#Newsflash - Crime at the Castle Launched

Glamis Castle

What! Haven’t you heard about Crime at the Castle? The original and new crime festival taking place at Glamis Castle and about to burst onto the scene on February 24th, 2018. Click here for information

This is where you’ll find the biggest and hottest crime writers that Scotland has to offer. One newspaper described the selection of authors as “some of the nation’s best crime writers”. And guess what? I’m included in the programme. Click here for the programme

Crime at the Castle was the brainchild of author Wendy H Jones and after a lot of hard work in conjunction with the Glamis Castle events team, the programme has just been launched. And if you haven’t heard of Wendy H Jones, then you’ve had your eyes shut. Either that or you never visit social media sites. She’s impossible to miss on Facebook and has a following that is the envy of many authors. But, if you really haven’t heard about Wendy click here for her website

But let’s talk about the conference. It’s a one-day event, and as I previously said, it’s taking place at Glamis Castle. There are sixteen famous authors appearing including Val McDermid, Denise Mina, Alex Gray, Chris Brookmyre, Lin Anderson, Caro Ramsay and plenty more. The hard thing for those booking a place at the conference will be selecting which author’s event to choose because there is a choice of six different events running at the same time although some of us have a slot in the morning and a repeat slot in the afternoon.

For example, my first slot is at 10 am in The Chapel, and my repeat slot is at 2.30 pm in the Queen Mother’s sitting room. In both slots, I will be talking about the rocky road to publication. I just hope I get an audience because Caro Ramsey, Alex Gray, Shona McLean, Caroline Dunford and Jackie McLean, are on at the same time in the morning, and I’m up against Val McDermid, Alex Gray, Caroline Dunford, Michael J Malone, and Douglas Skelton in the afternoon. All of them stiff competition.

As well as my own events I’ll also be introducing Chris Brookmyre in the Drawing Room, and interviewing Lin Anderson in the Dining Room. So it’s going to be a hectic day.

So, what will this fabulous event cost you? I guarantee you won’t have to take out a mortgage to cover it because it’s only £55 for the entire day and that includes lunch in the Glamis Castle restaurant. And they do really nice lunches. I’ve eaten there before at previous visits. In my opinion, it’s the bargain of the year. Meeting your favourite authors, sitting down to lunch with them, and an exciting experience in fabulous surroundings. What more could a reader or writer ask for?

One last proviso, there are only a limited number of tickets which is due to the space available and the inability to squeeze in additional people so I would advise you to get your tickets as soon as possible, particularly if there is a favourite author’s session you want to attend. It will be first come, first served, and once it’s gone it’s gone.

I hope to see you there.

Chris Longmuir

Glamis Castle

Crime at the Castle

Crime at the Castle Programme

https://www.chrislongmuir.co.uk/

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Bloody Scotland Photo Gallery

Scotland's International Crime Festival which has been dedicated this year to the memory of William McIlvanney, who sadly passed away earlier this year. Not only is the festival dedicated in his honour, but so too is the Scottish crime Book of the Year Award, now named The McIlvanney Prize.

Stuart MacBride and Caro Ramsay opened the crime festival with their own distinctive brands of humour which left the festival goers wanting more.

They were followed by the hilarious, if somewhat, foul-mouthed duo, Mark Billingham, and Chris Brookmyre. As an aside, Chris won the McIlvanney Prize, and will go down in history as the first recipient.

Chris and Mark sneaking off the stage before anyone has a chance to ask for a refund.

Scotland the Grave was hilarious as each author defended their own part of the country. Catriona McPherson fought the corner for Galloway, Douglas Skelton threatened everyone with a police cosh in an effort to come out ahead of the others, Gillian Galbraith thought Edinburgh was the best crime location, and Russel D McLean defended Dundee. He's a nice lad, Russel. He gave me a shout out by saying he was the only crime writer writing about Dundee until Chris Longmuir (me) came along a couple of years later and then said very complimentary things about my books which I'm too modest to repeat.

Val McDermid, talking about her new book, was next on the programme for me. Val is always entertaining and I enjoy listening to her.

Alanna Knight, a very dear friend and one of my favourite authors presented a new drama production with several willing authors acting the parts. Alanna is on the left of this photo introducing the play and it's actors before the action starts. Gordon Brown, the author not the politician, made a very imposing policeman, although I don't think he needed to keep order while Alanna was speaking.

And here is Gordon, our imposing policeman, reporting to Inspector Faro, who looks a lot like Stuart MacBride.

Now we can see the full cast: Stuart MacBride heading the proceedings, Gordon Brown standing guard on the suspects.

And to finish off Saturday the male authors and female authors pitted their wits against each other in a hilarious quiz. There were a couple of later events, but my granddaughter comes with me to these festivals. She loves them. So the Curly Coo or Darling Clementine wasn't an option for us.

I don't suppose any other crime festival asks the contestants to guess crime show theme tunes played on the bagpipes. But this is Bloody Scotland and anything goes.

Lin Anderson and forensic soil scientist Professor Lorna Dawson were digging up the bodies on Sunday morning. These forensic events are always full of fascinating information.

Next on the agenda was Victorian Gothic with Oscar De Muriel setting his historical crime novel in an Edinburgh lunatic asylum, and E S Thomson featuring a mystery set in a crumbling London infirmary.

Witness the Dead concentrated on how good a witness anyone in the audience would be. The crime author panel was quizzed by Professor Graham Pike, an expert in eyewitness identification, on how their fictional character would investigate the crime which had been shown on the screen, while the audience were asked to identify the criminal. Needless to say, quite a lot of people made the wrong identification despite having clearly seen the perpetrator.

This photo gallery is simply a selection of events I attended, but there were many other events I didn't attend because there were always three choices to pick from. The dilemma at Bloody Scotland is always what to choose and what to miss out on.

I hope you've enjoyed my photos of Bloody Scotland, and if you haven't been to it yet then you really must put it in your diary. It's an unmissable event.

Chris Longmuir

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

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If you would like a free short story featuring DS Bill Murphy from my popular Dundee Crime Series then visit my website and fill in a form to tell me where to send it. Meet Bill Murphy long before he became a policeman. Get a taste of the child that made the man.

Bloody Scotland Highlights 2015

It's that time of year again. It's time for my annual excursion to Stirling to attend Bloody Scotland. This is Scotland's very own crime writing festival, and it's hard to believe this the fourth year it has been running, and it just keeps getting better and better.

This year was slightly different though, because I took my thirteen year old granddaughter with me, and she had a ball. I have no doubt she enjoyed it because she wants to go again next year.

The other thing that was different was the hotel. The Stirling Highland Hotel was completely booked, so we checked into the Golden Lion. It was an older hotel, but the service and accommodation were top class, although the lift was deadly slow. On the other hand, we didn’t have to climb the hill to get to the hotel. I swear that hill up to the Stirling Highland Hotel gets steeper every year.

Because Amy was coming with me to Bloody Scotland, I had to wait until she finished school for the day, so we weren’t able to get to Stirling in time for the first event which was a shame because it meant we missed Val McDermid and Peter May in conversation. However, we were in time for Whose Crime is it Anyway, three top crime authors improvising a crime story on stage from clues and prompts from comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli, the audience, a spinning wheel, and phrases from a copy of Katie Price's (Jordan) autobiography. The authors, Caro Ramsay, Christopher Brookmyre, and Kevin Wignall, took up the challenge with gusto each one contributing and twisting the plot in turns. But just as they were getting into their stride Hardeep threw them a curveball from one of the prompts. Needless to say as the story developed it became more and more outrageous, and the writers more and more manic. It was a hilarious event and I'm sure the laughter of the audience must have been heard all over Stirling. This was a fantastic start to a great weekend.

The first event on Saturday morning was Forensics with Val McDermid and Lin Anderson. I had been looking forward to this, and it didn’t disappoint. They started the event off with the thing that most crime writers know, that when writing stories forensics is only a tool and that it is the character who creates suspense, But then they branched off into the rise of technology, and how this has impacted on storytelling. The discussion ranged over a wide-ranging variety of topics such as – computer science, maggots, blood spatter DNA, toxicology, soil forensics, and so on.

Some interesting facts came to light during the discussion. For example, did you know that flies can smell blood from a kilometre away, and even if they can’t get to them they will lay their eggs, even through zips if necessary? As for blood spatter, pigs are used to test this because their blood splatters just like human blood. The most interesting thing I heard about DNA was in relation to maggots. Apparently maggots tear flesh, and you can get fragments of DNA from between their tiny teeth. I’ll pause for a shudder here. Oh, and before I forget, there is a bone in your ear which can be analysed to reveal where your mother was living when she was pregnant with you. All very fascinating stuff.

Keeping up with forensic details is a massive task because science is constantly changing, therefore it is up to the writer to make things sound authentic. And a word of warning from Val – it’s the things you think you know that trip you up.

We attended other panels and events, but those two were the highlights as far as I am concerned. Although this year, because I had my granddaughter with me, I actually went to the football match – English authors versus Scottish authors (I’m not a football fan). It was hilarious and I found myself shouting, along with everyone else, when a goal was scored. And it resulted in a five all draw (I think). I believe that last year the Scottish authors won by fourteen goals to one.

All in all we had a great weekend, and arrived home on Sunday night absolutely knackered.

Chris Longmuir

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

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Bloody Scotland Photo Gallery

I had a brilliant time at Bloody Scotland so I thought I'd share some pics with you.

A lively event with Christopher Brookmyre and Denise Mina

Happy chappies waiting to go on stage - Mark Billingham and Stuart Macbride

Stuart Macbride successfully turned Mark Billingham, as well as the audience, into zombies as he read from Skeleton Bob

The Digital Detectives - Ed James, Allan Guthrie, and Alexandra Sokoloff

A bit of light relief. The Elvis Cleaning Team sprucing up Stirling on Saturday

Favourite authors Caro Ramsay, and Alex Gray, being interviewed by Gordon Brown

Entertaining Event - Alanna Knight interviewing Peter May

Ian Rankin and Kathy Reichs in conversation

The rapt audience listening to Ian and Kathy Reichs

Peter Mays speaking at the gala dinner where he was awarded with the Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award for Entry Island

Lin Anderson with her forensic team - brilliant presentation involving volunteers from the audience

The forensic volunteers suited up and ready to try out their fingerprinting skills

There was lots more but insufficient time to attend everything or post all the pics I took. If you're a crime writer or reader, and within travelling distance of Stirling, this is one event that's unmissable.

Chris Longmuir

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

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