In The St Hilda's Spotlight - Stuart Neville

Name:- Stuart Neville

Job:- Author

Website:- https://www.stuartneville.com  

Facebook:- https://www.facebook.com/stuartneville

X @stuartneville

Introduction:-

Stuart Neville is a Northern Irish author whose novel The Twelve (aka The Ghosts of Belfast) won the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2010. It also won the 2010 Spinetingler New Voice Category Award. It was also nominated for the 2010 Dilys, Anthony, Barry and Macavity awards.  It was also on the list of best novels in 2009 by both The New York and Los Angeles Times. He has also been shortlisted for an Edgar Award, CWA Dagger, Theakstons Old Peculier Novel of the Year as well as the Irish Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year.

He has published eleven novels (two under the pen name Haylen Beck) and a collection of short stories. The French-edition of The Twelve or The Ghosts-of-Belfast- Les Fantômes-de Belfast, won L- Prix Mystère de-la Critique du Meilleur Roman Étranger and The Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger. His first standalone novel Ratlines was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.  His novel Blood Like Mine has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. Blood Like Ours which is the sequel, is due out in August 2025. Stuart Neville is also a member of the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers where he plays the guitar as well as being a vocalist.

Current book? (This can either be the current book that you are reading or writing or both)

Blood Like Mine out now in paperback, Blood Like Ours coming late August.

Has any gothic book spooked you and if so which one and why

More modern horror than gothic, but Stephen King’s Pet Sematary scared me when I read it around the age of thirteen or fourteen.

Which two gothic writers would you invite to dinner and why?

Bram Stoker and J S Le Fanu so they could fight over who invented the vampire novel.

How do you relax?

Playing and making guitars. I’m just about to build a Telecaster for myself.

Which gothic book do you wish you had written and why?

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is so thick with atmosphere and character, and it’s written with such a singular voice. It’s the kind of writing that makes me want to try harder.

If you were to write a gothic book where would you set it and why?

I have an unfinished book that I want to return to. It’s set in rural Northern Ireland at the end of the Second World War and it’s about a soldier who returns from the front having been severely wounded and finds his home village has transformed into something rather sinister.

How would you describe your latest published book?

Blood Like Mine is a slightly different take on the vampire novel. It asks the question, if vampirism was a real thing in our world, what would that be like? There are no magical powers, no fangs, just a mother and daughter caught in a horrific situation.

With Detecting the Gothic: tales from the Dark Heart of Crime Fiction the theme at St Hilda's this year, which are you three favourite gothic authors or books

The aforementioned We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The Private Memoir and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg is an extraordinary work for its time. I’ll always have a soft spot for Stoker’s Dracula because I read it over and over as a kid.

Which 3 gothic films would you rewatch and why.

I saw David Eggers’ Nosferatu in the cinema and thought it was brilliantly fresh take on a story that’s been told so often. Freaks, directed by Tod Browning, is nearly a century old but is still a disturbing watch. Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone is a wonderful ghost story set against the Spanish Civil War whose most grotesque horrors are the living adults.

What are you looking forward to at St Hilda's?

I’m looking forward to seeing some of my writer friends, and visiting Oxford for the first time.

Blood Like Ours by Stuart Neville (Simon & Schuster) Published August 2025

You would do anything for your family . . . even if they are monsters. Rebecca Carter is back from the dead. Lost and terrified, she is gripped by two desperate urges ''' to find her daughter, and to sate her ravenous hunger. Alone in the wild, Monica Carter survives on whatever small prey she can hunt down. But she needs more. One night, drawn by the maddening scent of human blood, she encounters two young brothers, who call to her as Moonflower and tell her that if she comes with them, they will keep her safe. But Jacob and Willard Hendry are not what they seem. They know all about dying and disappearing – after all, it’s been almost three decades since they did the same. Rebecca’s hope for a reunion with her daughter turns to terror when she realizes that the brothers aren’t like Moonflower – they chose to be what they are, relishing the slaughter, and they are leaving an increasingly bloody trail in their wake. But as she chases them west, she isn’t alone on the road. FBI agent Sarah McGrath, haunted by the death of her partner Marc Donner moments after he killed Rebecca, is hot on her tail. McGrath wants answers, and she will stop at nothing to get them. But she never expected them to come from a shadowy figure within the Bureau . . .

Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville (Simon & Schuster) Out now

You'd do anything to protect your child. Even if she's a monster... On a snowy December night, single mother Rebecca Carter drives her van into a snowbank to avoid hitting an elk on a desolate mountain highway. She is at the end of her rope, out of money and food. Still, she refuses help from a man in a pickup truck—Rebecca’s adolescent daughter, Moonflower, is on the run from a grisly secret, and the last thing they can afford is to be remembered by anyone they meet. Meanwhile, Special Agent Marc Donner of the FBI has spent the better part of two years hunting down a gruesome serial killer who drains victims of blood before severing their spinal cords, leaving a trail of bodies across the country. As Agent Donner’s investigation brings him closer and closer to where Rebecca and Moonflower are hiding out, in the foothills of Colorado, the life that Rebecca has fought so hard to hold together for her daughter becomes increasingly imperiled.

 

Information on how to buy online tickets can be found here. The programme can be found here.

Bute Noir 2022 Programme Announced

 

Time For a Change by Luca Veste

When I was teenager, my bookshelves (well, the stack of books I kept propped against my bedroom wall – we didn’t have anything as fancy as a shelf) were all horror novels. I couldn’t read any other genre at that point. It was all horror. Then, I didn’t read for ten years.

I was around twenty-four years old when my grandmother handed me a Mark Billingham book. Sleepyhead. She said, “you’ll like this. It’s dark.”. A great recommendation. A few days later, I was given a huge box of all those Stephen King novels I’d once taken from the library a decade earlier and devoured. My aunty Jo was making room and remembered I’d liked him as a kid and thought I’d give them a good home.

I did. They’re sitting on a shelf behind me as I write this. 

Thirty odd books, to join the two or three I’d somehow managed to keep hold of since being a teenager and moving around a lot when I left home six years earlier. Now, on that aforementioned shelving behind me, I have well over a 1,000. 

I’m not sure what happened in that week. I remember a lot of sleepless nights, as my first child was teething. Maybe that’s what made me pick up a book for the first time in ten years. Maybe it was the nostalgic element of seeing all those Stephen King books – a nice reminder when the darkness was about the possibility of something moving in the shadows, rather than a baby crying out. Whatever it was, I found myself reading Mark Billingham’s book at three in the morning. 

That book made me fall in love with reading again. It wasn’t long until I was buying multiple books a day. I discovered Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, John Connolly, Mo Hayder, and so many more amazing British crime writers, all in the space of a month or two. I went through and read their entire backlists. 

It made sense when I started writing novels that I would try and emulate those procedural style stories I had fallen in love with. However, I had also discovered the likes of Harlan Coben and Linwood Barclay. Along with the love of horror, I was being pulled in a few different directions when it came to deciding on what I wanted to write.

You Never Said Goodbye is a departure for me, genre-wise, but it is something I’ve wanted to write for years now. When I was writing my procedural novels with Murphy and Rossi, or my crime-horror crossover with The Bone Keeper, this idea has been at the back of my mind, niggling away at me. I knew what I wanted to do with it. I knew it didn’t fit in with what I was writing. Yet, I couldn’t shift this idea. I knew it wouldn’t be like anything I’d written before – a very personal story, that has its roots in my own past experiences – and I knew I had to do it. 

I feel like I’ve been building to this shift for years and it was nerve-wracking waiting for those early reviews. More so than the previous seven books! Thankfully, they’ve been incredibly positive and I have many more stories like this one to tell. Ordinary people in extraordinary situations. High-stakes, different continents, and massively emotional elements. I’ve never felt more excited about what’s to come next. You Never Said Goodbye is the culmination of me finding my way, but it is also a beginning. 

You Never Said Goodbye is by Luca Veste (Published by Hodder & Stoughton) Out Now.
A DEVOTED MOTHER - Sam Cooper has a happy life: a good job, a blossoming relationship. Yet, there's something he can never forget - the image seared into his mind of his mother, Laurie, dying when he was a child. His father allowed his grief to tear them apart and Sam hasn't seen him in years. A LOVING WIFE - Until an unexpected call from Firwood hospital, asking Sam to come home, puts in motion a chain of devastating events. On his deathbed, Sam's father makes a shocking confession. A LIAR? - Who was Laurie Cooper? It's clear that everything Sam thought he knew about his mother was wrong. And now he's determined to find out exactly what she did and why - whatever the cost. What happens if you discover you've been lied to by your own family for twenty-five years? Sam Cooper is about to find out.

More information about Luca Veste and his books can be found on his blog or you can find him on Twitter @LucaVeste. Luca Veste is one half of the podcast “Two Crime Writers and a Microphone” You can follow them on Twitter @TwoCrimeWriters. He is also the bass player for The Fun Lovin' Crime Writers. @FunLovinWriters

Bloody Scotland from Infinity to Beyond

Scottish Festival Goes Global

Sponsored by The Glencairn Glass with match funding from Culture & Business Fund Scotland

Bloody Scotland online concluded today with an audience far greater than we could have ever squeezed into the Albert Halls for a conversation between two of the biggest crime writers on the planet, Val McDermid in Scotland and Lee Child in the US.

The virtual Festival allowed us to break down borders and have authors and audience from across the world. Five Continents of Crime challenged time zones with J P Pomare, an award-winning Maori author nursing a midnight dram on one side of the world and Attica Locke having breakfast on the other. Throughout the weekend the chat forum was buzzing with crime fiction fans from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Austria, France, Spain, Netherlands, Poland and South Africa.

The new format didn’t mean we lost old favourites. The much loved cabaret, Crime at the Coo, normally sells out as soon as tickets go on sale with around 80 packed into the whisky bar but the virtual version, brilliantly chaired by Craig Robertson, brought in ten times that on Saturday night with a combination of archive footage, live performances and pre-recorded packages from various members of the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, some debut authors and a stellar performance from Festival Director, Bob McDevitt.

One of the most exciting new additions was the Never-Ending Panel, a rolling event which went on for four hours with authors and chairs coming in and out every 20 minutes. Chaos, entertaining and fun which pretty much sums up what Bloody Scotland is all about.

The transition to online proves that although Covid-19 may have temporarily floored us it couldn’t take away the spirit of the Festival.

Bob McDevitt, Festival Director, said: 'Bloody Scotland 2020 was quite unlike any other year but rather than being the poor relation of previous years, I think it will stand proud as one of the most enjoyable festivals yet with a truly dazzling array of international talent, a sizeable and engaged (often emotional) audience and just as many memorable moments as any other year. We may not have been able to visit Stirling in person, but we were definitely still able to go to Bloody Scotland!'

Bloody Scotland 2021 will be back 17-19 September 2021 hopefully in Stirling, possibly on-line or a combination of the two. Thanks to everyone who has supported us this weekend.

Most of the panels will be available on YouTube for a month after the Festival.