January 2025
Writing this on a beautifully bright but cold day in the office space I share with my partner, Sarah, in the garden flat in north London we moved to last summer. Aside from today’s match between Grimsby and Notts County being cancelled some 90 minutes before kick off, all is good.
News first of a pamphlet collection of new poems – Blue in Green – that will be published by Shoestring Press on March 21st. There are two launch readings planned, one, on Wednesday 9th April, at Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham, where my fellow reader will be Rob Etty, the other on the following evening, Thursday 10th, at Owl Bookshop in Kentish Town, north London, where I shall be partnered by Mike Bartholomew-Biggs.
https://fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/events/john-harvey-and-rob-etty-a-shoestring-press-reading/
If you happen to be near either of those venues, it would be good to meet you and sign your copy, should you wish, but if not, copies can be ordered from either Five Leaves or Owl or through the distributors, Central Books …
T: + 44 (0) 20 8525 8800 E: W: centralbooks.com
With my other writing hat on, a new short story, Criss-Cross – in which a certain Charlie Resnick makes an appearance – will be published on March 4th in Playing Dead, a collection of new stories by members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards and including stories by … well, you can see below …
My story, Fedora, which was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger in 2014, is scheduled to appear later in the year in a collection, also edited by Martin Edwards, of the best short fiction written over the years by members of the CWA. More details to follow.
Oh, and there are rumours of yet another Resnick short story in the works, in which Charlie looks back at his Nottingham past …
Happy New Year!
2024
Apologies for the lengthy gap between these posts. Part of the reason for my tardiness is that my partner and I have recently moved, downsizing, as seems to be the fashion, from a fairly large house to a garden flat in the same locality, and being forced to say goodbye to many things along the way – not least 35 boxes of books collected by Amnesty International UK for resale in their bookshops and on line.
That aside, there is a smidgeon of writing/publishing news. A new short story, Criss-Cross, featuring Alex Hadley, senior officer in one of the Major Investigation teams within the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command – and a leading character in the final book in the Frank Elder series, Body & Soul (2018) – together with one Charles Resnick (Det. Insp. retired), is due to be published in a collection of new stories by members of the Detection Club, edited by Martin Edwards, due out in the Spring of 2025.
Later in 2025, Fedora, which won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2014, will be included in another collection edited by Martin Edwards, this one bringing together the best of short fiction written over the years by CWA members. And if you didn’t catch Fedora first time around and don’t want to wait several months, it’s available as an e-book here or as one of seven stories in Going Down Slow, published by Five Leaves Publications (2017) and readily available from Five Leaves Bookshop.
Short fiction aside, since the publication of On Balance (Shoestring Press, 2023), I’ve been working towards having enough poems for a new collection, tentatively titled Blue in Green, after a Miles Davis track from 1959.
If you’re in the area and want to check them out, I shall be reading some of the new poems plus a few from On Balance, at the Torriano Meeting House in Kentish Town, north London on Sunday, October 27th, when I shall be sharing the stage with Tamar Yoseloff, who will be reading from her new collection, Belief Systems (Nine Arches Press, 2024). More details here.
I’m pleased to say that after some mobility problems have prevented me from doing so in recent years, I shall be back at CrimeFest in Bristol in 2025, 16th-18th May. The last time I was there was near the occasion of my 80th birthday when I had the pleasure of being interviewed by fellow-writer Alison Joseph.
Finally, it’s worth noting that now that I am getting around a tad more easily, I’d be very open to invitations to read from and talk about my work from any libraries, readers’ groups, independent bookstores et cetera that might be interested. Please contact me here.