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Website Profile:
CRIME SCENE SCOTLAND
By Russel D. McLean and Douglas Shepherd |
THE BLOODY CRIME SCENE:
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NOIR WORLD OF CRIME SCENE SCOTLAND
Ladies and gentlemen (and readers of Spinetingler Magazine),
my name is Douglas Shepherd.
Probably doesn’t mean a whole lot to you.
Doesn’t mean a whole lot to anyone, really.
Except my girlfriend. Who keeps me under lock and key,
if you believe the words of my erstwhile partner in crime
Mr. Russel D McLean.
But, fuck it, here I am. Talking to you today about a little
endeavour I got involved in a few years back. Crime Scene
Scotland.
This fine crime zine was up and running before I ever got
properly involved. These days I’m the fiction editor
and I’m known for being a fussy little bastard. Some
might even call me blunt.
Or that’s what I like to think they’re calling
me.
Anyway, Crime Scene Scotland is an online noir zine. We
publish short stories (inevitably noir with a few notable
exceptions). We also publish articles and reviews. All
of them to do with the joy of dark crime fiction.
And there’s a lot of joy to be had. Well, if you,
like us, get your joy from reading about violent bastards
and people’s lives invariably getting fucked up through
greed, stupidity or a combination of both.
There’s even joy to be had when you’re working
with a lazy bastard like our esteemed Editor at the helm.
Cheers, Doug.
Don’t mention it.
In case you haven’t realised, this little introduction
to Crime Scene Scotland is being co-written. We would have
finished it a year ago, but Russel insisted on helping.
This is a pattern. Every time something goes wrong, you
blame me.
Who do you think they’re going to believe?
Fair point.
So while you’re here, do you mind answering a few
questions?
About the zine?
Yeah, about the zine. Do you want to tell me why you started
in the first place?
Uh, sure… I mean you know all of this…
But it’s for the benefit of these buggers out there
on the internet. If you don’t mind, I’m just
going to read a book while you witter on.
Great. Sure thing. For anyone still listening, the magazine
started as a whole other project. I wanted to sell books,
tried to open a bookshop, got stuck with webspace and a
pile of secondhand crime novels.
Crime Scene Scotland was originally set up to sell
off these novels. It failed. But what happened was – somewhere
along the line – I decided to put up stories by friends
of mine. Suddenly people started submitting stories to
us and before too long we became a fully fledged crime
zine…
At which point, to lighten the not inconsiderable load,
you took on a hardnosed fiction editor.
Or someone who could say no to the crap stories and not
feel bad about it. Yeah, that was Doug. He really upped
the quality of submissions and introduced the policy of
actually editing work that appeared on the site.
I’m surprised someone didn’t think of that
before…
We’ve published a bundle of great writers on the
site. Some of them have gone on to have novels accepted.
Some people even got published before submitting to us.
We’ve had a huge variety of styles and stories from
authors at all stages of their careers.
Guys like Ed Lynskey, Colin Conway, JA Konrath, Neal Marks
(Whose story, Down and Out in Brentwood made the top ten
for the Story South Award and is soon to be available in
The Deadly Bride and more of the Best Crime and Mystery
Stories of the Year). It’s a great mix. But all these
stories have at least one thing in common.
They’re all crime stories. By which we mean they’re
not mystery.
Because we have a big problem with that word.
I think it draws the focus away from the crime aspect
of a story. A mystery always sounds safe and predictable.
Something that can be understood and analysed in logical
terms…
Oh, Jesus… sorry about this folks – if you
read his reviews
you’ll know likes to sound like he got an education
somewhere…
But it’s a fair point. Crime is not about solving
crime, but about exploring the fallout from these pretty
horrific acts.
Basically we like to get straight to the violence and the
killing. Like that story, what was it?
Angel.
Yeah, the prison rape story. Got a lot of complaints.
And a lot of praise, too. Bloody violent story, but with
brains, too.
Which is what we like.
Well look at the authors we champion: the new wave
brits like Allan Guthrie, Charlie Williams, Ray Banks,
Ken Bruen…
And the American hardboiled: all the way from the classics
Hammett and McDonald to guys like Lawrence Block, James
Ellroy, Charlie Stella, George Pelecanos…
One of the things people always ask, of course, is why
Crime Scene Scotland?
Because they wonder why the fuck we’re publishing
and promoting American writers, too. There are two answers
to this aren’t there?
The Patriotic one
Whereby we wanted to promoted the fact we were Scottish.
And the lazy (true) one
Whereby you wanted to call it The Crime Scene but found
out the domain name was taken by someone else.
The first reason sounds better. I should have stuck to
it.
Yeah, that’s true. Except that Allan Guthrie, blabbed
about in the pages of Crime Spree magazine… going
to prove you should never trust a hardboiled author not
to give away your darkest secrets.
Look, McLean, Ruttan only gave us limited space to chunter
on, so you want to tell people what’s in the future
for Crime Scene Scotland?
Hell, yeah: more and better reviews. A new publishing schedule
(we’re going quarterly) with revised submission guidelines
and a great selection of new stories to get your juices
flowing. We’re also setting up mailing lists concerning
not just the mag, but important announcements from Friends
of Crime Scene as well as some other fun things. Keep an
eye on the mag (or my blog at http://www.theseayemeanstreets.blogspot.com)
for further information. And we’re going to try and
not kill each other when the deadline for each issue approaches.
Hah, speak for yourself, bud…
Crime Scene Scotland, a crime and mystery ezine, can be
found at http://www.crimescenescotland.com .
Russel D McLean and Doug Shepherd take no responsibility
for any offence
or upset caused by the site’s content. Or indeed
responsibility for much of anything.
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