We’ll be doing something special at the great Canterbury Festival this year — a day-long fun event that will test your story creation powers. Meet us at the Farmhouse on Sunday October 24, 11.30 am and we will set a series of clues scattered around the lovely city during the day. Come back in the afternoon and tell us very briefly how they might shape a crime story. You could win a prize!
I’ll be kicking off proceedings in the morning and there for the denouement in the afternoon, then talking a little about how I structure my own work. If you’re a budding writer or someone who just wants some insight into how books are constructed don’t miss it.
Fantastic time here in Melbourne thanks to the wonderful Crime and Justice Festival. Comes to an end tomorrow. One tip for anyone coming out here… my favourite place to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner…. Cumulus in Flinders Lane. There’s a good review with pictures here.
Posted in Travel
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Tagged Food and Drink
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I’m a sucker for markets. The Rialto in Venice, Testaccio in Rome, London’s Borough Market, Seattle’s Pike Place, Rome’s Campo dei Fiori.
But Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market – Vic for short — is something else, sprawling place where you can buy everything from a didgeridoo to some of the loveliest food around. A great place and very busy on Sunday morning so I wasn’t able to get the traditional bratwurst from Drago’s — no time before my final event at Crime and Justice with Garry Disher and Adrian Hyland, ably overseen by Jude Bourguignon.
You’ll find a few photos below. Thanks to everyone from C&J for the invitation to Melbourne — a lovely event in a friendly and beautiful city. One more meeting tomorrow then it’s on, briefly, to Singapore. Oh — and you can see the reason I dashed down to the Vic Market at the end of these photos. It’s the only place I know that sells the dog’s favourite toy — Eddie would be mortified if I came back without one.
Posted in Travel
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Tagged Travel
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The programme for the Melbourne Writers Festival, which runs August 27 to September 5, was in this morning’s edition of The Age. Quite a line-up I have to say, from Brett Easton Ellis to Joss Whedon. Several of my mates are coming along too, Peter James, Simon Kernick and Val McDermid among them. They’ll have a great time. I’ve done the festival twice now and it’s quite something.
But how about this from the programme…
‘There seems no end to our shameless enthusiasm for crime stories.’
I put the word ‘shameless’ in bold there because, frankly, it took my breath away.
This is a country that’s just awarded its top literary prize, the Miles Franklin, its equivalent of the Booker, to Peter Temple, a ‘crime writer’, for Truth. Are we really supposed to feel some guilt, some sense of shame for wanting to read stories that address so directly the world we inhabit?
Melbourne Writers Festival 2010
