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Although I am a crime novelist, I recently taught a class on horror fiction, as part of a creative writing course I was running.

The session threw up an old chestnut, one that is often debated by crime writers as well. How graphic do you allow your writing to become? Do you leave it to the reader’s imagination or soak them in blood and gore at every opportunity?

It was an interesting debate and we never really came to a definitive answer. However, there was a leaning towards…

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A lot of my teaching focuses on characters (they are at the heart of my classes, they are, after all, our major tools as writers).

So how do you create them? Here’s some thoughts:

* Maybe base them on people you know but beware of the law. Don’t lift your local vicar wholesale and turn him/her into a cold-blooded killer! Make your characters composites of several people

*Describe their physical characteristics You can do it one bit or slot descriptions in as you go. Describe… Continue

A decision to replace trained school librarians with pupils has been criticised. The criticism came after it was reported that Sc…

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I have been having some interesting discussions with crime writers recently about emotion.

Emotion is something of which some writers are…

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Writing a series brings with it its own challenges -…

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An important part of crime writing is creating villains. The golden rule is to make them credible; you have to make them real and not some clichéd villain lifted from the movies.…

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I am delighted that the Jack Harris audio crime books Dead Hill, To Die Alone and The Vixen’s Scream, narrated by the excellent Nicholas Camm, are proving popular.…

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It is always humbling when readers post good reviews of your work, as has happened with…

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As part of Book Week Scotland crime writer John Dean will be giving talks at Georgetown Library, Dumfries, at 6pm on Monday November 19 and at 2pm at Stranraer Library on Tuesday November 20.

Speaking in my capacity as the Crime Writers’ Association Libraries Champion in Scotland, I have to say that this story about proposed library closures is happening far too often – libraries should be treasured not closed…

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