Welcome to PROSE & CONS, the new newsletter from a motley bunch of writers, including Adam Southward, Victoria Selman, Kate Simants, Dominic Nolan, Jo Furniss, Rachael Blok, James Delargy, Niki Mackay, Heather Critchlow, Clare Empson, Louisa Scarr, Fliss Chester, TE Kinsey, Robert Scragg, and Elle Croft.
Each month, we’ll be going deep on the craft and culture of writing.
Subscribe now and you’ll receive the premiere issue in your inbox when we publish in June.
We plan and God laughs, but the idea is each month we’ll publish news on our work, short articles and essays on writing, interviews, curious tales from our research, recommendations on books and films, old and new. We’ll offer exclusive extracts and flash fictions, and maybe even some giveaways.
You’ll hear from all sorts of writers - hardboiled, romantic, literary, cozy, historical, psychological - on all sorts of subjects, and will be able to comment and interact with them all.
Nobody likes to be overloaded, and we aim to send only thoughtful and interesting stuff to you, once a month. Think of it as a precision strike of authorly goodness, rather than a deluge like the Wicked Witch attacking with her winged monkeys.
Some of the writers you’ll be hearing from
ADAM SOUTHWARD is a philosophy graduate with a professional background in IT. His debut novel, TRANCE, was an Amazon bestseller. His new novel, THE STRANGER NEXT DOOR, is out May 27th.
VICTORIA SELMAN is the Amazon bestselling author of the Ziba MacKenzie criminal profiler series. She read Modern History at Oxford University, studied Creative Writing at the City Lit and holds certificates in criminal profiling and criminal psychology.
KATE SIMANTS’s debut LOCK ME IN was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger, and her second book, A RUINED GIRL, won the Bath Novel Award. She spent years as an investigative broadcast journalist, for both Channel 4 and the BBC, specialising in covert filming and undercover work.
DOMINIC NOLAN, author of the Boone thrillers, PAST LIFE and AFTER DARK. His new novel, a panoramic historical noir based on the Soho Strangler murders of the 1930s, is out in November 2021.
JO FURNISS was a broadcast journalist for the BBC for over a decade. She lived in Singapore, Switzerland, and Cameroon. Her debut, ALL THE LITTLE CHILDREN, was an Amazon Charts bestseller and one of the Top 50 Kindle titles of 2017. Her most recent novel, THE LAST TO KNOW, was released in 2020.
RACHAEL BLOK studied literature at Warwick University and then taught English at a London comprehensive. She is now a full-time writer. Her crime series is set in the cathedral city of St Albans. Here, DCI Maarten Jansen struggles against his plain-speaking Dutch upbringing when faced with the seemingly polite world of the picturesque city. UNDER THE ICE, THE SCORCHED EARTH and INTO THE FIRE are out now.
JAMES DELARGY, Author Ordinaire. Working on the Extra bit. His debut, 55, sold in 21 territories. His second novel, VANISHED, came out in April.
NIKI MACKAY studied Performing Arts at the BRIT School, and it turned out she wasn't very good at acting but quite liked writing scripts. She has published two novels about PI Madison Attallee - I, WITNESS and THE LIES WE TELL - and two novels as NJ Mackay - FOUND HER and THE GIRLS INSIDE. Her sixties gangland novel, LOADED, comes out May 27th.
HEATHER CRITCHLOW is a crime writer and business journalist. After studying history and social science at Cambridge University, she spent ten years writing and editing B2B magazines, before going freelance. She is working on two literary crime novels, and is a regular contributor to the AFRAID OF THE LIGHT anthology series.
CLARE EMPSON worked as a staff writer on national newspapers covering everything from collapsing merchant banks to tea with the late Barbara Cartland. After moving to the West Country, she founded the arts and lifestyle website countrycalling.co.uk. Her psychological noirs, HIM and MINE, are out now.
LOUISA SCARR is the author of the Butler and West police procedural crime series, including LAST PLACE YOU LOOK, UNDER A DARK CLOUD and BLINK OF AN EYE. Her debut novel, THE DREAM WIFE, published as Louisa de Lange, was an eBook bestseller and was hailed as “thriller-writing at its best” by the Daily Mail. A psychology graduate and keen runner, she lives in Hampshire where her productivity is continually ruined by a small black spaniel.
FLISS CHESTER studied Art History at the University of York, which set her up nicely for many years as a sub-editor, happily captioning pictures. Her first three novels follow the glamorous Euro-hopping romantic liaisons of Jenna Jenkins. More recently, she has written the Fen Churche mysteries, a trilogy of cozy whodunnits set in the aftermath of the Second World War.
TE KINSEY grew up in ‘70s London when everything was brown and made of corduroy, went to uni in ‘80s Bristol when hair was big and spectacles bigger, worked in ‘90s magazines when Britannia was cool, and in the ‘00s he helped the fledging internet to boom at IMDb. These days he is selling the odd million copies of his Lady Hardcastle and Dizzy Heights mystery series.
ROBERT SCRAGG is a northerner born and bred. His debut, WHAT FALLS BETWEEN THE CRACKS, earned thumbs up from the judges in the Dragons Pen at the Theakston Crime Festival. He has since written three more novels in his Porter & Styles series, most recently THE END OF THE LINE, and was the winner of the 2021 Lindisfarne Prize.
ELLE CROFT is the author of three psychological thrillers, and a host of the true crime podcast Crime Girl Gang. Her debut, THE GUILTY WIFE, was a Kindle bestseller. Her new novel, BURIED, is out August 5th.
Prose & Cons runs the writing gamut. Come run it with us.
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