Can you believe that ‘Care & Control’ is now one year old?!

For me, it still hasn’t fully sunk in.

Earlier this month, I attended Aberford Literature Festival as a representative of Promoting Yorkshire Authors (more on that in a moment). I walked into the venue and spotted, as part of the PYA display, ‘Care & Control’ in amongst the works of well-established Yorkshire authors. Proud moment!

I could talk about all the obvious things, like the overwhelming positive feedback that the book has garnered. What I’ve learnt from the experience and how it’s shaped my forthcoming book ‘The Voodoo Room’ is a blog post in itself, so let’s stick a pin in that for now.

Let me talk instead about the community of people I’ve met in the last year in the form of PYA. One thing I discovered very quickly as a new, unrepresented author is the host of people and companies that are keen to offer you various services for a fee. That’s not a criticism of these companies or the authors that use them – just an observation of what’s out there and how overwhelming it can be to a new author. This feeds into a wider point, which my friend Erzebet (proprietrix of the wonderful ‘Miss Lollipop’s Bookshop’) described perfectly as ‘the business of book-selling’. It has certainly been a steep learning curve!

I stumbled on Promoting Yorkshire Authors quite by accident. I was reluctant to get involved at first because it all seemed a little too good to be true. I’m glad I persevered because I now belong to a community of writers from all walks of life, writing all kinds of genres and at different stages in their journeys. Some are working on their first manuscript, others are published into double figures. The support, feedback and opportunities I get are invaluable. At a basic level, having a group I can go to and ask about the author ‘business’ is a wonderful safety net. I would encourage all you Yorkshire authors, wherever you are in your journey, to link in with PYA.

This leads me in a roundabout way to Aberford Literature Festival. It was a fantastic local event with some amazing speakers (Jane Clack, Jane Lovering and Kate Rhodes, to name a few). What really stood out for me, though, was the focus on children and young people as readers and authors. It was great to see children and young people being encouraged to develop and share their talent. I remember having similar encouragement when I was a kid but can we really ever have too much?

I often say that I want to add my voice to the increasingly intersectional nature of British crime fiction. It’s wonderful to know that I’ve already achieved this through ‘Care & Control’ and will continue to do so through ‘The Voodoo Room’. I love to think that teenage me could now browse the crime fiction section and find a hero that looks like him within the pages.

As great as that is, there’s also something to be said for making space at the table for the next generation of authors. This is what Chris Berry and his team are achieving through the Aberford Literature Festival. I was humbled to hear from Jane Lovering and Kate Rhodes how their neurodiversity, treated as a disadvantage in the bad old days when less was known about things like dyslexia and ADHD, is not a barrier to creating their amazing work.

A phrase that’s often used now is, “You’ve got to see it to be it.”

I like to think that children and young people are now seeing themselves up there on those stages, seeing their future potential more than ever before. It’s hard not to be inspired by the likes of Jane and Kate. If it takes a village to raise a child, I suppose you could say it takes a community to raise an author? I’ve been privileged to be invited North Yorkshire’s ‘Books & Beverages’ Crime Festival in August as a panellist – this is what I’ll have in the back of my mind as I participate.

So, here’s to one year of ‘Care & Control’. A year of having PC Louis Mortimer and young Connor McAllen living in my head. Let’s see what this next year brings!