Saturday, July 21, 2012

Harrogate - Crime in Another Dimension

The second panel of the day at Harrogate was Crime in Another Dimension. Talking cross-over novels were Ben Aaronovitch, (Euro Crime favourite) Christopher Fowler, Stuart MacBride and Charles Stross, moderated by David Quantick.

This was a chatty and funny panel with a running joke about changing your name by adding a letter or calling yourself  S J.


Here are my notes:
BA writes cross-overs due to laziness as he couldn't decide what genre to write so put it all in one novel. He's not sure if it is easier, but you have to write what you enjoy writing. Writers' ego believes that people will want to read what you've written.

CF start where you are most interested, Bryant & May contain supernatural but against the mythic background that is London. 2000 years of history. Asked why B & M not aging properly - because they're like the Simpsons, it's fiction! Addresses issue in new book (Bryant and May and the Invisible Code) though Bryant avoids answering.

BA made his hero 25 deliberately to avoid the Rankin problem (retirement age).

SM calls Halfhead a near future thriller not SF. He wrote it before the Logan books and would like to do something different but publishers not keen.

CS Rule 34 , set 15 years ahead. 90% of near future is here today. 9% is new stuff 1% unimaginable. As part of research he discovered that anything you can imagine - there's pornography about it.

David Tennant  was to narrate Cold Granite but got cast as Dr Who so didn't. (Some discussion about Michael Moorcock's Dr Who book - The Coming of the Terraphiles - apparently he didn't want to do it but they kept throwing money at him) SM available for Dr Who book project as loves Dr Who.

BA - book was originally a tv project, cliches bolted together, originally level entry role for a Jamaican woman but then wrote the name Peter Brant and background developed. You can pay police for info (300 pounds) and speak to a currently serving officer rather than a retired one.

CF - a bitter WPC sent him her notebooks, which seem to be in code with all the police acronyms!

CS - suggests looking for blogs of serving cops.

( I think BA said this) Wallander has no reason to be depressed, 1 murder every few years he should just be pleased when there's a murder!

Audience question:

Which book of their would the authors recommended you try

CS: The Atrocity Archives
SM: Currently unpublished novella, Ring of Githa (from sound of it won't get pubbed!)
CF: Kalabash
BA: Rivers of London

2 comments:

Maxine Clarke said...

Sounds a fun session even though this isn't my sort of book. I quite liked Paul Johnson's first couple of books, set in a futuristic Edinburgh, but they got borning & he moved on to other (more conventional crime fic) series.

Jay said...

This session totally sucked. The boys were hardly funny and so full of themselves that they must have thought they don't need to give the paying audience a decent session.

It was the ONLY crappy session among all the really excellent ones.
Many people I spoke to share my view, btw ...