10 Writers in Search of a Story

Zoë Sharp

 

Back in 2012, I took part in the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which takes place annually in Harrogate. Stuart MacBride was the Chair that year, I seem to recall, and he asked me to take part in a round-robin story he’d been asked to write. The story was going to be called SPECIFIC GRAVITY, and the idea was that Stuart would ask ten different crime writers to pen a chapter each, then he would attempt to make sense of the chaos by knitting it all together again into some kind of ending.

 

I dimly remember that there were some vague guidelines for the tale. As T&R Theakston—brewers of the aforementioned Old Peculier—were the title sponsors, I was told they were very keen that nothing untoward should happen at the brewery itself, nor should there be any suggestion that there was more ‘body’ in the beer than one would normally expect.

 

I’m not sure Stuart got the memo on that one, if his opening chapter, The Head, was anything to go by…

 

I duly wrote my follow-on chapter to that, entitled The Hands—for reasons that are obvious when you read it.

 

Laura Wilson was up next. She came up with The Torso for chapter three.

 

NJ Cooper followed up with chapter four, The Feet.

 

Then came Martyn Waites with The Brains for chapter five.

 

Chapter six, The Legs, was penned by Martin Edwards.

 

Followed by Ann Cleeves with The Teeth for chapter seven.

 

Dreda Say Mitchell wrote chapter eight, The Fingers.

 

Chapter nine, written by Allan Guthrie was The Unmentionables.

 

Charlie Williams wrote chapter ten, The Bottom.

 

And Stuart rounded things off with chapter eleven, The Heart (and Soul).

 

My hat goes off to Stuart for carrying off the literary equivalent of herding cats. And in some style, I might add.

 

A sampler containing the first three chapters was available at the Festival that year, but I never quite found out what happened to the story after that.

 

It was only recently that I resorted to Google and discovered the whole thing was available online via the 36stories website as one of their Fifteen Minute Reads. Sponsored both by Harrogate International Festivals and Transdev, the idea is that there are fifteen minutes between services of the No36 that runs throughout the day between Leeds, Harrogate, and Ripon. As the website says, ‘With the help of our Fifteen Minute Read, the minutes between services will disappear completely.’

 

So, if you have fifteen minutes to spare, and you fancy being entertained by the twisted imaginations of ten crime writers, why not give it a whirl?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is pauciloquent, meaning to use few words in speech, laconic. Earliest use was mid-17^thcentury, from the Latin pauci meaning little or few, and loquent that speaks.

Murder Out of Africa

Michael - Thursday

Paul deciding on the menu

We’re between events in the UK.  It started last Friday with the UK launch of A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, hard on the heels of DEADLY HARVEST, which came out in May.  Then on Tuesday evening we had a great session with Paul Mendelson, who sets his crime fiction in Cape Town, at Waterstones, Piccadilly, discussing South Africa and Sunshine Noir.  We followed the event with a scrumptious Chinese dinner where Paul chose a spectacular spread.

Yesterday evening we had fun at Heffers in Cambridge, meeting a delightful group at their crime book club.  Richard Reynolds hosted the evening and had interesting stories of his own to tell also.

Now on to the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate for a panel on Murder Out of Africa with Deon Meyer, Paul Mendelson and Leye Adenle.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind trip, but a lot of fun.  It’s also made me think about African mysteries and the developing interest in them.  On one occasion we were told, “Americans aren’t interested in Africa or South America.”  It seems to me that’s changing.  Think about the wildly successful No. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY series by Alexander McCall Smith.  Long before that, James McClure kicked off the interest in South African crime fiction with his Kramer and Zondi novels that won the Silver and Gold Crime Writers Association dagger awards.  (The McClure books are still well worth reading and are currently being reissued by Soho.)

In post-apartheid South Africa, Deon Meyer has emerged as a major talent and his books have gained recognition and a serious following around the world.  He's won a number of prizes and is currently short listed for the Crime Writers Association International Dagger for ICARUS, based on the shenanigans in the wine industry during sanctions days.  So plenty of interest there.  Deon is by no means alone.  Mike Nicol, Jassy McKenzie, Paul Mendelson, Malla Nunn, Roger Smith, and many others delve into modern South Africa using crime fiction as a vehicle. Then there is South African author Lauren Beukes whose breakout thriller THE SHINING GIRLS combined the thriller and speculative fiction genres.

Elsewhere on the continent, Leye Adenle has a searing  debut novel of Lagos, EASY MOTION TOURIST, Kwei Quartey’s Detective Darko Dawson tries to set Ghana to rights, Richard Crompton has a Masai detective trapped in the modern day problems of Kenya, while Annamaria Alfieri looks back into Kenya’s colonial history with her Justin Tolliver series.  There are many more, and I’m sure there are a lot that I’m simply ignorant about.  Murder is coming out of Africa, and the backstories are often intriguingly different from those of Europe and America.

I mentioned Mike Nicol before and he deserves a lot of credit for putting South African crime fiction on the map.  Not only does he have a number of powerful books to his name, but he set up a website, Crimebeat, in the early days that showcased the development of the genre in South Africa.  With the inauguration of the International Thriller Writers Association in 2005, he volunteered to write a monthly newsletter from South Africa, once again helping his fellow authors gain exposure.  After five years, he needed a break and passed it on to me.  With Joanne Hichens I tried to expand it from South Africa (look, it had to include at least Botswana, right?) and we changed the title to Africa Scene.  Each piece introduces a new author or a new book, and features a synopsis, interview with the author, and a few pictures illustrating his or her African location.  Last month, I discussed NOWHERE with Roger Smith.  In the next few months I’m interviewing  Annamaria about her second book in the Kenya series, THE IDOL OF MOMBASA, and Sally Andrews, whose debut, RECIPES FOR LOVE AND MURDER, leaves you drooling both for Tannie Maria's Karoo food and for more books.  Next month Michele Rowe, who won the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger for her debut, will be talking about the second book in her trilogy, THE HOUR OF DARKNESS.  It has an intriguing premise. While we're doing our bit for the environment by turning off the lights for Earth Hour, that gives the perfect opportunity for criminals to act unseen. Then Paul Mendelson has agreed to discuss his new book THE HISTORY OF BLOOD.

Africa Scene is one of the articles each month in ITW’s The Big Thrill e-magazine and you can sign up for it (and ITW for that matter) for free.  I’ll also post the pieces on Facebook.  And if you follow any of the links here to the authors mentioned, you'll see the pieces about them and their recent books.

Any published authors interested in participating are invited to contact me. The only requirement is that you set a substantial part of your book in Africa.

So, thinking about Caro’s piece last Friday, I’ve been asking myself why I undertook this and have stuck with it for almost five years.  Well, I get the opportunity to discover and read a lot of authors who are new to me.  ITW has quite a big circulation for The Big Thrill so I hope that it helps some new authors get exposure and broaden their readership outside Africa, and beyond that, I hope that it may attract a few readers to try out African mysteries.  There are a lot of really good ones out there.  And, yes, of course, I hope it raises the Michael Stanley profile a bit too. But most of all it’s fun!