How did I become a crime writer? Where do I start? Well,
like all good stories it’s better to start at the beginning.
In the beginning there was a little girl who always had her
head in a book and went about making stories up in her head, although she
didn’t actually commit them to paper. Silly girl. But you see, she thought
writers were magical people, and she was only ordinary, and ordinary girls
didn’t have books on the book shop shelves.
Roll on a few years, and as a new mum she still had that
urge to create stories, so she scraped and scrimped to buy a correspondence
course in how to write (no computers then!). The only reason she could afford
to do this was because each lesson was paid at a time. Two lessons in, and her
mother-in-law commented “Who would want to do that?” referring to her desire to
write. Thoroughly discouraged the young mum bought no more lessons – silly
girl.
A short time later she wrote a short story for a Scottish
Sunday newspaper, and she got a rave rejection. But she was so naive she just
registered it as a rejection. Silly girl. It was many years before she
understood that a rave rejection means that if the story was worked on in
accordance to the advice, it would have sold. And yes, you’ve guessed it, that
little girl was me.
Then life got in the way. Two children, and a career in
social work took up a lot of time, but the urge never really went away, and
when a night class was advertised for creative writing, followed shortly after
by the establishment of a writers’ group, that urge became a reality. However,
I have to admit my first attempts at writing were dire. But I’m stubborn and I
don’t like giving up.
My first short story sold to People’s Friend, followed by several to My Weekly. I wrote a lot of articles, mainly historical, and sold
to a variety of markets in the UK and the US. This kept me busy for about
twenty years, but I still hankered to write a book.
But the one I wrote wasn’t a crime novel. It was a
historical saga, A Salt Splashed Cradle.
The RNA (Romantic Novelist Society) liked it so much they placed it with a
publisher. Guess what? That was the year sagas went out of fashion and saga
writers were being dropped by their publishers.
Not to be discouraged I changed genre, and wrote a
historical crime novel, The Death Game.
The publisher, Penguin liked this one, but not 110%. Probably 100% wasn’t good
enough.
Nothing daunted, I turned to contemporary crime, and wrote Night Watcher, introducing DS Bill
Murphy. He’s a hit with the ladies, but strangely, men like him as well. This
was the first book of my Dundee Crime
Series. No publishing nibbles for that one, despite the fact it won the
Scottish Association of Writers Pitlochry Award.
Did I mention I’m stubborn and never give up. I started on
Book two of the Dundee Crime Series,
and wrote Dead Wood, again no nibbles
when it went the rounds, but this book also won the Pitlochry Award, and it
went on to hit the big time when it won the Dundee International Book Prize in
2009, and was published by Polygon.
The third book in the series is Missing Believed Dead, again with the popular DS Bill Murphy.
Now that my career as a writer was taking off I went on to
publish A Salt Splashed Cradle, and The Death Game, and I’ve never looked
back.
My life of crime is well and truly started.
Chris Longmuir
Amazon
Apple iBooks
