I went to Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in July. For those of you that haven’t been – wow. It’s a big deal. I genuinely had no idea about just how big it is until I went last year. You’re at the bar with Lee Child or Richard Osman or CJ Tudor. Some real BIG names of writing. There are agents, editors, publishers, PR people, influencers… You name it and they descend on the beautiful town of Harrogate for the weekend.
And that’s great… Mostly…
Last year, I really threw myself into the festival. I took proofs of Last Night of Freedom (more on that VERY soon) and got into some interesting chats with other writers. I ended the weekend with 3 agents taking the full manuscript and I left with a feeling that anything could be possible. Sadly, those 3 agents passed on the book. Ultimately, it came to nothing, but I put myself in the shop window and gave it a go.
This year, the festival was fun. Some great chats, some superb panels, but something was off – missing. I took some ARC copies of Lionhearts with me and some press packs and some stickers, I fully intended to chase down a load of agents and publishers and pitch to them. Yet when I got there I just… didn’t…
The thing about Harrogate and writing in general is that it can make you feel small. It can discourage you. But it wasn’t that which took hold of me in the famous tent.
It was a general feeling of “what in the name of fuck am I doing?” Not just in terms of being at Harrogate but in terms of my writing career.
I’m a prolific writer, yet I didn’t release a book last year because I spent the whole of 2023 madly chasing an agent, like a deranged dog chasing a seagull across the beach. I was unfocused and I wasn’t disciplined. I could’ve done the whole submissions process dance AND released a book. I SHOULD’VE done that, because now I have nothing to show for a whole year.
Also, and this won’t surprise you as much as it surprised me… I am NOT a crime writer. I may love the work of SA Cosby or Will Carver (probably not a crime writer) and Ian Rankin and Joanna Wallace and whoever else, but I am not writing in the same space as them.
I have not been true to myself for a long time. I’ve been lying (strong term) to agents about what my books are – painting them as things they aren’t in an attempt to shoehorn myself through the door of trad publishing. In doing that I’ve shortchanged myself AND my books.
No more.
Harrogate was a strange weekend in that regard. This realisation hit me like a tonne of bricks and I spent some of the weekend in a daze (some of that was also induced by beer). But I drove home in a position of absolute clarity for the first time in a long time.
No more chasing submissions or publishers I don’t fit. No more trying to bend what I’m writing to the whims of the market or the wish list of a particular agent. No more chasing. It’s tiring and bears little fruit.
Now, it’s just about me. What kind of writer am I? What I want from my career? What kind of books do I want to put out into the world?
I’m working on The Beacons currently but I’ve got a couple of novels I owe my time in 2025, as well as a novella and a feature film in pre-production. Funnily enough, none of these things are crime…
Time to stop kidding myself and embrace the stories that matter to me. Onwards.