I am delighted to be again leading this popular course:…

Really excited to have been invited to be a guest at the Selkirk Speakers Club with fellow crime writer Ian Patrick. The event happens at the Selkirk Arms in Kirkudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, on the evening of Thursday February 7, 2019 at 7pm.

The format is a buffet supper…

I love it when a novel starts to assume a life of its own. I am 32,000 words into the new DCI Jack Harris novel and things are slotting together nicely now.

That was not always the case. Writing is like a jigsaw and, whereas at the beginning of the process, the author has lots of fragments floating around, in time they start to make sense.

Relationships between characters start to come together, plotlines link up, lines of dialogue find their home. That is what is happening at…

You can check out the reviews of the latest Jack Harris novel Thou Shalt Kill (The Book Folks) at …

The Blizzard mystery The Secrets Man (The Book Folks) is climbing the Amazon Kindle bestseller…

I recently assessed a manuscript for an aspiring writer and was delighted to discover that they understood the importance of a good beginning to a novel.

The opening chapter got the book off to a cracking start. Opening…

One of the biggest lessons I have had to learn as a novelist is how to create pace. It’s a lesson about which I continually remind myself and which I find myself often writing about when I carry out assessments of…

As part of my work, I am often hired to assess aspiring authors’ manuscripts and one of the recurring themes that crops up in the reports that I write is how to build tension.

Tension is crucial in crime fiction but…

As I have said in previous blogs, I have always believed that a writer is influenced to some degree by where they live and work. I know it is a gross generalisation but I am sure that a writer writing in a dark, cold landscape produces different fiction than one in a bright sunny one.…

I am preparing a writing workshop which focuses on ideas and which will attempt to spark some ideas for stories from those present in the room.

As anyone…

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve been doing a lot of teaching on the idea of ideas lately and among the quotes I came across during my research was “People always want to know: Where do I get my ideas? They're everywhere. I'm inspired by people and things around me” from Gwendolyn Brooks, an American poet.

That is certainly true…

A year after being published by The Book Folks, The Railway Man continues to be my best performing title in the Amazon Kindle Top 100 British Detective stories, currently occupying Number 87.

In the book, few tears are shed when an ex-boxer and local hard man is found dead in a disused railway signal box. When DCI John Blizzard is called in to…

I recently did a Q and A session for a magazine to promote our online crime fiction course and thought it would be of interest. If you wish to find out more about the course, you can contact me on deangriss@btintenet.com…

The Book Folks have some cracking new books out, including Vengeance Blind by the excellent Anna Willett, a thriller full of suspense and intrigue. You can find out more about all the latest books at…