March 2005
Star billing at the March Blue Room went to Val McDermid, internationally known for her psychological thrillers. She has given us the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan team, Kate Brannigan and Lindsay Gordon. Check out Val's website and you'll see all these modern fictional heroes have their own international followings. The Wire in the Blood TV series, filmed in and around Newcastle, starring Robson Green and Hermione Norris as Tony and Carol, introduced a new audience to the "Tony and Carol" novels. Val's most recent "Tony and Carol" novel is The Torment of Others and the most recent Lindsay Gordon novel is Hostage to Murder.
Val also writes stand alone thrillers: The latest is A Distant Echo. It is the story of a tight-knit group of four young lads who stumble upon the body of a dying woman and become suspects. Twenty five years later, it seems someone is wreaking revenge against them for a murder they didn't commit. Her next stand alone novel The Grave Tattoo will appear in September 2005: it is the story of a present day murder that has its roots in the mutiny on the Bounty and an undiscovered manuscript by William Wordsworth. Val gave the Blue Room audience a rare taste of "work in progress", a teasing taste of this new novel.
Val McDermid also champions the work of other writers. She's at the forefront of the Save Our Short Story campaign: "the finely crafted short story... can rattle the cage of our complacency". Shorter fiction is a neglected form in the UK and she is trying to change that. A volume of Val's own shorter fiction, Stranded will be published shortly by Flambard Press. She read to the spellbound audience an entire short story, White Nights, Black Magic from this collection. The secret of her Russian accent? It's easy if you come from Fife!
June Portlock read - or rather, performed - two sections from her novel The Colour of Pegs (available from Diamond Twig). The novel had begun its existence as a short story: June bought coloured clothes pegs and found herself matching the pegs to the washing; then she wondered what kind of person would do this. That short story won the Sid Chaplin short story competition in 1998. The judges urged June to write something longer. The Colour of Pegs is now a full length novel and is available from Diamond Twig.
The narrative is in three voices, and June's reading brought two of them to life.
Jo Colley writes poetry, plays and prose. Her first poetry collection As If came out in 2002; another collection is due later this year. A former prize winner in the Sid Chaplin Short Story competition, she is now working on her third novel. Her play Heavy Breathing won a Northern Arts award. Her latest work is Electric Ladyland, a celebration of Mary Pickford, Ethel Rosenberg and Sylvia Plath in words and music; it will be performed at the Dog and Parrot in Newcastle on March 31st. She is also co-director of Hydrogen Jukebox, a monthly cabaret of the spoken word in Darlington.
At the Blue Room, she read from new work, responding to Val McDermid's tale of white nights in St Petersburg with an emphasis on such exotic locations as Darlington, Ferryhill and even Brighton.
The last reader was Emma McGordon, who writes:
"I was born and grew up in Whitehaven, West Cumbria and started writing seriously in my early teens. I met Barry MacSweeney at a writers' workshop who later published my pamphlet collection The Hangman and the Stars (Blacksuede Boot Press 2000). Numerous readings followed this and in 2001 I was chosen as the Cumbrian poet for the first ever Words by the Water festival. In 2002 I was awarded Northern Young Writer of the Year by Northern Arts. I have worked as a trainee Journalist but am now in my third year at the University of Liverpool studying for my BA English lit."
She gave a lively performance of her work, including her response to The Tempest, in which Caliban takes his revenge on Prospero!
The evening still had one more treat in store: surprise guest Kathryn Williams sang some new songs and some established favourites. She was clearly rather nervous to be giving a solo acoustic performance, but her quiet singing held the audience in rapt attention.
