I'm now over 20,000 words into my new novel!
Set in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1957, DARN CROOK follows on from PINK LANE and DOG LEAP STAIRS. This time DI Metcalf and DS Al Hughes are investigating the death of an unidentified man found in Darn Crook.
Darn Crook is the former name of a street in Newcastle city centre - now known as St Andrew's Street. I prefer the old name, myself. It conjures up more interesting images.
OUT NOW!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DT4DLMTR
Newcastle upon Tyne 1956
Cross-dressers are being murdered in the seedy Pink Lane area.
DI Michael Metcalf and his sidekick, DS Al Hughes, are stumped while rookie WPC Betty Morgan has ideas of her own. Her boss is a sexist slob, her mother’s a drunk, and Morgan is the lowest of the low.
When she faces the ultimate challenge, can Morgan prove she’s not just a ‘chit of a girl’?
Featuring some of the same characters as, Dog Leap Stairs, Pink Lane is a police procedural set in fifties Newcastle.
COMING SOON!
PINK LANE
by
Barbara Scott Emmett
Available in online bookshops shortly.
Newcastle upon Tyne 1956
Cross-dressers are being murdered in the seedy Pink Lane area.
DI Michael Metcalf and his sidekick, DS Al Hughes, are stumped while rookie WPC Betty Morgan has ideas of her own.
Her boss is a sexist slob, her mother’s a drunk, and Morgan is the lowest of the low.
When she faces the ultimate challenge, can Morgan prove she’s not just a ‘chit of a girl’?
Yesterday I got this lovely rejection letter from Burning Chair Publishing.
I submitted DOG LEAP STAIRS to them last May and had assumed I'd already had a rejection from them. Apparently not - and here it is. Such kind people. I can't reply to the email to thank them - so I'm thanking them here.
Thanks Pete & Si at Burning Chair - I'm sure you would have been wonderful to work with.
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Newcastle 1955
Monica haunts the quayside picking up men of a certain age. Then one of them is found dead. Since nobody knows what she does at night, she can't be in the frame for the murder.
Can she?
At her lowest point, she meets Bobby Wilson, an ordinary lad, handsome in his way.
But is this the right time to fall in love?
As the oily Tyne flows past the wharfs and under the iconic bridge, middle-aged men are being targeted by a vicious killer. Monica Brown, damaged, abused, just happens to be in the area - just happens to be excited by the murders.
Dog Leap Stairs is a blend of psychological realism and crime; dark, claustrophobic and atmospheric, it is both a portrait of Tyneside in the 1950s and an account of one woman's struggle against her true nature.
Paperback £7.99 /$9.99 and eBook 99p/99c (until Monday 2nd May 2022) available from Amazon here:
I am delighted to have received a special runner up award for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction. My WIP Dog Leap Stairs was shortlisted in March and the winner (Robert Scragg) was announced at the beginning of May.
I've read all the Paolo Sterling books and this one doesn't disappoint.
As usual,, it's a mix of gritty crime, police procedure and Paolo's personal life.
Promoted, against his wishes, to DCI, Paolo is faced with insubordination from a member of his team and disapprobation from his boss.
And if cracking a drugs ring, tracking down a murderer and finding a missing woman isn't enough, he also has worries about his daughter, out of touch in Africa, and a renewed relationship with his ex-wife to contend with.
This is a good solid story of detection and I certainly didn't guess the culprit before the end.
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The Green Fairy by Surian
Soosay
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| The Specials by Chris Worden |
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| Bioluminescence by Kris Williams |
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| Roman inside a hat by schadenfreude |
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| Siria Palmira by Jose Javier Martin Espartosa |
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| Suite Française by Eric Huybrechts |
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| Caution: itchy trigger finger by Flood G. |
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| Kathleen Jones |
My
first book was a biography of one of the pioneer women writers,
living at a time when it was considered positively immoral for a
woman to publish anything. In fact, in the 17th
century, even getting an education was believed to injure a woman’s
reproductive organs and addle her brain. The marvellous, scandalous
Margaret Cavendish was only the beginning of my fascination with
women who lived ‘outside the box’. The biography was picked up by
Bloomsbury and it was the beginning of my life as a ‘proper
author’. 
I wrote about Christina Rossetti defying Victorian
conventions, and then about Catherine Cookson – an illegitimate
girl who was born into one of the poorest communities in the western
world, left school at thirteen and went on to become one of the
best-selling (and richest) authors of the twentieth century. One of my books was published by Virago – an account of the women who
lived with the stars of the Romantic movement, Wordsworth, Coleridge
and Southey – women who wrote journals and letters and the
occasional poem, living in a society that considered it off-limits
for women to write anything more.
We’re all rebels, free to write the books
we want to write without being constrained by the false categories of
genre. 
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| Carol Cooper |
“Literary fiction is a term principally used for certain fictional works that hold literary merit. In other words, they are works that offer deliberate commentary on larger social issues, political issues, or focus on the individual to explore some part of the human condition.”
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| Outside the Box - Women Writing Women Box Set |
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| Excerpt from One Night at the Jacaranda |
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| Women Writing Women Box Set Authors |
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| JONI RODGERS |
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| Excerpt from Crazy for Trying by Joni Rodgers |
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