The Dundee Mafia and the Year Chris Went Hybrid

I quote directly from Caro Ramsay’s talk at the Scottish Association of Writers conference where she was Keynote Speaker. After I picked myself up off the floor, where I’d landed when I fell off my chair convulsed with laughter, I wondered what on earth I had done to Caro to deserve such treatment. But it was all in good fun and she drew a brilliant mind picture of a Dundee filled with zombies after ‘Chris went hybrid’. So, if you find any zombies in Dundee, just remember, it’s all my fault.

Top Table waiting for adjudication

But to get back to the conference, it was a brilliant weekend, which started on Friday night with a special reception for the adjudicators and speakers to get to know each other. And guess who I met there? None other than the legendary Frances Gay (in his most recent incarnation), from the Sunday Post. He’s been writing as long as I’ve been living, and probably longer. In addition, I chatted to Catherine Czerkawska, Helen Forbes, Linda Strachan, Douglas Skelton, Alex Gray, Alanna Knight, and a host of others.

Adjudicating the self-published book

My first task came after a lovely dinner when all I wanted to do was put my head down and have a nap. But it was the first of the adjudications, and because I’d adjudicated the self-published book competition I had to stand up and talk about it before announcing the winners. My turn came all too soon, and the irrepressible Marc Sherland introduced me, including in his introduction that 2011 was ‘the year that Chris went hybrid’, and that was where Caro got some of the fuel for her keynote talk the next evening.

Saturday was a day off for me, so I could mingle, chat to old friends (in the sense of people I have known for a long time), and make many new ones. The variety of workshops always poses a problem as to which of them would be of most value, but Al Guthrie had a couple of workshops on Self Editing for Novelist, so I popped along to those. Al has a wicked sense of humour, and it made us think twice before sticking our heads over the parapet to voice an opinion, but there was nothing nasty about it, in fact it was the direct opposite. It was all good fun.

We had already had a full breakfast, followed by elevenses with delicious pasties and fruit, and a full lunch, when the time for the gala dinner rolled round. You would think we wouldn’t have been hungry enough to tackle the meal that followed, but it’s surprising the amount you can eat at these conferences, and I’m sure I returned home a couple of stones heavier, and I still haven’t found my waistline! Anyway, the room for the gala dinner was a treat for the eyes. We sat at round tables, with immaculate white tablecloths, there was a Hogwarts style candelabra in the middle of each table, and the blue ceiling lights gave it an atmospheric feel.

Stuffed with food we settled back in our chairs, promising ourselves we wouldn’t nod off during the keynote speech. Well, there was no danger of that. Caro Ramsay is noted for her sense of humour and she had us all in stitches. She poked fun at quite a few of us in the audience (it’s dangerous to be a friend of Caro), but she started off with the Dundee Mafia, and zombies taking over the city, and it all happened the year ‘Chris went hybrid’. Dundee, you have been warned. The zombies are coming!

Suzanne hitting the high notes

I meant to go to bed after that because I had a workshop to think about for the next day. But, somehow or other, I found myself in the clubroom for the talent Show & Poetry Penthouse. What a brilliant evening, some great singers, funny poetry, and a hilarious monologue. I stumbled into bed several hours later, but I wouldn’t have missed that evening for the world.

Sunday dawned, and I was quaking in my shoes. I’d agreed to do a workshop on ‘The Nuts and Bolts of Self-Publishing’. Now, if you’ve ever been to a writers’ conference you will know that by the last day your brains can be pretty well scrambled, so I was hoping I wouldn’t make a fool of myself or that I would be stuck for something to say before the hour was up. I needn’t have feared, because once the adrenalin kicked in, I was off and running, and we actually overran by 15 minutes because the audience were so interested. I could have talked for another hour!

The prizewinners - self-published prizewinner on the right of photo

With the workshop done and dusted I could now relax, chat and enjoy myself. The weekend was finished off with a Dragons’ Pen event, where writers pitched their book to a panel of judges. And then it was off home, exhausted, bloated, and several inches fatter. I reckon it’s going to have to be toast and tea all this week, or I’ll have to widen the doors.

  

Chris Longmuir

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

http://chrislongmuir.blogspot.co.uk/

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

Woo Hoo! I’ve won the SAW best self-published Book Award

Award presentation to Chris Longmuir by Alanna Knight

I’m walking on air this week – yes, I know that’s a cliche – but I really am walking on air. You see, I’ve just returned from a brilliant weekend at the SAW writers’ conference – for those not in the know SAW stands for the Scottish Association of Writers. Now, I belong to several professional Associations such as the CWA (Crime Writers’ Association), the SOA (Society of Authors), and ALLi (the Alliance of Independent Authors), but the SAW is special to me because it was the first association I joined as a member of AWC (Angus Writers’ Circle). Have you noticed how all these organisations like to be known by their initials?

Anyway, back to the weekend which was most enjoyable. Eleven of us from Angus Writers’ Circle attended, but of course the best thing about the SAW conference is meeting up with old friends, and making new ones. Scottish writers are a friendly bunch.

Don't I scrub well?
 

The weekend was packed with speakers, workshops and seminars. The main speaker was Alexandra Sokoloff. She also ran two workshops on story structure – I attended both. As well as being a novelist, Alexandra is a Hollywood script writer, so I was interested in her take on structure, and it was interesting. Did you know that in films the hooks (climactic scenes) which writers use to keep the reader page turning, and ensuring the TV watcher keeps watching after the break, are placed in the film script at specific points based on when the film reels had to be changed in the early days of cinema? And, of course, nowadays they come before the commercial break in TV shows. Fascinating information

Linda Gillard also presented a great workshop on how to promote a book, write blurbs, and the effective use of promotional material. Very informative.



The Barbara Hammond Trophy for
the best self-published book

But, the icing on the cake for me – yes, I know it’s another cliche – was winning the best self-published book award which is a new competition the SAW set up this year. Winning this competition means I get the fabulous Barbara Hammond trophy. So, I’m the leader of the pack because I’m the first person who has won this. Oh, and before I forget, the book that won the award was my historical crime novel, The Death Game.

If anyone is interested in entering this competition next year, or even a similar one, the adjudicator explained the winning entry was decided on the basis of presentation, professional book cover, formatting, editorial and proofing issues, professional appearance, and of course, the actual story. My book scored high on all levels, and he said some extremely complimentary things about it, but I was beyond hearing most of them because I was so excited at having won this prestigious award.

So, all in all, it was the best weekend ever, and I’m walking on air.

 

The award winning book

Chris Longmuir

 

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

 

Amazon

Amazon Author Page

Amazon UK

Amazon.com

 

Apple iBooks

ITunes Book Page UK

iTunes Book Page US

Do Writers need Writers Groups?

I got to wondering how other writers see writers’ groups. Are they beneficial? Or are they just social gatherings?

 
Well, there are all types of writers’ groups and whether or not you are involved is, of course a matter of choice. I am involved in several of these groups, physical ones and virtual ones. Let’s look at the physical ones first.
 

Members of Angus Writers' Circle

The first group I became involved with was Angus Writers’ Circle http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/anguswriterscircle/index.html I was one of the founder members over 20 years ago. At that time I was a novice writer and much of my writing really wasn’t worth publishing. I’ve progressed since then, my writing has improved, and I’ve become a professional writer. Now I don’t know whether I would have had the same outcome if I’d never belonged to Angus Writers’ Circle, but I can say that the crits and encouragement I experienced along the way did help me develop as a writer.
 
I have to say, though, that there are writers’ groups in existence which simply give praise irrespective of the quality of writing. These groups do nothing to help a writer develop. The groups that are of the most benefit are the ones which are honest with their crits, even if the truth hurts.
 
One of the benefits of belonging to a writers’ group is acceptance to professional bodies like the Scottish Association of Writers. I have attended their weekend conferences on a regular basis over the past 20 odd years, and have been awarded many prizes from their annual writing competitions. The most prized of these was when I won the Pitlochry Award on two different occasions, once for Night Watcher, and again for Dead Wood before it went on to win the Dundee International Book Prize.
 

Margaret Thomson Davies presenting me with the Pitlochry Award for Night Watcher

But crits, encouragement and awards are not the only benefits from belonging to these groups, there is also the social aspect, the networking, and the acceptance from other writers. I met many of my now more famous friends through these groups, at a time before they became famous. People like Ian Rankin and Alex Gray. I could name many more, but enough of the name dropping and let’s get on with the blog.
 
It’s time to have a look at virtual groups. There are many of these around, particularly on Facebook. I’ve sampled a few of these and when they become overloaded with ‘buy my book’ posts to the exclusion of most of the other posts, I usually back out the door and only look in occasionally.
 

The exception to these is the three main groups I’m heavily involved with. I’ll take them one at a time.

 
First there’s the loveahappyending.com group which is an invitation only group for authors, although they also have readers, editors and publishers as members. This group started a year ago and as of this morning there have been over a million visits to the website. When I was invited to join, I think my first response was ‘You do know what kind of books I write?’ You see I never thought of my books as being anything to do with happy endings. The response when it came was that they wanted a mix of authors and anyway, in my crime books, the fact that the crime was resolved equated to a happy ending. So I agreed to join and actually felt quite honoured to be one of their thirty authors, because that was the maximum amount they take on as members at any one time. If you want to have a look here is the link http://loveahappyending.com/
 

 
Then there is the Famous Five Plus group, FFP for short http://www.famousfiveplus.com/ I saw this coming to prominence on Twitter and became curious, so that was why I joined it. I’ve had no regrets about joining, although members are expected to promote the group through Twitter and other media sites. That’s why you’ll see me with loads of retweets involving FFP. But it’s a fabulous group with lots of lovely members who are supportive. The website’s pages are worth checking out, they have a Home page, Books page, Authors page, Review page and loads more. They also post an excerpt from one of the books every day. I love it when it’s my turn. Oh, and they also have a readers’ club if you would like to join. The details are on the Books page of the site here’s the link http://www.famousfiveplus.com/p/books.html
 

 

 

Last and not least, there is the Authors Electric group, which again is an invitation only group. Each member is expected to provide a blog post for their blog – Do Authors Dream of Electric Books. My turn is on the 19^th of each month if you want to check me out. The blog itself is a mix of posts from various writers and is well worth a look. Here’s the link http://authorselectric.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 
Well, that’s an overview of the groups I’m involved with and all I can say is that I find them beneficial. However, whether you would is a different matter and only you can decide whether to join a group or not. The only advice I would give is, be selective.

  

http://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/