Chiltern Kills : One Day Crime Writing Festival

 Report by Roger Corke 

Investigative journalist Roger Corke’s debut thriller, Deadly Protocol, has just been published, so he decided he’d better pop along to one of Britain’s newest crime-writing festivals – Chiltern Kills at  Gerrards Cross. He was in for a few surprises, not least two rounds of applause for his new book - instigated by Jeffrey Archer!

    Frederick Forsyth cuts the ribbon to
                    open Chiltern Kills

I knew we were in for a revealing day when the distinguished patron of
Chiltern Kills, Frederick Forsyth, cut the ribbon and told us about the
afternoon’s keynote speaker. 

“I knew Jeffrey Archer when he was an honest man – and that was a long time ago!” disclosed the master of the high-octane thriller. 

Lord Archer – famously convicted and jailed for perjury in 2001 – had plenty of surprises of his own when he finally came on stage, but there were revelations all day at this delightful festival, which is only in its second year but feels as though it’s been around for ever.  

That’s because of the vibe. It’s friendly and relaxed, due in no small part to the way the two local writers behind Chiltern Kills –
Paul Waters and Tony Kent –
have set it up. This is not a big money spinner for organisers, authors and publishers. All profits go to the Centrepoint charity for homeless young people and every writer gives their time for free. 

 Frederick Forsyth with Chiltern Kills curators
Paul Waters, left, and Tony Kent.  

And there was no shortage of writing talent on hand to impart the
secrets of their craft.
First up in the morning was a group of debut authors in Fresh Blood, who were asked how they came up with the plot for their debut crime thrillers.

 BBC journalist Louise Minchin revealed that a spell on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!
was her inspiration. The contestants were cut off by a violent storm, which she found absolutely terrifying.

 “It was doing my head in so much that I thought I had to harness that terror and fear and write it,” Louise told moderator Heather Fitt, so she set her upcoming thriller on the remote set of a reality TV show. Isolation Island was born

Fresh Blood: For first-time author Tina Payne, working for 18 years at the sharp end of the criminal justice system as a police investigator, dealing with victims of domestic violence, enabled her to write Long Time Dead.

LJ Shepherd was brutally honest about her inspiration. “My idea came from laziness,” said Laura, who trained as a lawyer. “I decided I’m going to have to write a legal thriller and I love high-concept thrillers.” The Trials of Lila Dalton, is about a barrister who stands up to speak in a murder trial but has no idea how she got there, is the result.

Left to right Heather Fitt, Louise Minchin, Tina Payne and LJ Shepherd. 

Flat Out Thrillers was asked that very question and they all came up with a different answer.

Left to right - Mason Cross, Robert Rutherford and Rob Parker in Flat Out Thrillers.

“A good and a bad guy,” said Mason Cross.

“A countdown to something,” said Robert Rutherford

“High stakes,” said Rob Parker.

Of course, you need all of those ingredients if your thriller is going to be really successful, as a group of leading authors found out in The Writers’ Room.

We don’t go in for writers’ rooms much in this country but they have elevated series like The Wire, Succession, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos into some of the greatest examples of TV drama ever.

 MJ Alridge in The Writers’ Room.

Best-selling author MJ Alridge decided to try the writers’ room concept with crime thrillers and got together with a number of colleagues from his publishers, Orion. He set out a detailed treatment for a thriller and his co-writer produced the first draft.

“Reading the first draft, it was fantastic to find surprises in a story you know really well,” Matthew told the Chiltern Kills audience.

And the experience has altered the way some of those colleagues now write.
MJ always plotted his books before writing but
co-author Lisa Hall didn’t. She does now.

“My process changed, because the treatment is now the thing,” said Lisa. “I don’t think I could write a book now without a treatment.”

Lisa Hall in The Writers’ Room

British crime-writing’s most famous jailbird has never needed a writers’ room to write more than 40 thrillers and collections of short stories. Jeffrey Archer gets by with sheer hard work, bags of ideas – and, as his audience soon discovered, plenty of charm. Within half a minute, he had the packed-out tent eating out of his hand.

In fact, the only person not charmed by the old rascal was moderator Jeremy Vine, who swiftly found himself very much surplus to requirements.

“Thank you for coming, Jeremy,” said Lord Archer, who pushed his chair back, strode to the front of the stage and spent the entire time talking to all of us about how he produces blockbuster after blockbuster.

“I like to work between six to eight, ten to twelve, two to four, six to eight and in bed by nine-thirty,” said the sprightly 84-year old.  The first draft takes 40 days but he writes as many as – wait for it – fourteen! “So, I tell every budding author that, God willing, you’ve got the talent, but it won’t stop have having to work damned hard.”
Still, it helps if you base all your main characters on a real person, which is why he puts wife Mary is in almost every one of his books. "Try not to invent characters,” he said. “The easiest thing is to write the human being standing in front of you because you will be with them and so will your readers.”

Still, it helps if you base all your main characters on a real person, which is why he puts wife Mary is in almost every one of his books. "Try not to invent characters,” he said. “The easiest thing is to write the human being standing in front of you because you will be with them and so will your readers.”

Roger Corke is a TV journalist who has travelled the world producing and directing documentaries for flagship current affairs series like the BBC's Panorama, Channel 4's Dispatches and ITV's World in Action and Tonight. That experience was invaluable in writing his first crime thriller and it was a chance conversation with a scientist whilst on a filming trip in America that led him to devise the plot for Deadly Protocol.