Scottish author Frances Crawford has become the first writer ever to win both The Bloody Scotland Debut Prize and the McIlvanney Prize, for Scotland’s best crime thriller, in the same year. The 64-year-old landed the two top awards at the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling last weekend, just months after her debut novel A Bad Bad Place won the McDermid Debut Prize at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate in July.
From struggling to success
Crawford says no one would believe her personal story if she had written it as a novel. After decades of struggling with a muscular disease that left her largely unable to work and struggling to pay for heating and food, landing a book deal for her debut changed her life. At the same time, the writer was offered a new trial drug on the NHS that has transformed her health in the same way that the book deal has transformed her finances. Without it, she admits, she would be in a wheelchair today.
Despite all this, Crawford says she was happiest just to see her gritty thriller set in 1970s Glasgow about the far-reaching effects of murder on a community published in February. The novel is set in Possilpark, a tough part of north Glasgow, where Crawford grew up and still lives. It tells the story of 12-year-old Janey Devine, who finds the body of a murdered woman while walking her dog, Sid Vicious.
An unbelievable journey
“I'm incredibly proud. It is not something I had ever expected,” she says. “Sometimes I feel if I wrote it in a novel people would say this is not believable, it's not an authentic story, all these wonderful things could not happen to one character. Even the timing of it feels unreal, it feels unbelievable.”
Crawford was in Lidl with her husband Willy trying to work out how many wonky carrots they could afford to buy when they heard A Bad Bad Place had been bought by a publisher after a 10-way bidding war. “I got this email saying, 'Congratulations, Frances, you're going to be a published writer and you're getting this lovely amount of money'. And I went, 'Put the wonky carrots down, Willy! We're going up to Waitrose'!” she smiles.
Proud of her roots
She says the book deal “absolutely changed our life, it's made a huge difference, not just to Willy and I, but our children and the family. I have a lovely, supportive family, and they would take us on holiday. And for the first time in my life, I took them out for dinner!”
Crawford says it means a lot to her to win the prize named after the godfather of Scottish crime fiction, William McIlvanney, as this would have made her father Malcolm and mother Sarah proud. “When I was growing up, we didn't own any books, we didn't have any money for books. We didn't have the room to store them either, there were a lot of us in a council house. But there were lots of library books; we were all great readers.”
Crawford has just submitted the first draft for her second novel to her publisher. It is set in Possil six years into the future from the events in the first book and follows one of the minor characters, Martin, who is falsely accused of a murder. While the publication date has not been set yet, it is expected to be some time next year. Crawford is also hoping her personal story will inspire more older people to write the book they have always talked about doing. She says: “To even be a debut novelist at almost 65, I feel really proud of that. So I can say, 'There's always time'.”
