The Hobcast Book Show

We don't make a habit of inviting guests back so soon on T he Hobcast Book Show , but we've made an exception for Greg Mosse , who joined us on Episode 94. This week we discuss Greg's foray into cosy crime with recent release, Murder At Church Lodge . Drawing on his own experiences growing up in rural Sussex, Greg takes us into the world of his protagonist, Maisie Cooper, and the challenges she fa...

Imagine falling in love with the crime fiction genre, but facing a perpetual shortage of books to read. That was the situation our guest Tony Mott faced growing up in Romania under the Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Classic western European authors like Agatha Christie were widely available in translation as they were regarded as politically neutral, but modern writers were banned. As Tony...

If there's ever a career that could prepare you to become an author of domestic noir and psychological thrillers, then being a divorce lawyer must be pretty high on the list. You'll witness all aspects of human behaviour, and watch as dark domestic secrets emerge. So perhaps it was natural for our guest, Caroline England , to specialise in these genres. Writing also as C E Rose, Caroline explains...

"Write what you know." It's probably the most over-used piece of advice to aspiring authors. That said, if what you know is being a private investigator, that's not a bad piece of advice for a potential crime fiction author. Our guest this week, Linda Mather , drew on her experience to create her main character, Jo Hughes, a PI who uses astrology to help solve her cases. With the sixth book in her...

What does it take to translate fiction? That's the question for our guest this week on The Hobcast Book Show, Quentin Bates , who in recent years has built a career as a translator of Icelandic fiction into English, working with some of the best authors from the island. Quentin tells us it's not as straightforward as translating each book word for word; he has to get inside the story and the autho...

It's that time of the year - Harrogate! This week the show comes from the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival , the UK's premier event celebrating the genre. Joining us at The Old Swan Hotel is Liz Mistry , the prolific Bradford-based author and creator of two hugely popular crime series . We discuss the influence Bradford has had on her writing, and the impact of her mixed-race marriag...

What if? Two simple words that can unlock a world of stories. Throw in a few more questions, examine your ideas from different angles, and you can really come up with a compelling story. That's certainly the approach taken by our guest this week, Alison Stockham , a Cambridge-based author of psychological fiction. Her debut novel, The Cuckoo Sister , was a break out success. The premise is simple...

We've often said on The Hobcast Book Show that are more than a few similarities between the book trade and the music business. True, it's not often that an author fills a stadium with screaming fans, but there's no doubt that the two industries share common challenges and risks. No matter how hard you work creatively, you never know if your next novel or album will find a big audience. So imagine...

It's one thing to teach English for a living, it's another to practice what you preach. Our guest this week, Louise Mumford , after years at the front of the classroom, has now established herself as one of the rising stars of the UK thriller scene, but her big break came by chance at an arts festival in Suffolk. Being the organised person she is, Louise was carrying a sample of her first novel wh...

This week's Hobcast Book Show is a departure from our usual subject areas. We're joined by the co-authors of Vitalising Purpose , Jonathan Bland and Jamie Veitch . Drawing on their years of experience working in the UK's social enterprise sector, the book offers insights and suggestions for improving vital public services we all rely on, by introducing lessons learned from organisations and pionee...

What's behind the enduring popularity of the 'locked room' mystery? Agatha Christie was without question the queen of the genre, but they remain a mainstay of crime publishing. Our guest this week, Heather Fitt has published two modern takes on the locked room mystery, setting her novels on an airliner and a transatlantic yacht respectively. So what's the secret to writing a successful one? In thi...

You might imagine we've lost our minds here at The Hobcast Book Show with an episode title like this, but, believe it or not, it's a common Icelandic phrase, such is the power and popularity of literature there. Our guest this week is one of the most influential figures in Icelandic fiction, Jónína Leósdóttir . Jónína is a playwright, journalist, and author of twenty-one books. Her most recent boo...

In a departure for The Hobcast Book Show we're bringing you a special episode celebrating the launch of one of our latest Hobeck titles, The Bad Neighbour by Jennie Ensor which has raced to number one in two Amazon categories already. Set in an English village at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, it's a sparkling pschological suspense mystery laced with dark humour. Adrian and Rebecca are joined...

We all know how a crime is investigated don't we? After all, we've read enough books, watched enough TV cop shows and read the papers. Interviewing a suspect? We'd all give it a fair go wouldn't we? But would we? How quickly would we commit an elementary mistake of procedure or due process? How soon would a soon would a savvy lawyer unpick our case or cast enough suspicion on our evidence to have...

There's no doubt that editing can make a huge difference to any finished work of fiction or non-fiction. Our guest this week, Abbie Rutherford , describes her move from social worker to copy editor and proofreader as a mixture of necessity and fulfilling her passion too. Abbie now one of the UK's most established editors, and specialises in crime fiction from her home base in Sunderland. In this w...

We've linked up with Japan this week to speak to our guest, sci-fi author Jude Austin . As Jude tells us, her dreams of becoming an actress ended when a bad knee injury forced her to abandon her training at a Japanese film school, where physical challenges and combat classes were a key part of the curriculum. Jude has since turned her creative passions towards sci-fi and fan fiction, and she has a...

It's always a delight to share launch week with a debut novelist on  The Hobcast Book Show. Rachel Corsini  once dreamed of Broadway and ballet success, especially during her teenage years as a student at one of Manhattan's famed performing arts high schools. While she watched friends and contemporaries reach their dreams, Rachel's path to creative success was far longer and tougher. It was an aun...

Crowdfunding is becoming a  growing factor in independent publishing. You have a book you would like to publish, but need funds to cover the editing, production and promotion. The solution? Ask your readers for support. Our guest this week, Matt Adcock has taken this route to support some of his writing projects, converting his cyberpunk novel Complete Darkness   into a graphic novel version, and...

It's one of the sadder realities of modern publishing: the traditional market for well-told short stories is drying up with the closure of magazines all over the world. That's certainly the case in the UK, where a host of household name titles have closed down in recent years. Jude Hayland cut her teeth as an author for women's weekly magazines, enjoying a steady income and much of her work being...

We're all storytellers at heart in the fiction publishing world, right? Our guest this week, thriller author Amer Anwar's personal story though is truly astonishing. Brought up in Southall in West London, Amer always assumed that someone from his background could never become a writer, until he won the coveted CWA Debut Dagger award for the opening 3000 words of a novel he'd begun writing at a cre...

Our guest this week is no stranger to awards recognition. Heleen Kist is the author of three published psychological thrillers, the first two of which were shortlisted for a host of major international awards. Drawing on her surroundings in her adopted home of Glasgow, and inspired by the experiences of friends, her latest novel, What I Hid From You , features Radha, a dentist whose addiction to v...

If there's one genre that has dominated the mystery and suspense market in recent years, it is psychological suspense and thrillers. Our guest this week, Louise Mangos , has built a strong reputation in the genre, with three novels published to date. Louise is, like no less than four of our own Hobeck authors, a graduate of the Crime Fiction MA at the University of East Anglia. That gave her the f...

It's probably the number one piece of advice handed out to all aspirant authors - "write what you know." Our guest this week has perhaps drawn on this advice in two key regards: write  where  you know, and write  when  you knew. Nick Edmunds , writing as N J Edmunds, is the author of  Miles Away - a dark psychological mystery novel set in 1970s Scotland, and draws on Nick's own experiences of the...

We wear many hats at Hobeck Books . We're editors, cover designers, proof-readers, marketeers and audiobook creators to name but a few of our roles. We recently decided to combine these skills with a new arm of the company, Arch Publishing Services - helping clients to get their books from concept to finished product. This week we speak to our first clients, Bryn Thompson and Steve Lowndes of New...

There are so many potential avenues to pursue for the gifted writer. In recent episodes we've touched on poetry and writing plays, but have you ever considered the key role writers play in creating video games? Our guest this week, Colin Harvey , is a published fiction, non-fiction, and comic author in his own right, but it's his expertise in transmedia storytelling that we focus on in this interv...