Here are my golden rules for witing.

* Consider the reader - do not write for yourself, always write for the reader.

* Be…

Life imitating art, I have recently become a dog owner, like my character DCI Jack Harris. It gives extra poignance to To Die Alone, one of the Harris series, part of which is set in the murky world of illegal dog fighting. You can buy the novel at …

The shortlist for the…

Darlington-based Inkerman Writers have produced their latest anthology of short stories, Inkerman  Street, based on the demolition of a fictional northern street. …

Novelist John Dean is running an online mentoring and writing workshop programme for aspiring authors.

John, who is based in Dumfries and Galloway, has had sixteen crime novels published and is with London-based The Book Folks. He is a co-director of Inscribe Media Limited, which is running the programmes.

John, who also runs creative writing courses, said: “Writing can be a lonely pastime and our programmes help writers tackle some of the many challenges that it throws up. “We…

Are the defacing of a town’s war memorial and the death of a WWII veteran connected? DCI Jack Harris investigates.

The small town of Levton Bridge is beset by a spate of vandalism against its war memorials. Uniformed police believe it is just kids, but DCI Jack Harris is not so sure. And when a local WWII veteran is found brutally murdered, his suspicions are…

The Week has named its crime fiction books to look out for in 2018  Check them out at…

Big hitters including Lee Child, Ian Rankin and Val McDermid feature on the longlist for the most prestigious crime writing prize in the country.

The prize was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction and is open to UK and Irish crime authors whose novels were published in paperback from 1 May 2017 to 30 April 2018.

2018 marks the 14^th year of the …

Best-selling crime writer John Dean is to give a talk to the Mystery Readers’ Group at Wigtown Library in Dumfries and Galloway on Monday 28^th…

You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you can not make your stories live unless you have characters. They are your vehicle to tell the story.

Characters have jobs to do within the story, making things…

Crime novels and psychological thrillers are outselling other types of fiction for the first time, after television dramas boosted interest in the genre.

In 2017, 18.7 million crime and thriller books were sold, up 19 per cent since 2015. General and…

I can heartily recommend the latest Crime Writer’s Association (CWA) anthology. The CWA anthologies are collections of short stories by members of the association and celebrate the best of crime writing by…

Continuing my theme of evoking reactions in your reader, I think that good writing is about triggers - words, phrases, images, places, sensations - that reach deep into the reader’…

This is an article I have just had published in Red Herrings, the magazine of the Crime Writers’ Association, of which I am a member, which I thought might interest…

Best-selling crime novelist John Dean is to give a talk at the Village Hall in Gelston near Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway,in June.

John, whose books regularly feature in the best-selling charts on Amazon, is the creator of the DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris series.

The writer, who has had 16 novels published and is currently with The Book Folks of London, will talk about where his ideas come from at the village hall from 7pm on Wednesday June 6. Entrance is £3,…

Here’s some thoughts on starting stories by creating momentum right from the off.

The first rule of opening lines is that they should possess most of the individual elements that make up the story. An opening paragraph should have a distinctive voice, a point of view, a rudimentary…

Emotion is something of which some writers are wary, preferring to produce work without revealing too much of themselves.

However, for many other writers, there cannot be fiction without a sense of themselves in it.…

Join crime writer John Dean at the Darlington Arts Festival Literary Day on Saturday May 26. John, the creator of the DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris series, who has had 16 novels published and is currently with The Book Folks of London, will talk about where his ideas come from.…