Lucy Atkins's Blog, page 5

Creepy Criminals:

How to write Suspense, Crime and Thrillers
With Peter Kemp


Nov 18th

10:00am 1h  John Mackintosh Hall

In this discussion-based session, Lucy Atkins offers techniques, tips and tactics for aspiring authors. Lucy talks about how she crafts her own ‘noir’ fiction, exploring her writing process – from plotting (or not) to researching beetles for The Night Visitor, and getting up at 5am to write. She will focus specifically on techniques for creating suspense and tension – and why every author needs them. The session will include information for aspiring authors on how to find a literary agent, and how to get a book published.

Tickets here 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fiction Masterclass – How to get your Book Published
Lucy Atkins and Fanny Blake

Saturday 27th October 12.30pm @ The Beacon

Join this expert master class on how to get your novel published. Everything from editing, agents, publishing, will be discussed. Lucy and Fanny are two award-winning bestselling authors, one a Costa judge, the other an ex-Penguin editor. Come armed with your questions! £10

Buy tickets here 

 

Fiction Panel with Nicola Cornick, Lucy Atkins and Fanny Blake.

Saturday 27th October 2.15pm @ The Beacon

Too good an opportunity to miss! Thriller writer Lucy Atkins and romantic novelist Fanny Blake are joined by international historical bestselling author Nicola Cornick. They will be discussing their personal experiences and love of writing. This event will be compered by Vivien McCoubrey.

 

Buy tickets here

Blackwell’s new Westgate shop has a big tree in it (see pic). I am envisaged us gathered round it with ukeleles…Here’s the info:

 

Blackwell’s Westgate is thrilled to host a panel of fantastic crime writers to discuss their new books on 24th July 2018. The authors will introduce their books and writing, as well as discussing crime fiction.

Lucy Atkins – The Night Visitor

JP Delaney – Believe Me

Cara Hunter – In The Dark

Olivia Kiernan – Too Close To Breathe

Crime Fiction is booming in the UK and sales of crime writing and thrillers growing faster than other fiction genres. Much of this growth has been driven by psychological thrillers. We look forward to listening in on the authors’ conversations and hearing why they think British readers love crime so much!

The event will be chaired by Barry Forshaw.

At the end of the discussion there will be an opportunity for questions from the audience and the chance to have your books signed by Lucy, JP, Cara and Olivia. A free glass wine will be served to customers in the bookshop during this event.

Tickets are £5. You can purchase online but if you buy your ticket at Blackwell’s Westgate or by phone 01865 980380, you can save the online fee.

Tuesday 12th June, Kibworth: Amanda Jennings & Lucy Atkins give tips for writing mysteries.  Tickets here

Great co-authors & goody bags for all! Tickets here 

 

Book tickets here

 

 

‘How far would you go. . .?’ Female historians as TV presenters – and The Night Visitor

The historian and TV presenter Kate Williams  tweeted today about the contents of her mailbox at Reading University, where she is Professor of History: ‘Today’s uni pigeonhole haul: exam scripts for marking, a PhD report, a note about the photocopier & obscene & threatening letters based on my TV appearances. The joy of being a woman in the public eye…’ Mary Beard, another brilliant historian and TV presenter who certainly knows what it’s like to be trolled, immediately tweeted back advising Kate to report the letters to the police. They are, she wrote, a crime. And a crime cannot be ignored.

As I watched all this unfold on Twitter I found myself wondering whether anybody is leaving poison pen letters in historian Simon Schama’s pigeon hole? Is anyone Twitter Trolling the handsome David Olusoga about his hair? Or publicly shaming Dr David Starkey for his glasses? Or telling Dan Snow that he’s fat. I doubt it. But when a female historian appears on TV she ceases to be judged on her intellect or wit or presenting skills. Instead she’s judged by the sum of her (body) parts: hair, teeth, bum, age, clothes.

I cannot imagine what this must add to the pressure these women are already under. Their jobs (juggling intense work in both academia and TV) are incredibly demanding. They know they are being scrutinized. As I watched the Twitter discussion, I found myself thinking about my character, Olivia, in the Night Visitor. Olivia, like Kate Williams, or Susannah Lipscombe (who helped me with the research for the character) is a history professor who also presents TV programs. She has a brilliant career, a talented husband, three children and houses in London and Sussex. But she also has a terrible secret and if the truth is ever exposed then her career will be in tatters – she will face public ridicule and shame. When you are in the public eye, with a huge Twitter following and an awareness of how vicious people can be, then the stakes must feel very high indeed.

Only one person knows Olivia’s secret and that is Vivian, the sixty-year-old housekeeper of a Sussex manor. Vivian has become Olivia’s unofficial research assistant and on the surface the two women could not have less in common. Vivian is single, unattractive and socially awkward, devoted to her rescue mutt Bertie. But as the novel unfolds it becomes clear that my characters have far more in common than they might ever believe (or admit to). They are both ambitious and very clever. And they both care, very deeply, about their careers.

In The Night Visitor I explore how far a successful woman like Olivia might go to protect her reputation. Everything she has worked so hard to achieve – her reputation, her public image, her good name, her job, the happiness of her children – is under threat. Is it okay to lie to protect all this? Is it okay to commit a crime?

I wanted to write a nail biting and entertaining book, but I also wanted to examine some moral grey areas. Successful women – particularly those in the public eye – get a bad rap, as Kate William’s matter of fact Tweet about her pigeonhole poison pen letters demonstrates so eloquently. I’ll admit that neither of my main characters is exactly ‘likeable’ (I find writing likeable characters very dull). But still, I felt a growing and powerful sympathy for both Olivia and Vivian as I wrote the book. Ultimately, all these women really want is to be taken seriously, for their minds. They just want to be allowed to do what they love, and to do it well, without being shamed or exposed or ridiculed. And really, where the crime in that?

Out in paperback, 3 May 2018

Now available to preorder from your local bookseller

or from Waterstones WH Smith  Amazon.co.uk and other major bookshops

 

 

Upcoming events at Oxford Literary Festival 2018

 Saturday 17th March – Lucy Atkins & Mick Herron ‘Secrets and Spies’

Mick Herron is the author of the Jackson Lamb series of spy novels. The first, Slow Horses, was hailed by the Daily Telegraph as one of the 20 greatest spy novels of all time. The most recent in the series is Spook Street, winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2017.

Mick and I will be talking about the secrets and spies at the heart of  our novels, and about writing flawed and unlikeable characters. Interviewed by Hannah Beckerman.

Tickets here: ‘Secrets & Spies’

Saturday 24 March –  Ruby Wax ‘How to be Human’

I’ll be interviewing the great & wise Ruby Wax about her new book How to be Human, the Manual at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. Wax has had a successful 25-year career as a comedian, television performer and writer. She also has a master’s degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy from the University of Oxford and was awarded an OBE for services to mental health.

More details & tickets here 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night was the Costa Book Awards ceremony at Quaglino’s in London, a truly uplifting celebration of some of the best writing in Britain today.  The overall Book of the Year prize went to Helen Dunmore’s incredible poetry collection, Inside the Wave, many of them written in the last weeks of her life. Dunmore, who died of cancer last year aged only 64, is the second writer to win the Book of the Year prize posthumously (Ted Hughes won for Birthday Letters in 1998).  Her family (pictured here) accepted the award last night and her son, Patrick Charnley, gave a short acceptance speech that had everybody wiping away tears.  ‘Poetry was in Mum’s soul’, he said.

‘For Mum to win the overall prize is staggering. We’re so thrilled. But there is a lot of sadness that she is not here. But she would have been really over the moon, particularly because it was her poetry … She’d have been so pleased to know that her win would bring new people to poetry’.

The category winners were:

Novel:  Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (pictured above with me & fellow judge Freya North); Biography: In the Days of Rain by Rebecca Stott Children’s:  The Explorer by Katherine Rundell; Debut: Gail Honeyman’s  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.