Novelist’s joy at Val honour
Doune writer on shortlist with idol
A Doune author has been shortlisted for an award alongside one of her own crimewriting heroines.
V i c k i Ch a p ma n Campbell, who writes as Vicki Clifford, is shortlisted along with five others — including bestselling author Val McDermid — in the crime section of the Diva Literary Awards 2017.
On inititally being told she was in the running she didn’t believe it.
Now, however, she is excitedly heading to Birmingham this weekend for the awards ceremony and, while she modestly says she doesn’t expect to win given the illustrious company of her fellow nominees, she is looking forward to the experience.
Vicki said: “The news came as a shock, in an email, which I thought must be spam and it had a longer than usual subject line. I thought someone might be trying to sell me a tractor from China or a timeshare in Venezuela. I opened it but still wasn’t convinced it was real.
“Then the date for the award ceremony and the offer of tickets appeared. I checked their website and there I was on a list of six for crime fiction.
“One of the others is my heroine Val McDermid, so I have no chance of winning, but it is really fabulous to be on a list with her.”
Until recently, Vicki taught Religious Studies at Stirling StirlingUni Uni, butshealsohas but she also has an unusual background as a freelance hairdresser with a PhD in psychoanalysis from Edinburgh University. She had her first book,’Freud’s Converts’, published in 2007 and when she isn’t writing lists her pastimes as walking her dogs or “making unorthodox tray bakes”.
The awards have listed the three books in Vicki’s ‘ Viv Fraser Mystery’ series — Beyond Cutting, Finding Tess and Digging Up the Dead - which makes good use of Vicki’s own varied life lif experiences to bring the character ch to life.
Viv also has a PhD and is a“a “stylist to the Edinburgh es establishment” but she al also has a double life as an investigative journalist an and finds herself involved in some hair-raising and ev even explosive scenes as sh she trawls the seamier side of the city.
Vicki said: “I have been ha hairdressing since I left sc school and self employed, well, forever. It seems bizarre i that in my 50s I’d embark on a whole new career. It’s been lovely.”
The fourth book in the Viv Fraser series will be out this month and available in local shops, the information centre in Doune and the Smiddy at Blair Drummond. I’m also doing a book signing at Harvey Maps for the Doune Christmas Fayre, which is the first Friday in December.”
More about Vicki can be found at www. vclifford. com and www. amazon. co.uk/Vicki-Clifford.