Crimefest

And so to Bristol, for a bakingly hot weekend of crime.  Last weekend was the annual Crimefest run by Myles Allfrey and Adrian Muller and I, for one, would like to say a big thank-you to them for making such a brilliant weekend possible.  Quite frankly, the thought of organising a convention on this scale makes me want to climb a tree and pull it up after me, but Myles and Adrian sale through and even (gosh!) look as if they’re enjoying it.

Writing, as it’s often said, is a lonely business. That’s perfectly true in my case, mainly, I suspect, because if anyone tries to make it a sociable business by coming in and nattering to me while I’m working, I tend to bite their head off.  So it’s really great to get together with a crowd of other partial serial hermits and blow off steam.

How Crimefest works is that every published author gets a panel which they share (thank God) with three other writers and a moderator.  My panel was moderated by the incredibly competent Edward Marston, author of tons of books, including the railway series which are fun about Inspector Colbeck, a mid 19^th Century policeman with a penchant for railways, Rebecca Jenkins, author of The Duke’s Agent, an 18^th Century mystery which I’m halfway through and enjoying very much and Andrew Taylor, who, despite being by any standards a star, is a very modest man and a very good speaker.  The discussion was called “Centuries of Murder” and allowed all sorts of musings on why, with modern conveniences to hand, we should bump people off in the past.  Dunno really.  It’s more fun that way I suppose and you don’t have to bother about DNA and stuff.

Duty done, I was able to sit back, relax and watch everyone else do the work.  The amazing thing is how well-informed everyone seems and what active lives folk have had.  Take Linda Regan, for instance.  As well as being a writer she’s an actress who’s starred in The Bill and Holby City, Pat McIntosh who’s a palaeontologist, Zoe Sharp who’s action woman personified and Michael Stanley, who’s two people really, both retired South African professors, who have tracked lions, fly aircraft and fought bush fires.  Sometimes I think I haven’t tried hard enough.  Having industrial amounts of children and going to Tesco’s doesn’t seen as exciting somehow.

But, of course, the real pleasure of any weekend like this is meeting old friends and making new ones.  J.G. Goodhind (Jeannie to her friends) is always fun to meet up with and like the living embodiment of her character, Honey Driver.  Less corpses perhaps – but that’s a social plus, really.  Dinner beckoned and a group of us hit Bristol.  I was trying to drag my fellow diners into the 21^st Century by showing them my ipod.  Marvel, I said, at its neatness, its compactness etc, etc.  Prithee, look and I will even use it as a video camera.  Well, that fell flat. Without a handy teenage I couldn’t get to play the damn thing.  Huh.  Never mind, I said, brightening, there’s tons of music on it.  Play me something you think I’d like, said Rebecca Jenkins.  Okey-doke.  I selected a classical piece, George Butterworth’s Banks of Green Willow. How about you, Suzette, I said, proffering the instrument to Suzette Hill.  Now Suzette’s got an incredibly expressive face.  As she listened, that incredibly expressive fisog turned to horror and she ripped the earphones out with a shudder. “Disgusting,” she said with deep feeling.  Well, dash it, my music selection’s not as bad as all that.  It was the Jazz standard Sway I was playing.  “I know,” she said in a sort of heartfelt way.  “Bend with me, sway with me? Well, really.”  I felt just like Bouncer the dog encountering Maurice the cat and if you’ve read Suzette’s books you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Meow!