Caledonia Crime Collective (CCC) to talk at the St Duthac Book and Arts Festival in Tain – group member Aberdeen crime writer Deborah Masson’s has just published her latest book From The Ashes
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“Eve lowered herself into the darkness, one rung at a time, stopping to wipe at the back of her neck and cheeks as strands of spider web brushed against her skin. She breathed in, dropping the torch by her side with one hand, illuminating the uneven ground beneath. Seeing Lucas lying there. Imagining his small body on the very ladder where she stood…”
Above is the moment that DI Eve Hunter forces herself to enter the chilling basement murder scene of Aberdeen crime writer Deborah Masson’s latest book, From The Ashes.
Deborah’s own story – how an online writing course to help stop her baby brain turn to mush fast forwarded into a publisher’s bidding war – is the stuff wannabe writers dream about.
But dip into the Aberdeen writer’s latest book and you quickly see what all the fuss is about.
It was no accident that Deborah found herself first signed up to Germany’s Random House publisher before, in the UK, giants Transworld won the right to publish her first three-book crime series.
The third book in the set of cases featuring DI Eve Hunter has been nominated for the longlist of The McIlvanney Prize for crime book of the year.
The first book, Hold Your Tongue, introducing Eve and her colleagues the odd-200 pages later, won the Debut Prize for a first crime novel, presented at the Bloody Scotland crime writing conference in Stirling each September.
But tomorrow Deborah will join her Scottish crime-writing friends in the seven-strong Caledonia Crime Collective (CCC) to talk at the St Duthac Book and Arts Festival in Tain.
“The CCC was actually the brainchild of Emma Christie who writes psychological thrillers,” Deborah explained.
“Emma was involved with other writers but she is from Edinburgh and said ’I really want to touch base with other writers’.
“She and I had chatted back and forth informally on Twitter and stuff and then she sent me a message saying ‘I’m thinking of starting up a group – would you be interested?’
“Of course, I bit her hand off! And then she asked if I had anyone I would like to see as part of the group, so I suggested Marion Todd, who I was also friendly with on Twitter and we had also worked together on a short story, and things. And it just kind of grew arms and legs from there, and before we knew it, there were seven of us!
“The idea was that though we all write crime, we are all very, very different in how we write, and we all come from different locations, so we all bring something different to the table.
“The whole idea of it – we have been going just over a year – is to promote our own work, but to support other people coming up behind us because the crime-writing community is such a friendly community.”
• For more on the festival visit the event's website.
