Great crime fiction
It was great to get back to this brilliant little community bookshop for the launch event for Dead Rich. Little it may be, but it’s a shop with big ideas. Next year will be the bookshop’s tenth anniversary. The community interest company was launched when the small town’s bookshop announced it was closing. Since then they’ve built up a really loyal local readership – so much so that they’re planning an exciting move into a much bigger space to mark their tenth year. I had a blast at this event.
My second G. W. Shaw book The Conspirators is out on July 20th 2023. It’s been a long journey for this book. I had the original idea for it under lockdown, reading my friend Marek’s book Four Words For Friend. Marek has Polish heritage and became fascinated with how bilingualism affects our neurology and the way we see ourselves and others.
I’m interested in writing about different type of heroes. I’m not really that interested in how well men can fight, or how well they can fire guns. In The Conspirators my hero sees himself as a failure in life. The only power he has is that he speaks several languages fluently. When he finds himself caught up in a lethal international conspiracy, he has to learn how he can use that power to save his own life – and the lives of others around him.
If you’re a book blogger, The Conspirators is currently available on Netgalley.
I did a panel at Capital Crime a couple of weeks ago, and the topic was crime writers from Brighton.
It really is a pretty extraordinary list, and I’m sure I’m missing a few. I have a brain like a sieve. Off the top of my head:
I count all of them as mates. We all know each other in some kind of way. At some point we’ve all sought each other out.
I’ve tried to think about why this is. Brighton is a place that attracts people who work from home, for a start. Which is something that writers do a lot. There’s a beach to walk along when we need to get away from our screens, and the downs behind us. There are cafes to escape to.
And out of that comes community. Because writers often find they work best when they talk to other writers.
In a recent newsletter, I talked about how Dead Rich was inspired by classic adventure fiction – adventure stories that take the readers on a journey to faraway places. I asked readers what their favourite adventure fiction books were and received an absolute deluge of brilliant replies. I decided to do a digest of some of the replies:
Many votes for Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Male – thanks Chris and a dozen others. Several too for John Buchan’s 39 Steps, which I almost included in my mini-library. Jack London‘s The Call of the Wild got a few thumbs up. Annabel gave me Colin Forbes, Jack Higgins and Trudy joined her voting for Frederick Forsyth, as did many others. The Day of the Jackal, said Celia; The Odessa File, said Paul, who was one of those who who thought we should include Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Gwynith, Wanja and Debra remember feeling the same way as I did about A Town Like Alice: “I absolutely could not put it down’ said Debra, I starting reading it one night and finished it early the next morning, happily a Saturday.”
Barry added Ken Follet’s Eye of the Needle. Mary remembered Clive Cussler, while Dugal said, “I did devour lots of Craig Thomas thrillers as a kid. Not sure if All The Grey Cats would stand up today…” Ruth included Tom Clancy’s classic The Hunt for Red October in her list. Margaret seconded Mary Stewart and said her favourite is Airs Above The Ground. 
Peter put a vote in for Alistair Maclean’s Puppet on a Chain. Alongside Alistair MacLean, Barry tipped his hat towards Jack Higgins’ The Eagle Has Landed and, more recently, Terry Hayes I Am Pilgrim, the book everyone’s still waiting for the sequel to. Sian reminded us that the great Lee Child is certainly adventure fiction. Michael Crichton‘s Timeline, said Victoria.
Anna-Marié suggested True Grit by Charles Portis. Great pick. J reminded me the Agatha Christie’s The Man in the Brown Suit was classic adventure fiction. Steve made a pitch for T. C. Boyle’s Water Music which does indeed have plenty of adventure in it. Modesty Blaise by Peter O’Donnell, suggested Kerrywho keeps going back to it “despite the inherent racism, sexism, etc.”.
Showing my ignorance, there were loads I had never come across before:
Gordon suggested Anthony Price who looks superb. Susan suggested The Lady Vanishes by Ethel Lina White, who I had vaguely heard of, but was one of those people whose biography was so worth looking up: this from Wikipedia:
“Her will read: “I give and bequeath unto [sister] Annis Dora White all that I possess on condition she pays a qualified surgeon to plunge a knife into my heart after death” thought to reflect her lifelong fear of being buried alive, a theme which featured in her novel The First Time He Died, published in 1935.”
Lis suggested The Beachy Head Murder by Arthur Gask. Scott mentioned an overlooked book by Alan Stillitoe of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner fame, The Lost Flying Boat.
Nor to my shame had I come across The John Madden series by Rennie Airth but I’ve been looking at them and they look fantastic. Thanks Barb.
Judith like the exotic travel aspect of books like The Kontiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl.
From Canada, Sharon opted for historical adventures by Frances Parkinson Keyes and Thomas B. Coastain
Three were a few real old classics. Don Quixote certainly ticks the boxes of adventure and exotic locations as did. Kidnapped, King Solomon’s Mines got a few ticks, plus The Swiss Family Robinson by J.D. Wyss, Treasure Island (many votes!) and The Count of Monte Christo. Ian came up with the classic pulp adventure of the Irish-American writer Maurice 
Walsh – who I’ve never read but who wrote The Quiet Man, in which John Wayne starred when as made into a movie.
On the more contemporary side, Jude opted for the John Tyler series by Danny Marshall and Sandra was really keen on Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope series: “They are an exciting mix of action and history, with a very capable main character.” Joyce picked James Rollins. Several people name checked Dan Brown and on the more fantastical level, Margaret picked The Dark Is Rising series by Susan Cooper
Many votes for Patricia Highsmith. A couple rooted for John Connolly and his Charlie Parker series.
Jo came up with a brilliant list – not classic action adventure, but “they are certainly adventures”:
And the question brought up this lovely reminiscence from Paul:
“Your adventure classics question has set me thinking. Undoubtedly the Alistair MacLean series featured in my early reading days…
“It did cause me to wonder how I got into this area, and I think I have a teacher to thank. Pretty sure his name was Jack Firth, and when I must have been 14 or 15, in his English literature lessons he had us read aloud Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea, one paragraph each in turn. Inevitably it allowed some planning ahead to see what you’d be reading, and I have a vivid memory of there being a paragraph consisting of the single word ‘Bollocks!’. And of course it fell to one of the girls who failed to do it the justice which some of us might have achieved. But way better for a teenage boy than parsing a Shakespeare play…”
There were far more than I could list here. Thanks so much for everyone who took part. It was brilliant getting your messages.
So now we had an empty shop. And there were three partners: myself, Creative Future and Goldsboro Books.
Now we needed people:
Writers. The original idea was to work with established writers alongside new voices, so I started by contacting about fifteen successful local writers I knew who might be interested.
What an unexpected find. Love it
The Book Makers customer
This is where I should say how amazed I was that so many talented people got on board; but in truth, I was fairly confident I’d hear back from most of them. The writers I know are almost all generous people who have a good understanding about how hard it is to get a foothold in this profession and are nearly always willing to lend a hand if they can. And my promise to put their books in a shop window didn’t exactly hurt.
The positive replies came in quickly over a space of few days from Elly Griffiths, Lesley Thomson, Mick Finlay, Laura Wilkinson, Araminta Hall, Bethan Roberts, Paul Burston, Dorothy Koomson, David Fennell, Heidi James, Mick Jackson, Sharon Duggal and Kate Harrison (aka Kate Help/Eva Carter). They were all local south-coast writers. I also reached out to Londoner Vaseem Khan because with the exception of Sharon, the rest of us were pretty white. These were to be the shop’s potential mentors and evangelists for the project. They were all positive and enthusiastic about the project.
Mentees. Creative Future and I were able to team some of these writers up with mentees; we set up a simple system where the mentees could meet with the writers to discuss work three times over the lifetime of the project. We took a very light touch approach and pretty much let the pairs get on with it.
Wonderful project, has provided so many opportunities for me as an emerging Brighton writer.
The Book Makers mentee and volunteer
Volunteers. Creative Future, meanwhile, were thinking about how we could use volunteers to run the project and how we could run the workshops.
At this stage, this was a project with no dedicated budget at all, beyond the promise of a revenue-share from Goldsboro Books. I applied for Arts Council Funding to pay for workshops but we were turned down – ironically on the grounds that they didn’t like to support projects where artists weren’t being paid. (Understandable, but that was kind of the principle on which the project was founded.)
Finding volunteers wasn’t going to be an issue either; all sorts of people want to work in a bookshop for a variety of reasons. Jane McMorrow of Creative Future identified the need to have a single person coordinating them and found some budget from the Charity to empty a part-time worker, Elsa Van Hefteren, to act as volunteer lead.
Creative Future used their networks to put out a call for volunteers and over the course of the project thirty people ended up working closely with the project. Many were writers. Many were avid readers. All, I think, found it a productive place to be over its six month run.
Thank you so much for providing this space to aspiring writers. It has really helped me. Keep the workshops coming please.
The Book Makers workshop attendee
Workshop event leaders. Because of the short-lead time we had – we had opened in July and wanted the workshop programme to start in September – we had a frenzied couple of weeks putting a the events together. Creative Future did the bulk of the workshop programming, programming a wide selection of events around writing and personal development, including Nature Journaling for Health and Wellbeing, Writing Yourself to Better Mental Health and Hidden His/Her/Their Stories.
Great workshop with a lovely, open, empathetic host. Really glad I got the opportunity to come.
The Book Makers workshop participant
From the start we wanted this to be a collegiate 
project so we invited other Brighton-based writing agencies to take part; two were able to take part. New Writing South were incredibly responsive and programmed a series of four workshops; Colin Grant’s organisation Writers Mosaic generously sponsored and managed two events, one featuring Vaseem Khan discussing the topic of appropriation in writing, and another with Jarred McGinnis about his debut The Coward.
Attending these workshops has given me a positive outlook and assisted with some healing for me, as I have had some emotionally upsetting things recently relating to loss.
The Book Makers workshop participant
I programmed quite a few of the author events. Interestingly, I’d judge the that the workshops were more successful than the events. Covid meant that organisations like libraries had been closed for some time and I got the impression that writers were 
starved of writing support.
Tara has been a very supportive & informative tutor, I know the course will have a lifelong impact.
Nature Journaling workshop participant
That said, we did run some cracking events. The one with Sara Jafari and Dorothy Koomson was one of the most interesting and provocative discussions I’ve witnessed – discussing attitudes to diversity in publishing. As a debut writer, Nadine Matheson was inspiring. And my old editor Rose Tomaszewska, now editorial director at Virago, gave a brilliant workshop on pitching. Joelle Taylor’s event was just brilliant and it was wonderful to have an appearance from the poet who, within a few weeks of her appearance, would go on to win the TS Eliot Prize.
In total by the time we’d completed the run, we’d done 20 workshops and run 12 book events.
I’m new to writing, so all the techniques will be really helpful. I feel that what I’ve learnt will help me with motivation to write
The Book Makers workshop participant
Book buyers. We opened the shop on July 14 and the book buyers started coming. By the time we finally closed 
our doors on December 18, we estimate that around 5,000 people had visited the shop as buyers and we’d sold £13,000 worth of books. We’re proud of that, because working with Creative Future – who had their own wall and table in the shop – we foregrounded many titles by writers from diverse backgrounds.
Amazing event, feeling uplifted & empowered.
The Book Makers workshop participant
Also we did well on books about writing. We had a few surprises. Poetry did really well. We sold dozens of copies of Jay Bernard’s Surge, even more of Joelle Taylor’s C+NTO. We had to keep reordering Mick Jackson’s Underground Man and Umi Sinha’s Belonging did particularly well. In a space like ours, people were after an experience. They weren’t after the kind of books they can buy anywhere.
Shelley Welti of Brilliant Brighton emailed with a few questions for her own evaluation of the project so I’ll use this as a way to wrap this up.
What attracted me to the project?
It was that thing I talked about on the first of these posts. I think in recent years bookshops have pioneered a new model of social retail and I admire them hugely. I was very eager to experiment with a social retail project that used the power of books and writers and readers to create something different. And then when we saw the space we were being offered, everything really clicked.
What challenges did we face?
I haven’t discussed the challenges much, but aside from the very long hours it took – mostly from me and Jane – there are real issues taking over a retail property, even if it’s rent-free. There are still business rates to pay, as well as water rates and electric bills. A real difficulty is that it is almost impossible to calculate those costs accurately. Ten months after we signed our lease, we’re still not sure of what the total cost will be. This is simply the way it is. (Had we not had the relationship with Goldsboro Books who had promised to underwrite emergency costs, we would have definitely thought twice about doing this at the start of the project.)
Properties don’t look after themselves. Ours was in a pretty good state, but it still needed a lot of upkeep. Our heating failed early on in the project, so we had to keep warm over the winter on fan heaters. The front doors never opened properly. Our basement was flooded at one point. There was a rough sleeper who came with the property – all fine and good, but there was a certain amount of relationship-management had to go along with that. It wasn’t a fully accessible property and we had to work to make it better. Lots of stuff like that.
What was the best thing about running The Book Makers for six months?
It worked!! Every day we were in there we had great conversations, great compliments. It was such a pleasure to see some of the writers link up with the project. Typical conversation:
‘Are you a writers?’
‘No. No… [Pause] Not really. Well. I write a bit. I’m half way through a novel. . . [etc]’
Beautiful space. Wish it could continue
The Book Makers workshop visitor
It demonstrated how books + a love of writing and reading can create a great shared social space. The project confirmed that most useful single thing people who write can do – wherever they are on their writing journey – is to link up with other writers to build skill and resilience and share their insights into the process. The workshops also demonstrated that there is a very clear and positive link between writing and wellbeing.
We didn’t have the funding to do any in depth evaluation but anecdotally the reactions were amazing.
What advice would we want to share with anyone else thinking of doing the same?
Develop partnerships. Not only can you not do it on your own, if you have a shop, you have a great platform to invite like-minded organisations to contribute to and if you’re excited by it, they will be too.
This was a completely partnership-led project between me, Creative Future, Goldsboro Books, Brilliant Brighton, Writers Mosaic, New Writing South and the brilliant writers who offered their time for free. It’s power came from those partnerships. When I asked designer Richard Wolfströdme, some advice on creating an identity, he created a logo for free and strong-armed the arts installation company Standard 8 to create our amazing shop front. The vinyl alone was worth hundreds of pounds but they wanted to be part of it.
