Plot Twist: a writing workshop and carefully curated creative adventure across Scotland and Yorkshire, September 1-7, 2025
Write the mystery, thriller, or suspense novel that you never knew you were going to start while you gallivant for a week across Scotland and Yorkshire being mentored by a Random House and Sunday Times bestselling crime writer. You’ll stay in unique boutiques and a lochside lodge inside a Scottish national park. You’ll ride first class on a train route included in The World’s Most Scenic Railway Journeys, and you’ll also be inspired by dark history, dungeons, castles, moats, idyllic landscapes, and a decadence of food.
No matter your writing genre, you’re invited to join us and start work on a terrifying thriller, or cozy mystery, or page-turning suspense novel—pick your poison. Whether you’re a published author or hoping to be published, this is a chance to be daring, and spontaneous, and try new methods of working in alluring settings while having far too much fun.
Small group: just 14 participants
Plot Twist is hosted by Writers’ Expeditions and Exploring York
(Scroll down for prices and inclusions, itinerary, hosts’ bios, contacts, and more photos for Plot Twist)
(Edinburgh Castle, photo by Peter Swan)
David Mark (your writing workshop mentor): Before writing twenty-five acclaimed books, including the internationally bestselling Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy series, David spent more than fifteen years as a journalist—and for seven of those years he was a crime reporter with The Yorkshire Post. This man knows murder, and you can tell when you read his books which aren’t just page-turners but are superbly crafted works of literature that engage all your senses.
David is a sought-after author, performer and public speaker at literary festivals, but the fourteen of you have him all to yourselves for an entire week.
Val McDermid (Scottish crime novelist) describes David’s writing as having “more twists and turns than a corkscrew through the eyeball.” The Financial Times declares, “Aficionados of the grittiest, most trenchant fare love Mark’s copper Aector McAvoy.” Daily Mail’s Geoffrey Wansell says that David Mark’s work is “Dark, compelling crime writing of the highest order.”
(More about David, including his mugshot and a link to his books at Penguin Random House, can be found below with the hosts’ bios)
Itinerary
Monday, September 1st
York, England—founded by Romans and loved by Vikings
(Clifford’s Tower, Medieval-Norman castle keep, York, England)
From Inspiration to Publication: We’ll meet at our boutique hotel (Victorian Yorkshire meets Parisian chic) for a warm-up writing romp in the lounge or garden (weather depending) followed by “From Inspiration to Publication” a conversation with David Mark. It’s time to start thinking about what kind of thriller or mystery you want to write, and David will discuss them all with you. Then we take to the cobbled streets inside the medieval-walled city of York where our guide will lead us on a walk riddled with real-life historical plots and characters.
(Plot Twist: photo by Kirsten Koza, author, adventurer, humorist, and Writers’ Expeditions host)
Free time for lunch and to work on your character hunting assignment for your book and decide whether you’ll be writing a character driven or plot driven mystery/thriller.
(Yorkshire Fat Rascals, photo by your guide, Matthew Greenwood, owner of Exploring York)
(Yorkshire Rarebit at Bettys (no apostrophe), photo by Kirsten Koza, Writers’ Expeditions)
Cocktail hour workshop and readings.
This evening we dine together at a reputedly haunted 17th century house that used to be owned by the ropemaker who made the hangman’s noose for York Prison, but it’s now a restaurant serving a relaxed French-inspired menu featuring Yorkshire produce. The Chopping Block also happily caters to dietary requirements.
Then we’ll experience the dank depths of the infamous York Dungeons where dark history and notorious villains come to life.
(Included: three-course dinner, York Dungeons tickets, overnight for the next two nights at Clementine’s boutique hotel)
Tuesday, September 2nd
(photo courtesy of Markenfield Hall for Writers’ Expeditions)
Pack your pen and notepads in your day bag, because today’s workshops will be on the move.
After breakfast at Clementine’s, we’ll board our minibus to head through the Yorkshire Dales to the Ripon Police Museum which is housed in a Victorian prison.
After lunch we have a treat – we’ve been invited to a medieval, moated, manor house, one of very few still in existence, for a private tour. Markenfield Hall might also be the oldest continually inhabited home in England, and they are excited to have us visit their home. The earliest part of the house was built circa 1230. While its history is bloody, the setting is serene making the moated manor the perfect inspiration for our settings workshop.
We’ll return to York in the afternoon, and then it is free time for writing. Our guide is a foodie and will give you restaurant recommendations.
(Included: breakfast, minibus, museum tickets, Markenfield Hall, overnight Clementine’s)
Wednesday, September 3rd
From North Yorkshire to Scotland – first class
(Royal Border Bridge, which you’ll be crossing on a train just like this one – photo by Peter Swan)
After breakfast you and your luggage will be shuttled by cabs to catch the 10:00 AM train from York to Edinburgh. The train ride is seacoast-sublime, but as you enjoy the view, you’ll also be plotting murder. We’ll arrive two and a half hours later at Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, the only train station in the world named after a work of literature. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels include the books Rob Roy and Ivanhoe. In fact, Edinburgh is the world’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes books) was even born here.
Did you know that Edinburgh Castle is built upon an extinct volcano?
(Photo by Kenny Lam, Visit Scotland)
We’ll be met by our private minibus which will take our luggage as we wander to lunch at the corner of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh’s Old Town. After lunch (for some dark inspiration) we’ll adventure below Edinburgh’s Royal Mile to the hidden underground streets, a tangle of tenements where people lived, loved, and were murdered in the 1600s to 1800s. Fans of Rebus might remember this location as it was used for a murder scene.
(Edinburgh, Old Town, photo by your guide, Matthew Greenwood)
We’ll then drive seven miles to the Craigie Hotel where we’ve booked the entire inn at the foot of the Pentland hills. This fabulous house, with a quirky past, was built in 1885 for a renowned zoologist (a Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University) who did pioneering genetic (breeding) work with zebras right on the grounds (think: baby zorses, and zonkeys, or zedonks).
Afternoon and evening of writing at the hotel – don’t worry, you’ll have guidance if you need it: whether you prefer the hotel bar, or enjoying your elegant room and the insides of your eyelids from your bed, or perhaps a pot of tea on the outdoor grounds where zebras used to roam – this is your time.
Dine at your leisure in the hotel’s restaurant. After dinner we’ll share our murders from the train, and you can talk about your book ideas with David and the group if you’d like.
(included: breakfast, first class train tickets, Mary King’s Close, cabs to York Station, and private minibus, and of course the Craigie Hotel accommodation for the next two nights)
Thursday, September 4th
(Rosslyn Chapel photo by Peter Swan)
We have one daytime activity besides writing, and that is a visit to the very nearby Rosslyn Chapel (just a few minutes away), not just because it is a sensational structure, but because it is the ideal setting (you probably know why) to discuss the success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which has sold over 81 million copies.
(Photos from Cannonball Restaurant – they’ll happily cater to dietary needs)
A thrilling evening: We’ll head into Edinburgh City Centre for a three course dinner by the castle at the award winning Cannonball Restaurant (built in 1630 and gets its name from a cannonball imbedded in one of the walls), followed by a haunted vaults and 16th century cemetery tour, where you might note the names on some old tombstones being the same as character-names in the Harry Potter books – purely coincidental, apparently.
(Photo of Edinburgh alley by Michaela Wenzler)
(Included: breakfast, Rosslyn Chapel entrances, three course dinner, ghost/vaults/cemetery tour, private minibus)
Friday, September 5th
To Loch Long, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park we go!
(Loch Lomond, photo by Niall Hardie)
After breakfast and checkout, we’ll stop to explore Stirling Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was crowned at nine months of age (but there has been a fortress here since prehistoric times). We’ll pause for lunch along the route of our scenic drive, which will take us through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park to Knockderry Country House Hotel, our exquisite lochside lodge, where you can hear Loch Long lapping from the front door. This loch also contains secrets (ones of global impact) which we’ll reveal to you when you’re there, or maybe you’ll witness this oddity-to-behold yourselves. We have booked the entire lodge for our mystery and thriller writing for the next two days and nights.
(Stirling Bridge and Wallace National Monument, photo by Kenny Lam, Visit Scotland)
Writing followed by workshop: fine tuning and perfecting first sentences, first pages, and titles.
Dine at your leisure at the hotel and perhaps sample some of their fine collection of whiskeys.
(Included: breakfast, entrance to Stirling Castle, private minibus, overnight at Knockderry Country House Hotel – we’ve booked the entire inn)
Saturday, September 6th
You will have all day to work on your new mystery or thriller at Knockderry Country House Hotel. You’ll be encouraged on this day to write as much as is inhumanly possible – to channel your creative demon – and write as many pages (of what is affectionately dubbed the vomit draft) as you can. All along on our writing adventure, you will have been given exercises and tips and techniques to lead up to doing just this.
(Knockderry Country House Hotel photographed by your guide, Matthew Greenwood)
Tonight we’ll have a decadent three-course meal together in our hotel’s dining room (yet another award winning restaurant) followed by readings.
(Included: Breakfast, dinner, and overnight at Knockderry Country House Hotel)
Sunday, September 7th
Following breakfast and checkout, we’ll tootle around Loch Lomond in our minibus stopping at the best vantage points until we arrive at our boat, where we’ll board and cruise to the breathtaking fjord-end of the lake.
We’ll reboard our bus, and will stop at the picture postcard village of Luss on Loch Lomond, where you can buy quality Scottish-made items, or just wander and admire the view from the dock. We’ll lunch at a traditional inn before driving back to Edinburgh where we’ll drop each of you off at either the airport, airport hotels, or back downtown Edinburgh, or at Waverley Train Station, where we’ll wave farewell around 6:00 PM.
(breakfast, boat tour tickets, minibus)
HOSTS’ BIOS, FOLLOWED BY PRICES AND INCLUSIONS
Kirsten Koza (writing workshop host): is a humourist and adventurer. She is the author of the book, Lost in Moscow, published by Turnstone Press and dubbed by CBC radio Canada “the ultimate what-I-did-last-summer essay ever.” Kirsten edited the Travelers’ Tales (USA) humour anthology, Wake Up and Smell the Shit, and read thousands of stories for that book before narrowing it down to the 31 writers she selected for the volume. She’s had over 75 stories published in books, magazines and newspapers around the world and has repeatedly been invited to speak at the American Society of Journalists and Authors annual conference in New York, on the power of social media for writers and making stories go viral.
As promised, a photo of David Mark, your murder mystery and thriller mentor. The link below his image leads to some of his books at Penguin Random House.
(Above: David Mark bestselling author, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/231321/david-mark/)
Matthew Greenwood (your guide): created his tour company, Exploring York, in 2004, out of a love for his native county of Yorkshire and his lifelong passion for travel. He has guided a wide variety of groups ranging from policemen from Sudan to venture capitalists from New Mexico and adores showing visitors from around the globe the British Isles.
When Matthew was a child he wanted to be a hotel manager and had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of international hotel chains. His interest in all things travel continued through life. He says the reason we embark on journeys is for the unknown, to make discoveries outside our realm of imagination. His own travels have circled the planet. A chance-meeting with a charity worker led to a lifetime dream-trip to Rwanda where he walked among the mountain gorillas, something he couldn’t have imagined coming true when watching Gorillas in the Mist as a child. That trip also fed Matthew’s appetite for learning about war and atrocities and how humanity can endure and overcome. This passion has led to him taking self-study trips (what he calls holidays) to Bosnia, Serbia, Cambodia, and Vietnam, where he and Kirsten (your workshop host) met in Hanoi outside Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. The two of them have been hosting creative adventures together since 2017.
Prices, Inclusions, Exclusions, and More Photos
PRICES AND INCLUSIONS: prices include hotel accommodations – full breakfasts daily – three three-course dinners – first class train ticket from York to Edinburgh – boat cruise on Loch Lomand – cab from Clementine’s to train station on day three – all tours in itinerary – museum and historical site entrances – transportation on our own private minibus while on tours – private guide – and writing workshops.
The price for a single participant on this writing expedition (having your own, delightful, hotel room, all to yourself) is £2800. A deposit of £200 reserves your place when you sign up – this amount is subtracted from the total. You can quickly Google the currency conversion from pounds to your country’s currency – the conversion, however, will happen on the day you make the transaction. The payments are broken down into three: the deposit when you sign up, a second payment in the spring, and the final payment in the summer before you travel.
The group size for this trip is just 14 participants! If you have questions, or would like to sign up, please email Kirsten at writers-expeditions@mail.com (and to make sure we get your email please cc kirstenkoza@gmail.com), or message us from the Writers’ Expeditions Facebook page. We respond quickly, so if you don’t hear back within 24 hours, please check your spam.
EXCLUSIONS: Airline tickets, alcohol, lunch, and dinners that are not on the itinerary.
(Writers’ Expeditions 2024 participants with internationally bestselling crime novelist David Mark [up to no good in the back row]…but why are two of the participants missing from this photo?)
(photo taken by our guide, Matthew Greenwood, in Edinburgh – note the small print)
(Night in York)
(Writers’ Expedition’s participants riding our private minibus through the Yorkshire Dales)
(Tearoom cabinet, photo by Matthew Greenwood, your private guide for Plot Twist)
(Little Shambles, photo by Kirsten Koza, Writers’ Expeditions)
(Scones and tea, photo by Kirsten Koza, Writers’ Expeditions)
(2019’s writers in a village pub – photo by Kirsten Koza, Writers’ Expeditions)
(A mushroom bourguignon pie at The Guy Fawkes Inn – photo by Kirsten Koza)
(York Minster, photo by Kirsten Koza, adventure travel writer, Writers’ Expeditions host)
