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…

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

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

Emotion is something of which some writers are…

Writing a series brings with it its own challenges -…

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.…

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.…

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

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…

So how do you know when you are onto something when you are writing the novel? For me, it is when it starts to write itself.

What do I mean? Well, as an example, I am working on the new Jack Harris novel and, as usual, took time before writing to plan it out – events, episodes,…

Libraries across the country are being hit hard by government cuts to local authority budgets. This online petition calls for the Government to ringfence…

Delighted to say that The Secrets Man is among seven of my novels in the Amazon Kindle top 100 British Detective Stories best-sellers chart. You can see the full chart at…

I have always believed that what differentiates good writing from less effective writing is detail, which is the theme of a creative writing class I am teaching at the moment at Kirkudbright Galleries.…

I am developing a talk that examines writers’ fascination with the way people flout convention, be it legal, ethical or moral. The talk has been inspired, in part, by my recently-published novel A Breach of Trust (Book…

I have always thought - and I know I will be shot down for this in some quarters - that writers view the world differently to a lot of people.

Talking to writers certainly bears that out, though, the way a word, a phrase, an image, an idea can create a train of thought that evolves…

I am returning to a familiar theme for this blog because it will form part of my theme for the talks I give for Book Week Scotland in late November (details to be announced).

The week’s theme is…