Tana’s School of Crime
4 WEEK INTRODUCTORY CRIME FICTION COURSE
I offer a 4 week beginners creative writing class over Zoom in crime fiction writing. In the course (1.5 hours to be delivered weekly) I cover how to build a cast of convincing characters we care about, structure and plot, the importance of setting, pacing, suspense and dialogue. And more besides. This course includes tips on how to get published taken from my own experience.
Cost: £240 (1-1) or £50 for a group class of at least 4 (group work coming soon!)
4 WEEK MORE ADVANCED CRIME FICTION COURSE
This is a 1-1 personalised service delivered over Zoom (1.5 hours to be delivered weekly) where I develop a 4 week course to suit your individual needs. Whether you have written three chapters or a whole manuscript, I will read and critique extracts of your work and together we will decide where our focus should lie. Past students have needed help in furthering characterisation, developing an overarching plot and using the senses more to bring their writing alive. This has proved an extremely popular course!
Cost: £300
SUBMISSION PACKAGE TO AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS
I offer an affordable but detailed manuscript critique on the first 5,000 words of your novel, help with your submission letter and synopsis.
Cost: £125
Please contact me through the contacts page or on Twitter where I can be found at @TanaCollins7
COVER REVEAL!
I am pleased to reveal the cover of Dark is the Day by Tana Collins, the fourth book in the Inspector Jim Carruthers Series.
Here’s the blurb:
DI Jim Carruthers has to put his personal feelings for newly- appointed DCI Sandra McTavish aside when a young student is brutally attacked and left for dead.
Meanwhile, when a university lecturer is stalked by one of her own students, Carruthers is horrified to discover that the academic is none other than his ex-wife, Mairi. Are the attacker and stalker one and the same, and if so, will Carruthers’ ex-wife be next?
When a second then a third victim is discovered, not only dead but mutilated, Carruthers and his team are tasked with searching for a murderer. A murderer who takes great pleasure from killing.
What is the victims’ connection to a cult in North America, which seems to be getting a stranglehold in a Scottish university? Why have these women been targeted? And who is doing the killing?
It looks like there might be a serial killer on the loose in Castletown but can DI Jim Carruthers stop this depraved murderer before they strike again?
IN OTHER NEWS
21st March 2020 CHANGE OF EVENT The event to celebrate Small Press Day at Waterstone’s, Princess Street, Edinburgh alongside Lesley Kelly and David F Ross will now be conducted at 6pm over Twitter!
3rd May 2020 Due to Coronavirus I will be appearing on a virtual panel at the Newcastle Crime Writers Festival with Jackie McLean; Ian Skewis and Lesley Kelly. It can be found under Newcastle Noir 2020 Part 2 There’s Been a Murder, Sir.
15th August 2020 I will be appearing live on line at 3pm in the Fife panel in a brand new festival put together by the amazing Lynsey Adams.
Tana Collins 