It's unbelievably exciting to have been longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for best crime novel of 2011 on my first run out of the gate. http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/2011/gold.html

Shock horror! A quick google of royal wedding dresses reveals Princess Anne looking lovely in her finery standing on a polar bear hide at Buck House. Isn't this the women whose dad was a one-time head of the World Wildlife Fund? 

A hiatus while I went on hols. Now back and discouraged to read this in the Alaska Dispatch about soaring demand for polar bear hides from Russia and China. While I'll always champion the idea of the Arctic being a great plethora of places, all very different from each other, it seems clear that the circumpolar region needs regional controls in some environmental areas. This is one of them. The laws on polar bear hunting differ wildly from nation to nation (US has banned sport hunting of bears whereas both Canada and Russia allow it) and even within nations (Nunavut in Canada issues quotas, whereas Quebec does not) which leaves some bear populations much more vulnerable than others and could potentially decimate discrete populations in regions less regulated, which has implications not only for global populations but for a healthy gene pool in the less regulated, and thus more intensely hunted areas. 

I've been thinking about food even more than usual. Arctic food in particular. In my notes from a recent trip to Alaska I came across some extracts from The Yukon Cookbook, which was lying on a shelf in my host's house in Nome, Alaska. Of particular interest: Stuffed Moose Hearts ('Open up heart, place stuffing inside'); Pot Roast Ground Squirrel ('recipe may also be used for hoary marmot or muskrat'); Boiled Moose Nose ('This is a delicacy') and Instant Powdered Moose ('When you come in from the bush tired and hungry, throw 3 tablespoons instant moose into the frying pan, add water and in no time you will have a thick sludge.'). Jamie Oliver eat your (stuffed moose) heart out. 

As a rookie in the crime slash mystery business I'm beginning to realise that it pays to be appropriately accessorised. At a recent launch for the Harrogate Crime Festival   a number of my new peers were sporting comedy crime accessories of one sort or another: a miniature handcuff tie pin here, a dagger-print shirt there. The greats have their signature accessories. Look at James Ellroy and his weapon dog (and, by the way, here’s my review of Ellroy’s The Hilliker Curse), Agatha Christie and her permanent wave, Carl Hiassen’s teeth. Clearly, if I have any hope of being taken seriously, it is time I get one of my own. But what? A google search offered up dagger heel nylons and the Kelsi dagger shoe, neither of which appear to have been entirely well–named. Eventually I settle on a bullet pendant. Not the most subtle of insignias, a little tacky even, but in the matter of motifs, or even of accessories to live by who, frankly, has room for subtlety? So, a bullet pendant it is. Any better suggestions (c'mon there must be hundreds) under £50 warmly welcomed. 

Off, via the wonderful association Prison Reading Groups, to a well-known London men’s prison to listen to a dozen or so inmates discussing Brighton Rock (the Graham Greene novel – for obvious reasons they haven’t seen the latest movie version), the men with plenty to say and more or less divided 50/50 score or snore. Best line: ‘Graham Greene got it all wrong. I’ve been in organized crime for years and it’s nothing like Brighton Rock.’ There’s always one in every crowd, as my mother would say. Caught self jokily threatening a latecomer with a detention, but too late to stuff words back into mouth.

I’m trying out two new things here. First, I’m taking my first babysteps as crime writer. Secondly I’m having a go at a blog.

From now on, this is where I’m going to come whenever there’s something worth offloading, raving or occasionally ranting about in my writing life. It’s also going to be where I share my curiosity and enthusiasm for other websites, blogs and what have you. And from time to time I’m going to be offering up work in progress in the surefire knowledge that you will find ways to make it more exciting/plausible/interesting/sexy/sinister or whatever. 

If you like it, feel free to pass it on. If you don't, feel equally free to tell me how to make it better. I'm all ears.