#NoirAtTheBarNE: Noir at the Bar comes to Newcastle upon Tyne

Zoë Sharp

Last Wednesday I drove over to Newcastle - the ‘upon Tyne’ one, rather than the ‘-under-Lyme’ one, and no, I have no idea why one is not hyphenated and the other is - for Noir At The Bar NorthEast.

This is now the third time a Noir At The Bar event has been staged in the UK. A US import, the first was organised by Jay Stringer north of the border, in Glasgow. The second - and the first in England - was at Carlisle back in March, and I was honoured to be one of the authors invited by organiser Graham Smith (of Crime & Publishment) to take part.

Wednesday night was the first time N@tB has taken place over in the northeast of the country. The lovely Vic Watson - known as Elementary V Watson, proof-reader, copy-editor and creative writer - and the equally wonderful Jacky Collins, brains behind Newcastle Noir, were the co-hosts this time around. Thank you SO much to those two for putting on such a great event, and allowing me to take part.

Vic Watson and Jacky Collins

The venue was the basement of The Town Wall pub in Newcastle, an atmospheric venue with cracking food and a charming barman who bore a startling resemblance to Jon Snow from Game of Thrones. They served very decent grub, too.

Jon Snow, who appeared to be moonlighting as the barman at The Town Wall pub in Newcastle

I wasn’t officially on the bill for Newcastle, but having gone to Carlisle it was such fun I decided to make the journey anyway, with a friend, Shell, along for a night out. Quite by co-incidence, I had an email on the morning of the event from Vic, saying an author had been forced to drop out at the last minute due to injury, and would I like to step in?

NOT Tess Makovesky

The injured author was Tess Makovesky, who apparently lost a battle with her furniture and knocked herself about quite a bit in the process. I swore I was nowhere near her at the time, but I’m not sure how much I was believed … Hope you recover soon, Tess!

For anyone unfamiliar with the N@tB format, it involves a group of authors being asked to come along to a bar (crime writers and a drinking establishment, who’d have thought a pairing like that would work …?) and read part of a current work. The names were put in a hat and drawn out at random for the running order.

The miscreants: (left to right) Graham Smith, Gordon Brown, Danielle Ramsay, Jacky Collins, Zoë Sharp, Eileen Wharton, Vic Watson, Sheila Quigley, Janet O'Kane, Martyn Taylor, G.J. Brown

It was a really fun evening, not only to hear some great stories, but also to mix with friends old and new, including finally getting to meet Noelle Holten of CrimeBookJunkie.

Vic Watson has covered the authors and the work from which they read so well in her own blog that I’m linking to it here. Well worth taking a look at! And the resemblance between us was spookily uncanny, especially when I put my reading glasses on ...

Spooky or what? Me and Vic Watson.
I am her Evil Twin

I read from a short story I recently finished, which is intended for The Strand magazine. It’s called ‘Risk Assessment’ and came about through an experience I had when I received my last car insurance renewal notice and decided to use an alternative provider.

Reading from 'Risk Assessment' on the night.

The events described in the story were entirely made up, by the way, but the possibilities are very real. And it is, after all, our job as crime authors to see the worst in any given situation …

This week’s Word of the Week is sesquipedalian, meaning to use a lot of long words that most people do not understand. As distinct from orotund, which means using extremely formal and complicated language intended to impress people, and also prolix, which is to use too many words, and therefore to be boring.

And with that, I’ll get me coat … 

Noir At The Bar: Carlisle - Noir At The Bar Comes to the UK

Zoë Sharp

Last week I had the pleasure of being invited to the first Noir At The Bar event held in England. It wasn’t the first one in the UK – that honour was nabbed by Glasgow in June last year.

The inaugural English event took place in Carlisle, at the quirky Moo Bar on Devonshire Street, which is a real-ale-drinker’s dream location. The organisers were three local crime authors – Matt Hilton, Graham Smith and Mike Craven, collectively known as Crime Ink-Corporated.

l to r Matt Hilton, Graham Smith, Mike Craven

When Matt first emailed me about taking part I said yes right away, and only then started to think about what I was actually going to read out. We were each allowed between five and seven minutes, although I’ve always found short and sweet tends to go down better than going on again, on again, on again.

In the end I plumped for part of my Charlie Fox short story ‘Kill Me Again Slowly’, which I wrote for the Bouchercon 2015 anthology, MURDER UNDER THE OAKS. This story had enough of a bizarre setup to be (I hope) both intriguing and entertaining. Seemed to go down well on the night, anyway.

Of course, while the idea of N@tB may be a new one in the UK, such events have been going on in the States since 2008. Crime reviewer, critic and blogger, Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders came up with the original idea, which was held at a bar tended by a friend in Philadelphia, where the décor happened to be all black.

Peter Rozovsky (right) with Ali Karim of Shots eZine
(pic by Ali Karim)

The format for those first evenings was for a single author to read and take questions, but since then – and with more authors wanting to take part – there can be quite a number, reading out short extracts either from a current work or, in some cases, from something experimental that might or might not otherwise see the light of … night.

great pic for N@tB, created by illustrator Brent Schoonover

Dozens of N@tB evenings have now sprung up from New York to LA and all points in between. And then last year two Brit authors decided to bring it over here. The organisers for the Glasgow event were Jay Stringer and Russel D McLean. Jay made it down to Carlisle for last week’s event, and very entertaining he is, too.

As were the other writers on the bill, including Lucy Cameron, Paul Finch, James Hilton, Tess Makovesky, David Mark, Jay Stringer, Neil White and myself. A wildcard name was pulled from a hat on the night – Linda Wright. Some read parts of short stories, work-in-progress novels, current novels and even a great poem. And all with that dark kind of humour that marks out this particular corner of the genre.

thanks to Noir at the Bar for the pic

The place was packed, and by the end of the evening Graham was able to announced that the Moo Bar had happily invited N@tB back again for a return match. I hope I’m lucky enough to be there for it.

l to r Matt Hilton, Lucy Cameron, Graham Smith, Tess Makovesky, Paul Finch, Linda Wright, Neil White, David Mark, Jay Stringer, ZS, Jim Hilton (Matt's brother) and Mike Craven

This week’s Word of the Week comes courtesy of Lucy Cameron’s blog, and is pleonasm, meaning the use of more words or parts of words than are strictly necessary for clear expression. It comes from the Greek pleonasmos (pleon) meaning more or too much. One common example is ‘safe haven’, as if it wasn’t safe it wouldn’t be a haven, so ‘safe’ can be left out. However, sometimes pleonasm is employed for additional emphasis, in case certain words are lost during communication.