Just finished rehearsal at The Studio Theatre Company, Belfast, of 'The Real Man', the gritty modern play on at the MAC Belfast 23rd-25th May 2013.
It was our last Monday rehearsal until April, as we turn our attention full-time to Oscar Wilde's 'Lady Windermere's Fan' leading up to its run at the MAC on April 4th, 5th and 6th.
Tickets for both plays will be on sale through www.themaclive.com from next week.
It has just taken me an hour to unlock my google account and be able to access this blog again....google has more security than Fort Knox!
Given that I'm spectacularly un-techy, it's a miracle that I managed to do it at all!
Now...back to the book edits...
Monday, 25 February 2013
Sunday, 24 February 2013
D.C.I. Craig Crime Series update
Finishing off the final edits for Book Three in the DCI Craig series
'THE VISITOR' -- released in paperback and Kindle on 29th March 2013.
Meanwhile Book Four is now with the publisher for consideration.
Meanwhile Book Four is now with the publisher for consideration.
The Studio Theatre Company
Meanwhile....back in the world of theatre.
Busy preparing The Studio Theatre Company for the opening night of Lady Windermere's Fan on the 4th April at the MAC Belfast. Lights, sound, scenery, costumes, marketing, programme.....
Our modern play 'The Real Man' will follow at the MAC on the 23th May.
Tickets will be available for sale on themaclive.com from next weekend.
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Exciting Times
The rehearsals for our two plays Lady Windermere's Fan by the wonderful Oscar Wilde and The Real Man by a new author are going really well. Everything's gearing up for our performances at the MAC theatre Belfast in April and May.
Lady Windermere is on 4th. 5th and 6th April
The Real Man is on 23rd, 24th, 25th May
Tickets will be available to book soon on the MAC website www.themaclive.com
We'll also be giving a number of free performances for the elderly and community groups around Belfast
Excitement!
Lady Windermere is on 4th. 5th and 6th April
The Real Man is on 23rd, 24th, 25th May
Tickets will be available to book soon on the MAC website www.themaclive.com
We'll also be giving a number of free performances for the elderly and community groups around Belfast
Excitement!
Saturday, 16 February 2013
Busy time!
It seems ages since I wrote a blog ( January!) and so much has been happening since then.
BOOKWISE I've been editing book three in the DCI Craig series 'The Visitor' out on the 29th March. We're just starting cover design this week so it's all go there.
Book four in the series is in the final stages of writing so that will be wending its merry way to the wonderful Crooked Cat Publishing this week, hopefully for publication in the summer.
Meanwhile I've turned towards New York to start writing a completely new book in the thriller not police genre tentatively titled 'The Carbon Trail', so hopefully that will be complete later this year.
Meanwhile THEATRE....back at The Studio Theatre Company in Belfast, we've been fortunate enough to secure a chance to perform at the wonderful MAC theatre in Belfast city centre with two plays.
Lady Windermere's Fan April 4th, 5th and 6th evenings and
The Real Man, the premier of a new work on May 23rd, 24th, 25th evenings
We'll also be giving some free performances for charity and communities over the periods around the MAC performances.
Phew...busy, busy
BOOKWISE I've been editing book three in the DCI Craig series 'The Visitor' out on the 29th March. We're just starting cover design this week so it's all go there.
Book four in the series is in the final stages of writing so that will be wending its merry way to the wonderful Crooked Cat Publishing this week, hopefully for publication in the summer.
Meanwhile I've turned towards New York to start writing a completely new book in the thriller not police genre tentatively titled 'The Carbon Trail', so hopefully that will be complete later this year.
Meanwhile THEATRE....back at The Studio Theatre Company in Belfast, we've been fortunate enough to secure a chance to perform at the wonderful MAC theatre in Belfast city centre with two plays.
Lady Windermere's Fan April 4th, 5th and 6th evenings and
The Real Man, the premier of a new work on May 23rd, 24th, 25th evenings
We'll also be giving some free performances for charity and communities over the periods around the MAC performances.
Phew...busy, busy
Monday, 21 January 2013
The Real New Year's Day
There are a lot of things happening at the moment, for a January. I say for a January because normally the New Year starts in February. February the 28th to be exact. Why? Because it just does. Honestly.
Every year I trudge through the weeks after Christmas, ecstatic that it's over and a fresh new year has begun. It's like a new notebook. You now, that orgasmic moment when you pull back the cover and there it is, that fresh clean page facing you, full of possibilities. It could be covered with black fibre-tip letters flowing from a pen to create words of wisdom. Or a list. Yes, how about a list of things to do in January? Or even by the summer. Or if you're feeling really excitable, by next Christmas . Yes, let's write a twelve month list. The best ever. So I do. Then I look at it, full of excitement at what 2013 brings.
And then the thing happens. The January thing. The cold weather. The dark mornings and wet evenings and sometimes... the snow. Not crisp and white and imprintable, like it is in places like Norway or proper snow countries like that. But slushy and sleety and wet and icy and ...well just Northern Irish snow...in the city.
There's the scraping through the mortgage payments and loading the fridge up with basics. The endless stretch of December's left-over salary, desperate to get through to January's end. And the thrill of the New Year gets parked, in the cupboard, behind the ten cans of baked beans you've just bought.
Then all of a sudden, there it is, February, coming over the horizon. Young and bright and full of Valentine's day and a short four weeks until you get paid, It comes quickly and then, before you've even shaken off January's gloom it's here. February 28th. Bills paid, Christmas debt wiped, home free with fifty quid to spare. The 28th of February. The real New Year's Day.
Every year I trudge through the weeks after Christmas, ecstatic that it's over and a fresh new year has begun. It's like a new notebook. You now, that orgasmic moment when you pull back the cover and there it is, that fresh clean page facing you, full of possibilities. It could be covered with black fibre-tip letters flowing from a pen to create words of wisdom. Or a list. Yes, how about a list of things to do in January? Or even by the summer. Or if you're feeling really excitable, by next Christmas . Yes, let's write a twelve month list. The best ever. So I do. Then I look at it, full of excitement at what 2013 brings.
And then the thing happens. The January thing. The cold weather. The dark mornings and wet evenings and sometimes... the snow. Not crisp and white and imprintable, like it is in places like Norway or proper snow countries like that. But slushy and sleety and wet and icy and ...well just Northern Irish snow...in the city.
There's the scraping through the mortgage payments and loading the fridge up with basics. The endless stretch of December's left-over salary, desperate to get through to January's end. And the thrill of the New Year gets parked, in the cupboard, behind the ten cans of baked beans you've just bought.
Then all of a sudden, there it is, February, coming over the horizon. Young and bright and full of Valentine's day and a short four weeks until you get paid, It comes quickly and then, before you've even shaken off January's gloom it's here. February 28th. Bills paid, Christmas debt wiped, home free with fifty quid to spare. The 28th of February. The real New Year's Day.
Wednesday, 9 January 2013
Interview NIScene
My brilliant interview in NIScene by Tammy Moore. Thanks Tammy!
http://niscene.co.uk/belfasts-king-of-crime-is-a-woman/
Belfast author Catriona King’s DCI Craig novels from Crooked Cat Publishing, A Limited Justice and the December launched The Grass Tattoo (read an extract here), combine tightly-plotted crime, a diverse cast of characters and a ‘tall, dark and handsome detective’ in DCI Marc Craig, the series’ eponymous main character. ‘Well,’ King chuckles, ‘you have to have someone to fancy don’t you?’
Set in modern-day Belfast (very modern, each book is released on the date the story starts) the series deals with what King calls ‘ordinary crime’. So, murder, black-mail, extortion – anything as long as it is nothing to do with the Troubles.
‘I wanted a story that could happen in Belfast or in Paris,’ King explains, adding with a grin. ‘Once you’ve changed the place-names and dialects, that is.’
In The Grass Tattoo, for example, the opening pages detail finding the dead body of a local politician’s wife (A fictional party) covered in writing. However, the local politics angle turns out to be a red herring – ‘It’s not what you think it will be,’ King says – and the criminal organisation involved isn’t a local one, but a Russian gang of tattooed criminals called the Vor Y Zakone.
That isn’t to say the novel isn’t distinctly Belfast. The crime might be ‘ordinary’ anywhere, but the setting and characters are unmistakably local. Craig takes a date to a romantic dinner at Deane’s or goes to Love & Death Inc and his team’s fictitious headquarters is set on the real Pilot Street, where King’s grandfather owned a business. Even the MAC, where King launched The Grass Tattoo in December 2012, makes an appearance.
The only time King isn’t punctilious about using real, physical Belfast locations is when she’s killing someone.
‘I was at a reading and someone pointed out one of the streets I used wasn’t real,’ she remembers. ‘I said, “I was killing someone, you wouldn’t want me to leave a dead body on your street would you?”. I know I wouldn’t, so I don’t. Unless it is a public building, that’s different.’
As an author King is also eager to be inclusive of people who don’t belong to the expected, at odds Protestant and Catholic communities.
‘There are a lot of people in Northern Ireland that aren’t solely Northern Irish. There are Polish and Chinese and other communities.’ King points out. ‘My hero is representative of that. His father is from Belfast, his mother is a first generation immigrant from Rome and he went to an integrated school. Neither side can claim him.’
Craig’s first appearance in print is in A Limited Justice, which is also King’s first foray into novel-writing as an adult. Although she always enjoyed writing, and wrote non-fiction for GP magazine Pulse, being a doctor and a Police Forensic Medical Examiner took up a lot of her time. It was only after she came back to Belfast full-time that she started to think about writing again.
‘It was actually three years ago,’ King recalls. ‘My mother was sick and I had taken time off to take care of her. Whenever I wasn’t with her, I worked on A Limited Justice.’
With Craig’s experience working with the police as a Forensic Medical Examiner, and her long-time love of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, the crime genre was an obvious stop for her. However, it might have seemed obvious for her to focus, a la Silent Witness and CSI , on the medical or forensic side of things. Instead, it was the detectives who interested her.
Although, once she tots up the skull-crushings, snipers and carotid occlusions, there is quite a bit of forensic detail included (‘And I made sure that it was all accurate,’ King says).
‘I didn’t want to bog the books down in detail,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes that can turn into showing off what you know, not telling a story.’
The next instalment in the story, and the third book in the series, is due out in March. That means that King has published three books, and written two, in under a year.
‘I love writing,’ she says. ‘If I didn’t have to make a living, I’d do it all the time.’
Fans of the series can also rest assured that King has no plans to make DCI Craig hang up his warrant card just yet. She plans to continue the series for at least another two or three books, and who knows – if they take off she might get her dream casting for her ‘tall, dark and handsome’ detective.
‘Aidan Turner from Being Human and the The Hobbit,’ she grins. ‘He’s still a bit young, but I think he can carry it off.’
Find out more about the series at Crooked Cat Publishing
http://niscene.co.uk/belfasts-king-of-crime-is-a-woman/
Belfast author Catriona King’s DCI Craig novels from Crooked Cat Publishing, A Limited Justice and the December launched The Grass Tattoo (read an extract here), combine tightly-plotted crime, a diverse cast of characters and a ‘tall, dark and handsome detective’ in DCI Marc Craig, the series’ eponymous main character. ‘Well,’ King chuckles, ‘you have to have someone to fancy don’t you?’
Set in modern-day Belfast (very modern, each book is released on the date the story starts) the series deals with what King calls ‘ordinary crime’. So, murder, black-mail, extortion – anything as long as it is nothing to do with the Troubles.
‘I wanted a story that could happen in Belfast or in Paris,’ King explains, adding with a grin. ‘Once you’ve changed the place-names and dialects, that is.’
In The Grass Tattoo, for example, the opening pages detail finding the dead body of a local politician’s wife (A fictional party) covered in writing. However, the local politics angle turns out to be a red herring – ‘It’s not what you think it will be,’ King says – and the criminal organisation involved isn’t a local one, but a Russian gang of tattooed criminals called the Vor Y Zakone.
That isn’t to say the novel isn’t distinctly Belfast. The crime might be ‘ordinary’ anywhere, but the setting and characters are unmistakably local. Craig takes a date to a romantic dinner at Deane’s or goes to Love & Death Inc and his team’s fictitious headquarters is set on the real Pilot Street, where King’s grandfather owned a business. Even the MAC, where King launched The Grass Tattoo in December 2012, makes an appearance.
The only time King isn’t punctilious about using real, physical Belfast locations is when she’s killing someone.
‘I was at a reading and someone pointed out one of the streets I used wasn’t real,’ she remembers. ‘I said, “I was killing someone, you wouldn’t want me to leave a dead body on your street would you?”. I know I wouldn’t, so I don’t. Unless it is a public building, that’s different.’
As an author King is also eager to be inclusive of people who don’t belong to the expected, at odds Protestant and Catholic communities.
‘There are a lot of people in Northern Ireland that aren’t solely Northern Irish. There are Polish and Chinese and other communities.’ King points out. ‘My hero is representative of that. His father is from Belfast, his mother is a first generation immigrant from Rome and he went to an integrated school. Neither side can claim him.’
Craig’s first appearance in print is in A Limited Justice, which is also King’s first foray into novel-writing as an adult. Although she always enjoyed writing, and wrote non-fiction for GP magazine Pulse, being a doctor and a Police Forensic Medical Examiner took up a lot of her time. It was only after she came back to Belfast full-time that she started to think about writing again.
‘It was actually three years ago,’ King recalls. ‘My mother was sick and I had taken time off to take care of her. Whenever I wasn’t with her, I worked on A Limited Justice.’
With Craig’s experience working with the police as a Forensic Medical Examiner, and her long-time love of Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels, the crime genre was an obvious stop for her. However, it might have seemed obvious for her to focus, a la Silent Witness and CSI , on the medical or forensic side of things. Instead, it was the detectives who interested her.
Although, once she tots up the skull-crushings, snipers and carotid occlusions, there is quite a bit of forensic detail included (‘And I made sure that it was all accurate,’ King says).
‘I didn’t want to bog the books down in detail,’ she explains. ‘Sometimes that can turn into showing off what you know, not telling a story.’
The next instalment in the story, and the third book in the series, is due out in March. That means that King has published three books, and written two, in under a year.
‘I love writing,’ she says. ‘If I didn’t have to make a living, I’d do it all the time.’
Fans of the series can also rest assured that King has no plans to make DCI Craig hang up his warrant card just yet. She plans to continue the series for at least another two or three books, and who knows – if they take off she might get her dream casting for her ‘tall, dark and handsome’ detective.
‘Aidan Turner from Being Human and the The Hobbit,’ she grins. ‘He’s still a bit young, but I think he can carry it off.’
Find out more about the series at Crooked Cat Publishing
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)