I hadn’t made up my mind whether or not to go to the last day of the festival. Last weekend, this time, would have been wonderful, as it focused on YA, but family commitments kept me busy, while people were happily tweeting about the great panels they attended. And this week’s YA events were all aimed at schools, no adults allowed unless with school groups - anyway, there were no bookings available on the app. So I went to two adult events earlier this week, and then, today, had to make up my mind if I was going at all.
But I decided I would, and then had to decide between a panel on romance and one on crime fiction. The romance panel sounded like fun, but after reading some tweets about the romance panel this morning and realising at least one afternoon panellist had been on the morning one and said some things that I didn’t agree with, I decided to go to “For The Love Of Crime” and was very glad I did.
Outside the door, I met fellow Sisters In Crime Carmel Shute and Lindy Cameron(who is the publisher at ClanDestine Press). Just inside, I met children’s writer Hazel Edwards, who was waiting for her daughter and grandson.
The Storey Hall at RMIT was packed with crime fiction fans. I’m guessing most of them had come to hear international GoH Val McDermid rather than local authors Mark Brandi and Christian White, who have both won awards, but are new-ish writers. But the guys were also entertaining and the audience laughed a lot, enjoying the session. The moderator was the Books editor from the Age newspaper, and he got right into the spirit of the thing.
He started by asking the authors how they had become crime writers. None of them had begun as crime writers, in fact all seemed to have started thinking they were writing literary fiction! Val said that she turned to crime fiction after failing at literary fiction and script writing, because it was something she knew about from reading. Christian said he had written what he thought was literary fiction and it ended up being promoted as crime fiction. Incidentally, later in the session, Val said she had been a judge on the Booker Prize and had to read hundreds of literary novels. She didn’t sound as if it had been enjoyable and yes, she agreed when asked, there were a lot of dinner parties in North London in the entries!
They spoke about their own novels and where some of the ideas had come from. Val said that as a former journalist she didn’t use any of the true stories she had read; the families had suffered enough grief without their stories turning up in books. Both the men gave suggestions for good online sources for crime writers. Apparently Reddit has a good writers page and the Victorian police have a media site that will answer questions without asking any!
An enjoyable way to end the Writers Festival - I hope there will be something as good next year.
But I decided I would, and then had to decide between a panel on romance and one on crime fiction. The romance panel sounded like fun, but after reading some tweets about the romance panel this morning and realising at least one afternoon panellist had been on the morning one and said some things that I didn’t agree with, I decided to go to “For The Love Of Crime” and was very glad I did.
Outside the door, I met fellow Sisters In Crime Carmel Shute and Lindy Cameron(who is the publisher at ClanDestine Press). Just inside, I met children’s writer Hazel Edwards, who was waiting for her daughter and grandson.
The Storey Hall at RMIT was packed with crime fiction fans. I’m guessing most of them had come to hear international GoH Val McDermid rather than local authors Mark Brandi and Christian White, who have both won awards, but are new-ish writers. But the guys were also entertaining and the audience laughed a lot, enjoying the session. The moderator was the Books editor from the Age newspaper, and he got right into the spirit of the thing.
He started by asking the authors how they had become crime writers. None of them had begun as crime writers, in fact all seemed to have started thinking they were writing literary fiction! Val said that she turned to crime fiction after failing at literary fiction and script writing, because it was something she knew about from reading. Christian said he had written what he thought was literary fiction and it ended up being promoted as crime fiction. Incidentally, later in the session, Val said she had been a judge on the Booker Prize and had to read hundreds of literary novels. She didn’t sound as if it had been enjoyable and yes, she agreed when asked, there were a lot of dinner parties in North London in the entries!
They spoke about their own novels and where some of the ideas had come from. Val said that as a former journalist she didn’t use any of the true stories she had read; the families had suffered enough grief without their stories turning up in books. Both the men gave suggestions for good online sources for crime writers. Apparently Reddit has a good writers page and the Victorian police have a media site that will answer questions without asking any!
An enjoyable way to end the Writers Festival - I hope there will be something as good next year.
4 comments:
I have seen some Val McDermid stories and characters on tv, but didn't like them quite as much as I enjoyed reading her books directly. A Place of Execution, for example, was written by this gay feminist in a way that makes her books special.
To be honest, Hels, I’ve only read one of her books. I really must read some more. I’ve never seen the TV show, but was curious about it when it was mentioned in the MWF session.
I find that literary festivals and writers panels are both enlightening and fun. It sounds like Melbourne was a very good one.
Crime writers getting material off of online police sites is neat.
The Internet has been a huge boon to writers, Brian! When I wrote my first couple of books, it was just starting up and there was certainly no Google. Web sites were basic. I did nearly all my research from books and a weekly visit to an Internet cafe a fair way from home. These days you can get information from experts just by finding the right web site and asking.
And yes, the session was fun. You do have to choose carefully - I’ve picked sessions that sounded interesting and weren’t. I was lucky this year,
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