Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for their Recommended Summer Reads promotion, and then rapidly went on to become the bestselling thriller of 2007. Simon’s research is what makes his thrillers so authentic. He talks both on and off the record to members of Special Branch, the Anti-Terrorist Branch and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, so he gets to hear first hand what actually happens in the dark and murky underbelly of UK crime.
His latest novel is Siege.
Dennis O’Donnell
Dennis O’Donnell was born in West Lothian in 1951, read English and American Literature at Edinburgh University and then went on to do research on the poetry of Ezra Pound with a view to a Ph.D. The thesis remains half written, the doctorate unbestowed, and he has not read a line of Pound since. Nor does he ever intend to. The fact that Pound spent some time immured in a psychiatric hospital seems to him now, as he looks back over the years, to have a resonant irony.
Despite a variety of jobs (including – once – catching chickens; (briefly) hatching chickens; (even more briefly) carrying heavy things so that joiners could nail them together; delivering the mails; conducting omnibuses, back in the days when such things as conductors walked the earth; and being a dogsbody and factotum in local radio), he eventually succumbed to the inevitable and became a teacher. In West Lothian. He did it for over twenty years before he began to long for incarceration like Ezra Pound.
Even more ironically, when he left teaching, and after wondering briefly whether chickens had not truly been his metier, he went into Psychiatric nursing. He’s fond of replying to the question of why he left teaching by answering that Fate had the psychiatric ward marked down for him. If he hadn’t left teaching, he’d have gone there as a patient.
He is very married, and has been since 1972. He has one daughter and two grand daughters. He is now writing a book about his teaching career. The masterpiece on chickens (and the hatching, not to mention catching of them) is on the back burner for the present.
Oliver Stark
Oliver Stark has been writing for as long as he can remember. As a teenager, he was an avid fan of American detective stories and made his first attempt at crime fiction at the age of sixteen. Needless to say, this never reached publication.
His debut novel was American Devil, a crime thriller series featuring Tom Harper and Denise Levene; and these characters have made a return in second book 88 Killer. He is now writing the third book in the series.
Book Heaven / Book Hell: David Wingrove
Born and raised in London, David Wingrove gave up a career in banking to return to studying, graduating with First Class Honours in English and American literature. It was whilst working on his subsequent doctorate that he set about the daunting task of researching and creating the epic twenty volume Chung Kuo series. Wingrove is also author of the Myst trilogy and produced several works of criticism and, with Brian Aldiss, is co-author of the highly-acclaimed Trillion-Year Spree: The History Of Science Fiction – winner of the prestigious Hugo and Locus awards. He lives with his family in north London.
Book Heaven
As a young adult, I loved the Victorian writer, G. A. Henty, with his rampaging historicals, told from the eye of the storm – tales that are still vividly in mind after all these years. As a young man, Hermann Hesse took my imagination, for his intelligence and sheer range, especially in his four best books, Saiddarha, Steppenwolf, Narziss and Goldmund and The Glass Bead Game. I regularly re-read all four. Each one improves each time.
Of late (in my fifties), I’ve read and re-read the wonderful Patrick O’Brian, never thinking it possible I could be seduced by sea stories, but O’Brien’s a great novelist and Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin two of the greatest creations in literature. I also love the sense of oceans opening up to the reader. I mean, nineteen big books!
Book Hell
For me it has to be contemporary mainstream fiction – McEwen, Rushdie, Amis and Barnes particularly. Such thin, emaciated stuff and so much “good writing” – i.e. style. I guess I’m a barbarian, but I hate such exercises in style. I want depth and character and a good page-turning story. Oh, and a world to explore, not the prison of middle class male angst. The single book I’d most hate to be stranded with? Midnight’s Children. I’ve never yet got beyond ‘The Tear In The Sheet’, a mere sixty-off pages in!
Stef Penney
Stef Penney was born and grew up in Edinburgh. After a degree in Philosophy and Theology from Bristol University she turned to film-making, studying Film and TV at Bournemouth College of Art. On graduation she was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme and has since written and directed two short films. The Tenderness of Wolves was her first novel, and was recently followed up by The Invisible Ones.
R.J. Ellory
R.J. Ellory is the author of the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Barry Award, the 813 Trophy, the Quebec Bookseller’s Prize and was winner of the Nouvel Observateur Crime Fiction Prize. His work has been translated into twenty-three languages and he was awarded the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year for his recent novel, A Simple Act of Violence. R.J. Ellory currently lives in England.
We asked him about his life as a writer and his recent book Saints of New York.
Amanda Kyle Williams
Amanda Kyle Williams has contributed to short story collections and worked as a freelance writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She worked as a house painter, a property manager, a sales rep, a commercial embroiderer, a courier, a VP of manufacturing at a North Georgia textile mill, and owned Latch Key Pets, a pet sitting and dog walking business. She also worked with a PI firm in Atlanta on surveillance operations, and became a court-appointed process server. Her first novel, The Stranger You Seek, was recently published by Headline in the UK.
Alan Glynn
Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, where he studied English Literature, and has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His second novel, Winterland, was published to huge acclaim in 2009, while his first novel The Dark Fields was released as the film Limitless – starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro – in Spring 2011. New novel Bloodland is out now.
Sam Eastland
Sam Eastland lives in the US and the UK. He is the grandson of a London police detective. His first novel was Eye of the Red Tsar, and his second, The Red Coffin was recently published.
Neil Cross
Neil Cross is the author of several novels including Always the Sun and Burial, as well as the bestselling memoir Heartland. He has been lead scriptwriter for the two most recent seasons of the acclaimed BBC spy drama series Spooks and continues to write widely for the screen, most recently Luther. His most recent book is a prequel to that show, Luther: The Calling, and is published by Simon & Schuster.
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Doug Johnstone
Doug Johnstone is a writer, musician and journalist based in Edinburgh. His latest novel, Smokeheads, was published by Faber and Faber in March 2011. He has previously published two novels with Penguin, Tombstoning (2006) and The Ossians (2008), which received praise from the likes of Irvine Welsh, Ian Rankin and Christopher Brookmyre. He’s working on a fourth novel and a screenplay. Doug is currently writer in residence at the University of Strathclyde. He’s had short stories appear in various publications, and since 1999 he has worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily covering music and literature.
Doug has a degree in physics, a PhD in nuclear physics and a diploma in journalism, and worked for four years designing airborne radars and missile guidance systems.
He grew up in Arbroath and lives in Portobello, Edinburgh with his wife and two children. He loves drinking malt whisky and playing football, not necessarily at the same time.
Elizabeth Miles
Elizabeth Miles grew up in Chappaqua, New York, not far from New York City. She graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2004, worked for several years at the Boston Phoenix, and now writes for the Portland Phoenix, an alternative weekly newspaper. She has won several awards from the New England Press Association and was nominated for an Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Award. Elizabeth serves on the board of trustees of Portland Players, a community theater and second home. She loves pizza; she can often be found running around on stage while scantily clad; and a cold winter night in Maine is one of the creepiest and most beautiful things she can think of. Fury, published by Simon & Schuster, is Elizabeth’s first novel:
It’s winter break in Ascension, Maine. The snow is falling and everything looks pristine and peaceful. But not all is as it seems…
Between cozy traditions and parties with her friends, Emily loves the holidays. And this year’s even better–the guy she’s been into for months is finally noticing her. But Em knows if she starts things with him, there’s no turning back. Because his girlfriend is Em’s best friend.
On the other side of town, Chase is having problems of his own. The stress of his home life is starting to take its toll, and his social life is unraveling. But that’s nothing compared to what’s really haunting him. Chase has done something cruel…something the perfect guy he pretends to be would never do. And it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed.
In Ascension, mistakes can be deadly. And three girls—three beautiful, mysterious girls—are here to choose who will pay.
Em and Chase have been chosen.
Adam Levin
Adam Levin’s stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Esquire. Winner of the 2003 Tin House/Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest and the 2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, Levin holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. His collection of short stories, Hot Pink, will be published by McSweeney’s in 2011, following his recently published novel The Instructions. He lives in Chicago, where he teaches writing at Columbia College and The School of the Art Institute. He also has a parrot.
Simon Spurrier
Simon Spurrier was born in 1981. After completing a degree in Film & Television Production at S.I.A.D. he worked as an Art Director for the BBC, and was awarded screenplay bursaries at the National Academy Of Writing and the Met Film School.
Since 2001 he’s become a major writer for the UK’s foremost adult comic 2000AD, and in recent years has published multiple projects through U.S. giants such as Marvel (X-Men, Wolverine, Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider), D.C. (Poison Ivy, Power Trip), Avatar Press (Crossed: Wish You Were Here, Disenchanted), Dark Horse (In Fetu) and Image (Gutsville).
He began his career as a prose writer in 2003 with a novelisation of the Kuju Entertainment/Games Workshop videogame Fire Warrior. He subsequently produced work-for-hire genre novels for BL Publishing (Lord of the Night, Strontium Dog: Prophet Margin) and Abaddon Press (The Culled). In late 2007 Spurrier published his first creator-owned novel, Contract. This was followed in 2011 by A Serpent Uncoiled.
Spurrier was born in Somewhere-You’ve-Never-Heard-Of, grew up in the heartlands of Nowhere-Terribly-Interesting, and lives today in North London. He spends much of his time in quiet cafes and pubs, where he exerts an unwanted cosmic magnetism upon any loud or malodorous patrons who should enter.
He spends far more time than he should on Twitter.
Malcolm Pryce
Malcolm Pryce is the author of a series of comic private detective novels set in Aberystwyth. Titles include Aberystwyth Mon Amour, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and many more. He has been described by the Sunday Telegraph as the ‘King of Welsh Noir’ and by the Cambrian News as “a twerp who needs a boot up his backside”.
After reviewing his latest offering, The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, Bookgeeks Jon Owens put him in the Bookgeeks hotseat:
Thomas Enger
Thomas Enger (b. 1973) previously worked as a journalist. Burned is his first novel. As well as writing, he also composes music. He lives in Oslo and is currently at work on Pierced, the next novel in the Henning Juul Series.
C.J. Box
C. J. Box is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award and the Barry Award. 2008 novel BLOOD TRAIL was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin (Ireland) Literary Award. The novels have been translated into 25 languages. Blue Heaven and Nowhere to Run have been optioned for film.
Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he co-owns an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo. They have three daughters. He lives in Wyoming.
Bookgeeks’ own Mike Stafford caught up with him while he was on a flying visit to the UK…
Harry Sidebottom
Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He had a basket saddle on a donkey before he could walk.
He was educated at various schools and universities, including Oxford, where he took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Corpus Christi College. In similar fashion he has taught at various universities including Oxford, where he is now Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College.
His main scholarly research interests are Greek culture under the Roman empire (thinking about the compromises and contradictions involved when an old and sophisticated culture is conquered and ruled by what it considers a younger and less civilised power) and warfare in classical antiquity (looking at how war was both done and thought about by Greeks and Romans). He has published numerous chapters in books, and articles and reviews in scholarly journals becoming an internationally recognised scholar in these fields.
Since 2006 he has been working on the Warrior of Rome series of novels featuring the Anglo-Saxon nobleman turned Roman army officer Ballista and his Familia which are set in the Roman Empire during the so-called `Great Crisis of the Third Century AD`.
He has travelled widely, especially around the Mediterranean. These trips have varied from the luxury of travelling as a guest speaker on a Cunard liner to a memorable solo journey into Albania not long after the fall of the dictator Enver Hoxha.
N.J. Cooper
An ex-publisher, past Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association, and lifelong Londoner, N J Cooper writes for a variety of newspapers and journals and contributes to many radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Saturday Review. As Natasha Cooper, she is the author of, among many others, No Escape, A Greater Evil and A Poisoned Mind. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Dagger in the Library, an award that ‘goes to the author whose work has given most pleasure to readers’.
Geraint Anderson AKA Cityboy
Before sacrificing his soul to dark forces in the Square Mile, Cityboy was a genuine left-wing hippy and political activist, complete with ponytail and hoop earrings. His dream of becoming a global traveller was cruelly dashed when his brother got him an interview at a French bank in the City, which would set him on the rocky road to destruction and despair. He recently published his second book, Just Business.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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