th July at the festival with well-known crime authors such as Lee Child and Val McDermid presenting the awards. The awards are as follows:
The Lee Child Award for Best Loner or Detective
The Val McDermid Award for Fiendish Forensics
The Reichenback Fall Award for Most Epic Ending
The Dr Lecter Award for Scariest Villain
The Patricia Highsmith Award for Most Exotic Location
The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book
Each winner will receive a specially designed magnifying glass trophy.
To vote please visit: Dead Good Reader Awards – Vote!
Find out more about: Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival
April 3, 2015
The Skeleton Road No. 5 Over Easter?
We are delighted to share that following sales figures for the week so far, Val McDermid’s THE SKELETON ROAD should be at No.5 in the Sunday Times chart this Easter weekend!
Read more about The Skeleton Road
March 24, 2015
Val is doing a Guardian Webchat
Post your questions for Val McDermid Now!
Scottish crime writer Val McDermid is a leading light of “tartan noir”, though she spent many years living in England and one of her best known characters – the kick-boxing private investigator Kate Brannigan – is from Manchester.
Asked what she meant by tartan noir, the Fife-born, Edinburgh based writer has described it as a tradition started by William McIlvanney’s 1977 novel Laidlaw: “[It] encompasses a wide range of work, from apparent rural douceness to raw urban savagery. But it seems to me that all of us who write from that Scottish sensibility have common underpinnings that draw us together and distinguish us from our English, Welsh and Irish colleagues.”
She is joining us to answer your questions in a live webchat at 1pm on Wednesday 25 March. Post your questions in the comments below about anything in her life or career, and she’ll try and answer as many as possible.
February 22, 2015
Win a signed copy of The Skeleton Road
Award-winning crime writer Val McDermid is a Number One bestseller, translated into more than 30 languages, with over two million copies sold in the UK and over 11 million worldwide. She has written 27 bestselling crime novels and has also published a retelling of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and an exploration of forensic science, Forensics: An Anatomy of Crime. Val will be in coversation with the brilliant Sara Paretsky. We can’t wait to see this perfect pairing on stage together!
To celebrate Val’s appearance at this year’s festival we have a fantastic competition running. To be in with the chance of winning an signed advance paperback copy of Val’s The Skeleton Road answer this question:
What year was Val’s first book published?
Please send your answers to crime@harrogate-festival.org.uk by the 6th March. Standard Terms & Conditions apply.
November 29, 2014
My Hero: PD James (1920-2014) by Val McDermid
The Guardian, Friday 28 November 2014
Phyllis had a deft way with the horrific, creating images that seared their way into the reader’s brain. This week, we lost a legend.
Just before her 90th birthday, PD James invited me to take part in an event she was organising at the Bodleian library in Oxford. At dinner afterwards, she admitted she was writing, but not an Adam Dalgliesh novel. I asked her why not. “Because I don’t want to die in the middle and have one of you lot finish it,” she said, a wicked twinkle in her eye.
Wicked twinkle … PD James. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
An Evening with Queen of Crime, part of Books on the Tyne festival
Date:
Sunday 30th November 2014
Time:
6pm – 7.30pm
Venue:
Newcastle City Library (Bewick Hall)
33 New Bridge Street West
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8AX
Cost:
£10.00 / £8.00
An Evening with Queen of Crime, 30 November 2014
Award-winning crime writer Val McDermid in conversation with Gail-Nina Anderson rounds off Books on Tyne ‘On the Edge’. Psychological thrills don’t get more thrilling than in Val’s world so hold onto the edge of your seats tonight at our grand finale!
Café at city library will be open for the purchase of drinks.
More Information:
http://www.booksontyne.co.uk/events/item/an-evening-with-queen-of-crime-val-mcdermid
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