Are you looking for a perfect present to introduce someone to the Helen Oddfellow mysteries this Christmas?
I’m offering two-book bundles, each including a signed copy of Unlawful Things and The Peacock Room, gift-wrapped and sent to the address of your choice, for £15 (including posting and packing). UK postage only.
I only have a few of these available, so if you’d like to order one, email me today at hello@annasayburnlane.com.
Unlawful Things
Lewisham Voices podcast: Beyond Unlawful Things
I enjoyed a long chat with Rachel New, outreach officer for Lewisham Libraries, for their Lewisham Voices website, about the inspiration behind Unlawful Things and my next novel, The Peacock Room. In
cludes tips on writing in lockdown, becoming a journalist, and how not to give up on your novel during eight years of writing!
You can listen to our conversation here.
The history and mysteries behind Unlawful Things – online talk
The usual talks and events that I had planned for this year are on hold, so I decided to try an online talk. On Monday May 4 at 7pm, I’ll be talking about the real-life history and mysteries that inspired the novel.
The talk will take you to some of the fascinating places in London and Kent that I visited while researching the novel. I’ll talk about the amazing archives at Dulwich College, the ancient pilgrim hostel in Canterbury and the magnificent Cobham Hall in Kent.
To join the talk, email me hello@annasayburnlane.com and I’ll send you a link.
NEW: Listen to a recording of the talk here.
What makes a crime writer?
Journalists. Police officers. Doctors. Engineers. School teachers. I met a lot of crime writers at the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival – and pretty much all of them had another string to their bow.
As someone who came to fiction writing late, I found it really heartening to discover that my fellow “new” crime writers picked for the Crime in the Spotlight strand of the festival were not the dynamic 20-somethings of my imagination, fresh from their creative writing MA. I wasn’t the elderly elephant in a roomful of under-30s, but typical of a group of professionals who’d spent 20 or 30 years working at one field or other, before translating that wealth of life experience to writing fiction.
For some of us, writing is a second job – I wasn’t the only working journalist who’s turned to fiction, and I met a teacher who manages to scribble down a novel during the six week summer holiday (respect!).
Others had begun writing after retiring from a career in medicine, or in the police force, or the army. Perhaps it’s no surprise that these professions that can bring you up close and personal with the grittier side of life tend to produce writers of crime fiction.
But the biggest surprise was Yrsa Sigurdardottir, the wildly-successful Icelandic crime writer I was paired with. I was amazed to discover that she doesn’t write full time – far from it. She’s an engineer who runs her own construction company.
Writing, she said, was like a hobby she turned to at the end of a hard day’s planning construction projects with her team. She says she takes a couple of weeks off when she’s nearing the end of a book, to get it ready for publication. Is it hard to go back to work again? Certainly not. ‘I kiss the floor of the office ,’ on her return to work, she said!
I get that. Working in the ‘real world’ means you engage with people, share the load, focus on clear, deliverable results. Writing a novel is about trying to choose between the endless possibilities in your own head, and what you hoped to achieve never seems quite to translate onto paper. Perhaps that’s why so many writers in the crime genre, which involves letting your imagination go to some pretty unsavoury places, are firmly rooted in the real world outside of fiction.
By the way, if you’re a crime fiction fan, I can heartily recommend the Bloody Scotland festival. It was tremendous fun, with a wide variety of events catering to every type of crime fiction imaginable. See you next year?
Unlawful Things at the Bloody Scotland crime writing festival
I’m excited to announce that I will be appearing at the prestigious Bloody Scotland crime writing festival next month, reading from Unlawful Things on Sunday 22 September.
The festival attracts lots of big names. This year the programme includes Ian Rankin, David Baldacci and Lisa Jewell, and many more.
The festival has a “Crime in the Spotlight” programme, which highlights new and upcoming crime writers. I was thrilled to be selected as one of this year’s 12 Spotlighters. I’ll be appearing alongside Icelandic crime queen Yrsa Sigurdardottir, who will be interviewed after my reading. Her detective Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, a lawyer, is also an amateur sleuth with a record of digging up secrets from the past.
It’s great for a new writer to get such good exposure, and I’m hoping to introduce some crime fans to Helen Oddfellow. I wonder how the two fictional detectives would get along in real life!
Find out more about the festival here.
Unlawful Things on tour
One of the many things I didn’t know existed when I started on my publishing journey was the Book Blog Tour. Instead of going on tour around the country, you send your book ‘on tour’ around the book blogs.
The Unlawful Things blog tour had 13 stops, with book-lovers around the country agreeing to post a review, extract or feature about the book. It was exciting to see the reaction of these amazing people, who all read a huge amount and post reviews on dozens of books each year. Book bloggers, unlike some social media ‘influencers’, are unpaid and truly independent. They get a review copy of the book, and are free to write whatever they want in their review – so I was also a little nervous. Would these expert readers like Unlawful Things?
They did. “It is definitely five stars from me for this one, a fully action packed thriller with plenty of content, fantastic characters and a great story line – very highly recommended!” said Donna of Donna’s Book Blog. “The great prologue has you hooked from the off……What then follows is a gripping tale of history, religion, conspiracies and a little romance,” said The Bookwormery. “A thriller with an academic twist, this is a unique book dominated by some serious historical research,” reported Northern Reader. Book After Book called it “suspenseful, atmospheric, and gripping” while Stacy Is Reading said: “Unlawful Things is a fascinating feast for the imagination and a true success on every level.”
Rachael Read It was one of several bloggers who hoped to hear more of Helen Oddfellow. “’Unlawful Things’ heralds the arrival of a heroine and literary sleuth who stays with you long after the last page,” she said, while Bookmark That declared: “Helen Oddfellow is my new favourite person.” The Book Drealms said “There was a depth of character built up as the story progressed which really endeared [Helen] to me.” Shelf of Unread Books, on the other hand, enthused about the “brilliantly, terrifyingly realised” villains.
Wrong Side of Forty declared it “an exciting, knowledgable and engrossing read”, while Jaffa Reads Too wrote: “Helen’s determined quest to discover the truth allows the story to look more closely into the tangled history of Christopher Marlowe, a fascinating subject in himself, but which also combines a really dark historical mystery, with a modern day fast action thriller.”
My thanks to everyone who took the trouble to read and review the book. It makes all the difference.