What goes on at Bloody Scotland? Our Literary Agent for Fiction Marissa Constantinou explains…

Bloody Scotland is one of the biggest crime writing festivals in the UK, held in the beautiful town of Stirling. Each September, hordes of novelists, fans and industry-folk take over the town, with events booked over three days in three venues.

For agents and publishers, it’s a weekend of two halves: networking with industry people through meetings, drinks and dinners, and attending as many events as we can to see our hardworking authors in action.

Here’s what I got up to:

1pm Saturday

Lunch with our author Jonathan Whitelaw and his team at HarperNorth, which is the first time I’d met everyone in person. Getting together outside of Zoom is such important part of the job, allowing us to have creative, off the cuff, in-depth discussions.

4pm Saturday

Drinks with our author Marion Todd, hosted by her publisher Canelo. Around the table were a range of Canelo authors and it was really interesting to talk to them about their differing experiences of publishing and of the festival scene.

10pm Saturday – Crime Family Fortunes

A comedy panel event featuring Jonathan Whitelaw, styled after Family Fortunes with questions like ‘Name something you would find in Miss Marple’s handbag’. It was a hilarious and refreshing take on a book event that I’d not seen before. Crime writers are very good at making people laugh; this is a tight-knit community who are not afraid of making fun of themselves.

10.30am Sunday – Independents Day

A sold-out panel between our author JD Kirk and LJ Ross, both huge names in the crime writing world and both self-published. I found it fascinating to hear about how they’ve disrupted traditional publishing by building such engaged audiences by themselves. This was evident in the 90 minutes long queue for signings afterwards, which staff said was the biggest they’d had.

1.30pm Sunday – Scotland the Grave

An insightful panel between Marion Todd, Callum McSorley and Foday Mannah. Each of these authors write in a slightly different genre and it was interesting to hear how setting was equally important to each of them and given as much detail as a character.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend packed with industry networking and inspiration, seeing our crime authors connect with loyal fans and captivate many new ones.