Tag Archives: crime fiction

Enter the Big Issue’s crime fiction competition

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Inside a Bristol Bridge by Judy DarleyThe Big Issue magazine has launched a competition looking for the next big name in crime fiction.

The author of the winning entry will be awarded a two-book deal to be published as  paperbacks under the Avon Books UK imprint by HarperCollins. Only one overall winner will be chosen from all submissions.The deadline for entries is Friday 31st May.

The competition is open to authors seeking their big break with a crime novel that’s complete or close to completion.

“We’re delighted to announce the launch of this competition,” says The Big Issue editor Paul McNamee. “Everybody is said to have a book in them but people frequently don’t know how to get their great ideas to the right people and into print. Working with such a legendary publishing house is a way to make somebody’s dream become reality. We’ve assembled a terrific panel to help uncover Britain’s best new, as yet undiscovered, crime writer.”

To enter the competition, submit:

  1. Your synopsis of no more than 100 words
  2. Your full and complete manuscript. The text must be double spaced and typed in Times New Roman font, point size 12 and must be the entrant’s own original work
  3. Your contact information including telephone number, email address and any social media handles

“It is with great excitement that we launch the search for the UK’s next big crime writer, and we couldn’t wish for a better publication to do this with than The Big Issue,” say Helen Huthwaite, publishing director at Avon. “With the help of some of the best talent in the business, we will be scouring the length and breadth of the country for an author who can deliver heart-stopping writing and nail-shredding suspense. This is a life-changing prize for one talented winner, and we can’t wait to see what the entries have in store for us.”

The judging panel includes The Big Issue’s books editor Jane Graham, literary agent Julia Silk, author Katerina Diamond, and editor and author MJ Ford.

The shortlist will be announced in September, with the winner’s announcement to follow in October. All terms and conditions can be found on bigissue.com or avonbooks.co.uk

Book review – If I Die Before I Wake by Emily Koch

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If I Die Before I Wake coverEasing a reader into the viewpoint of a protagonist is every writer’s greatest magic trick. Emily Koch managed something remarkable with her debut novel, enclosing us in the mind of a man suffering from undiagnosed locked in syndrome.

Unable to move or speak, Alex lies in his hospital bed, wishing he could let his friends, family and medical attendees know that he’s aware of everything that happens around him, that he feels pain, hunger and pleasure, and hears and smells each person who visits. From their point of view, he’s in a vegetative state, and the kindest thing to do might be to let him slip away.

More than a year into his ordeal, he wants nothing more than to die. But something isn’t quite right. Alex knows a climbing accident led him to hospitalisation. He was an experienced climber with confidence in his equipment, so what went wrong?

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Book review – Unraveled Visions by Nina Milton

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Unraveled Visions by Nina MiltonUnraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) is the second of The Shaman Mysteries by Nina Milton. This review has been written by Lee Fielding.

We’re back on the rain-drenched moors and the rugged, forbidding coastline of Somerset for the second Shaman Mystery by Nina Milton; Unraveled Visions. One of the many things that draws me to read these books and that keeps me looking out for them, is the brilliantly described landscapes, both of Somerset and of the shamanic otherworld – the place shamans go in when they’re in a trance.

As with number one of the series, In the Moors, which I reviewed for SkyLightRain on its release, I was hooked from the first page, a tense description of the body of an unknown young woman being winched up from her watery grave in a silted gravel pit on the River Parrett.

Like In the Moors, Unraveled Visions is a mystical thriller; a whodunit with supernatural undertones, but it still feels very much of the real world, because shamans are part of the alternative therapy community all over Britain and the US, as well as in traditional communities.

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Book review – No Other Darkness by Sarah Hilary

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No Other Darkness by Sarah HilaryIf you’ve read Someone Else’s Skin, Sarah Hilary’s stunning debut, you’ll have high expectations of the second book in her Marnie Rome series.

Quite rightly so. What you might not be prepared for, even with the book’s title, is just how dark you’re expected to get.

Here’s a clue: it begins with a pit, in the ground, containing the bodies of two little boys abandoned five years before; a family fostering a shifty teenage boy; a weird neighbour who collects dolls, and that’s not even the half of it.

Hilary conjures up scenes with her usual verging-on-poetic adroitness, in which aromas have sounds – “The smell coming up was squeaky and high-pitched, like the wail Cole had let out” – and emotions reek – “Marnie could smell remorse leaching from the woman’s skin, a sweet-sour smell like a nursing mother’s.” Continue reading →

Midweek writing prompt – evidence

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Picnic bench mushrooms cr Judy DarleyEver watched a crime show where the body is discovered buried in the forest, given away by the profusion of mushrooms sprouting over the corpse? Maybe no, maybe so, but it’s an idea that lodged in my mind from somewhere.

While visiting a leisure park recently with my family, I spotted this gloriously orange crop of mushrooms nestle beneath a picnic table, and wondered what made them choose that spot, out of the whole park.

Picnic bench mushrooms1 cr Judy Darley

Is there a body nurturing them, quietly rotting in the earth just there, or is it something else hidden in the soil – something much less distressing and far more magical?

No, I don’t know what that might be. Why don’t you give it some thought and see what your imagination dredges to the surface?

If you write something prompted by this, please let me know by sending an email to Judy(at)socket creative.com. With your permission, I’d love to share it on SkyLightRain.com.