cozy mystery

Writing a believable character

/ Caron Allan / 5 Comments

I think we all know that a work of fiction could not exist without its characters. They act out the plot, control the information given to the reader, and they are the people we would like to be if we ourselves were the centre of the work. They are our representatives in the story world in many respects. I think that is especially true in the kind of books I write – fairly traditional, solve-along-at-home mysteries.

One of the things I love about characters is their ability to be brave, cowardly, wicked or audacious, righteous, and definitely unlike me, astute and quick-thinking! They are able to be either in the right or the wrong place at the right or the wrong time. Always in the thick of the action, the excitement, leading the way to discovery. I love that my characters can do all the things I can’t – lead exciting lives in glamorous, or not so glamorous places, rub shoulders with criminals and celebrities, solve mysteries, dancing until the early hours of the morning, and of course, go to nice places! They rarely have to worry about shoving things in the washing machine, getting the groceries sorted, puzzling over a newly appeared patch of damp on a ceiling, or a lost roof tile. They don’t have to clear up after pets or puzzle over the right home insurance.

Hopefully this will be out in 2025. I’ve written it, I promise.

In many ways, a minor character can be fairly cardboard – not every character needs to be – or indeed can possibly be – unique. They are like the stock characters of a theatrical production. There are only so many human traits, qualities and physical looks that can be applied to characters. In a lot of cases, I just suggest an appearance or a type of person and let the imagination of my readers furnish the rest of the details. If you’re anything like me, too much description to read slows down the action and is the bit you have a tendency to skip.

But the main characters – oh they have to be fully realised and to become completely real, fully-rounded and believable for the reader, or else there is no empathy, no immersion in the story. If you can’t lose yourself completely in a murder mystery, then there is nothing to be gained with the final revelation, the answer to the riddle of the story. It just won’t matter. I love it when I close a book at the end, and look around me, almost surprised to see the world is still turning. I had forgotten the real world, and part of my imagination, part of my self is still lost in story land. That is a job well done by the novelist. It’s what I try to aim for, though I often worry I don’t succeed.

For me, a main character has to be imaginable. I need to be able to picture that person, as if they were real, moving and inhabiting some invented space in my head. I like to think I might recognise them if I met them in real life. I want to know how they think, how they feel, what they like, what they hate. I want to know who their friends are, how they fill their spare time, what they do to pay the bills, all the real life stuff that applies to ‘us’, the readers.

Honest this one is going to be finished one day too…

If they don’t engage with the world around them in the book they are set in, they won’t feel real to me. They need to act like real people. They must be impacted by social issues, by world events, by the art and popular culture of their time. I want to see them dancing, singing, talking, crying, laughing, eating, drinking, catching a bus or train, driving somewhere, getting caught in the rain, falling in love, or visiting their mother. They have to have a life that extends beyond merely the demands of the mystery. They can’t just be clue finders.

That said, I try to add what I think of as timeless values to my characters. I don’t want them to exhibit the tendencies and faults of their time. I don’t want my main characters to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or bigoted. I want them to transcend what might have been widely-held attitudes of their day, because those are things which are important to me. I don’t want them to appear too sanctimonious or holier-than-thou either, so it’s a fine line between Dottie, Dee and so forth being a decent person and being way too prim and proper.

But hopefully it’s keeping them on the right side of believable, and relatable, and making the story the stronger for it. I try to make my books character-driven rather than event or plot-driven, as for me, a story is all about its players.

So what’s happening with me now?

Just a quick catch up for you. I had hoped to have at least two if not three more bosk out this year, but it just hasn’t happened. It’s been a tough year. diagnosis of breast cancer, followed by chemo, two surgeries, radiotherapy and now, I’m about to start yet more chemo mean that I’ve been utterly exhausted and not able to write very much at all. I’ve done perhaps half of Dottie Manderson mystery book 8 Midnight, the Stars and You. and I’ve written about half of a new Friendship Can Be Murder mystery, to be called Dirty Work, and… *sigh* I’ve just started book 3 of the Miss Gascoigne mysteries, Through Dancing Poppies. I wrote a stand-alone novel The Cousins last year but haven’t had the oomph to do anything with that yet, so it’s all in the pipeline. Hopefully 2025 will be a n easier year.  On the upside, a new German translation of the first Miss Gascoigne mysteries Eine Begegnung mit Mord will be out on the 11th October, so that’s something, I suppose.

Onward and upward. 

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Looking ahead to Autumn and new things…

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

Our maple is already wearing its Autumn hues

It’s still the height of summer (not that you’d know it from the 19⁰C and wet weather we’ve had this week, in contrast to last week’s high 20s and even low 30s) yet already I’m turning my face towards Autumn.

I know I say this every year, but for me, it is not Spring, but Autumn and Winter that form my season of creativity. I have no idea why this is. I don’t know why, but for me, autumn is not the season for rest and consolidation, but of flights of imagination taking wings. I get quite excited about the approach of autumn and winter. Maybe it’s the cuddly jumpers, I don’t know.

It seems as though the rest of the world is full of new life in the Spring. Is it because I’m an October baby, my lifecycle naturally starts from Autumn onwards? Or because when we lived in Brisbane what seems like a lifetime ago, October was in the Spring? But how can five years there undo the habits of the other fifty-nine years I’ve lived in the Northern Hemisphere? Or maybe it’s because for parents everywhere in the UK, Autumn is when the children go back to school and you at last get two minutes to sit in silence and just enjoy hearing – nothing. Ah, bliss!

Started a new notebook today too – a cause for celebration in itself!

As I’ve mentioned a few times, in our house things have been tough since last October but now, today, I feel something stirring again. It’s a feeling, a bit like being pregnant, a sense of something wonderful happening in the hidden depths, a private joy that no one else is able to share or even aware of. It’s the buzzing of new ideas, of fresh creative energy, a sense of gentle excitement that says, ‘Hmm, I think something is coming…’ I love it, it’s such a special feeling, and it can only mean one thing.

I think I feel a new story coming on…

***

Unmasking the culprit

/ Caron Allan

This post kind of continues from a previous post about how the killer in a traditional murder mystery such as the ones I write–or try to–is always ‘one of us’. It’s important that the killer IS one of us. (You can read that one here, if you like: One Of Us?)

But I have to say, if I read a mystery and the perpetrator is revealed as someone barely mentioned, or the author uses that old chestnut, the guilty butler, or any other member of staff, I am SO bitterly disappointed–with both the story, and in fact the author. Because it just feels like a let-down, like the author ‘phoned it in’, as they say, ie couldn’t be bothered to do a proper job. Even some of my favourite authors indulged in this heinous practice!

In his essay, The Decline of the English Mystery, George Orwell wrote, ‘The perfect murderer is a humdrum little man (or woman, I say!) of the professional classes.’

I think most people could agree that when they read a murder mystery, the most satisfying part of the book is trying to beat the sleuth to the finish line. Or at least, to be able to nod sagely at the end and say, ‘I knew it!’ as the killer is revealed.

We’ve come a long way from this scenario: ‘God must search out the solution to this crime because only He knows the secrets of the heart.’ (Revelations of a Lady Detective, William Stephens Hayward, 1864) Now, we as readers want to take God’s place and work it out for ourselves. Is it because we want to impose a rigid order on our lives, or have complete control over something? Who knows. We could write a philosophical paper on why we enjoy crime books when we (most of us, anyway) are vehemently opposed to violence in real life.

I have to say, I do get a thrill when the murderer turns out to be someone I had completely ruled out or overlooked. I like to be surprised but I also, more than anything, like to be convinced. So if the evidence is flimsy or entirely circumstantial, I don’t buy into it at all. I need to know the why of it far more than how or all the other questions. After all, in a traditional type of murder mystery the guilty party must have a compelling and urgent necessity to take such a drastic act. Otherwise, they could simply move to another town and live under a new name. Or something normal like that.. and bear in mind that many of the most popular murder mysteries are set in the past when there was capital punishment in Britain, and that in many other places there still is today. Why would someone risk losing their own life if not for some absolutely necessary reason?

So here are a few must-haves for the killer of a traditional murder mystery:

  1. They have to appear innocuous or be excluded from being ‘the one who did it’.
  2. If possible they should be genial, amiable and pleasant to most people, and get on with everyone (apart from the victim lol )
  3. They will be very aware of every move the victim makes, and take a lot of trouble to keep themselves informed.
  4. They need to be pretty intelligent to outsmart–for a while at least–the sleuth who will be coming after them.
  5. In spite of being pleasant, genial etc they also should reveal–gradually–an arrogant side with a large dollop of superiority complex: they believe they are able to outwit everyone, and are better than anyone, and that their motive completely justifies or exonerates their action.
  6. Lastly, they will crave attention and status; this means they love to get involved in the investigation into the death of the victim. They want to keep themselves informed in order to plan their next move, and to make sure they are safe.

In mysteries, many killers merely carry out the act to cover their butts: the victim knows something, or has the power to do something that threatens the killer’s safety in some way, whether it is their actual liberty at risk, their financial position, their social status, or the safety or fidelity of a loved one. It must be an utterly compelling reason for them. Occasionally they act out of revenge or pure hatred.

The killer displays a persona – derived from the latin word for mask – to hide their true nature from everyone they encounter.

If they are truly psychopathic, they will feed off the admiration of others and continually find ways–subtle and not-so-subtle–to make sure everyone knows how clever they are. Sometimes this will lead them to offer to help the detective, or sometimes this will lead to another death, as they either have to cover up the first crime, or feel a need to display their ingenuity.

In the case of serial killers, another death can be the result of their urge to experience that sense of fulfilment and power they got from the act of killing itself. They crave that thrill as an addict craves their addictive substance. The pressure is then on for the sleuth to find the killer to prevent yet another death. And often, the author will ensure that tension ratchets up a notch or three by having the next potential victim someone the sleuth really cares about.

In fact the concept of the powerful killer is no such thing. As the story reaches its denouement, they are revealed not as powerful but weak, because they do not have the ability to be satisfied with being ordinary, or to shake off the slights in life that the rest of us just have to get over.

The most exciting, most fulfilling moment of the story, for us as readers, is that moment when the detective shines the spotlight on Mr or Ms Nice-Person, their mask of geniality is ripped away and they are revealed for the evil beast they truly are. And our reaction to this – surprise or joyous confirmation of our own suspicions – is a tribute to the author’s dexterity in manipulating our expectations.

Wow!

 

The world of the murder mystery

/ Caron Allan / 4 Comments

Not sure this guy is really a detective, or just a businessman who is late for a meeting.

As you may know, I love traditional detective fiction aka murder mysteries. You can get mysteries where there’s no murder, but if the stakes aren’t high, my attention isn’t grabbed. And if you’re here, reading this, the chances are, you probably like them too!

In the old Golden Age of detective fiction, there is generally a Countess clutching her pearls, casting disapproving looks at the corpse leaking blood onto her Aubusson carpet, and declaring that surely the perpetrator is some stranger, some tramp or wandering vagabond. ‘It can’t possibly be one of us.’

For me, the thrill of these books is the certain knowledge that, yes, it is most definitely one of ‘us’. One of these characters, outwardly so genteel, so polite, offering around the drinks decanter, or standing when a lady comes into the room, or smiling pleasantly and asking after the vicar’s marrows, it’s one of them. Most of them have known each other for years and see each other almost every day out walking the dog or playing tennis, or at drinks parties or dinner parties, at bridge evenings and coffee mornings. (Because this is the life of villagers of that era, we feel.)

An old lady with glasses can be the rich countess, or the village spinster/busybody. She doesn’t mind whose role she plays so long as she’s busy and well paid in scones and tea.

Like the suspects now before us, we too would like to believe that those around us are just like us, and thereby comes the assumption that no one ‘like us’ could possibly do something so sordid as to kill another person. Because such an action implies loss of self-control, unacceptable levels of emotion, and of course, a denial of the never-say-die attitude that instils us with hope for a better tomorrow. Or if not better, then at least no worse.

So when someone—let’s call him Major Wainwright—is found underneath the billiard table with his head bashed in or a hat pin piercing his eye to skewer his brain, we automatically think, no one I know could possibly commit such an act. Therefore, it could only have been done by someone ‘not from here’. Here endeth the first act of our little fiction.

Sorry about that graphic image, by the way, that fictional situation got really bad, really fast, didn’t it? I’ve been reading Agatha Christie this week, in case you’re wondering. And while I’ve got you here, I’ve no idea why it’s always a major. I can only assume that a warrant officer or a corporal just doesn’t have the same ring?

But when we look at those cast members or story characters around us, we suddenly think, how well do we really know them? This is what writers sometimes call the second act world of the ‘unknown’ or the ‘new world’, where we suddenly see everyone as different and unknowable.

Let’s look at this bunch of weirdos and oddballs.

Take the major’s wife, for example. She’s known for her knitting circles and good works. As is the vicar’s wife, busily visiting the elderly and infirm, taking care of the vulnerable.

The major enjoys civil war reenactments, often heard to say ‘That’s not how I would have done it.’

Then there’s the vicar himself. Does he really need to spend so much time shut away in his office muttering scriptures or Latin phrases to himself? What’s he really doing in there?

What about Miss Simmons, the village busybody, who knows everyone and everyone’s history. They say she has a heart of gold, but is she really over that old romance? After all, she’s never married, does she still carry a torch for that certain someone? These country villages seem to always have a nosy old woman. (Often that’s me.)

What about the village doctor—I bet he knows a secret or two.

Then there are the rest who can change from story to story, as required: there might be a visiting artist, or an aunt from another village, or perhaps a daughter just returned from university to care for an elderly father who once threatened the organist with his walking stick. And of course we have the organist himself. But don’t stop there, there’s the butler, the maid, a hotel owner, the owner of the knitting wool shop… oh all sorts of people. Maybe a weekending couple, he is ‘something in the city’ and she is a famous model, renowned for her torrid affairs before she settled down to marry a man twenty years older than herself. There might even be a gay couple, known locally as ‘artistic’, (that was euphemism my mum used for a couple of gay men we knew when I was a child in the early 60s, when same-sex relationships between men were illegal) in those unenlightened days, they may have been viewed with suspicion.

But in spite of all these people with their secret backgrounds, their secrets thoughts, ideas and attitudes, we still keep coming back to the same thing: surely no one I know would commit such a vicious crime?

But how well do I really know these people? As I watch them gathered around the corpse, their various emotions—triumph, relief, satisfaction, fear, horror, dismay, anger, sorrow—fleetingly appearing on their faces, I’m forced to admit it feels as though I am in a room filled with strangers.

It’s the job of acts 2 and 3 to follow the clues, not be tricked by the red herrings, and to unmask all their carefully concealed plans and desires and arrive at the truth. Any one of them could be the killer…

And for readers of mysteries, that’s the beauty of it!

***

Death at a Shetland Festival by Marsali Taylor #DEATHATASHETLANDFESTIVAL

/ Caron Allan

About Death At A Shetland Festival:

Crowds are gathered for a concert at Shetland’s renowned folk music festival when there’s a shocking discovery – international folk legend Fintan Foley has been stabbed backstage.

Sailing sleuth Cass Lynch and her partner DI Gavin Macrae are in the audience and must untangle a complicated case where nothing is quite what it seems. Cass soon discovers that Foley’s smiling stage persona concealed links with Shetland. He’d worked here in the 80s, the days when oil brought wealth to the islands.

Has a long-buried secret risen to the surface – and will it make Cass a target for a cold-blooded killer?

Review:

The folk festival is in full swing, and everyone is having a high old time – until, on the very first night, a man is found dead in the cloakroom! Everything seems to point to him having ‘history’ with the area, but no one wants to tell what they know. If indeed they know anything – the dead man knew how to keep a secret, and no one seems to quite know everything.

As a special unit of police from the mainland investigate, and Gavin, the local detective inspector is sidelined, his partner Cass who was with him at the festival on the night of the murder quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery.

Without saying too much or spoiling any surprises or plot points, this book has two facets to it: the here-and-now modern day mystery, and the events of the early 1980s, and each of these crucially sheds light on the other as the story progresses.

As always, Cass Lynch is unable to curb her curiosity and bit by bit she pieces the truth together – and still manages to squeeze in a spot of sailing, tea with her pals and spend time with her beloved cats.

The ending is by turns nail-biting and moving, but satisfying.

This is a tense, absorbing page-turner of a book, and definitely Marsali Taylor’s best yet. I thoroughly enjoyed this new mystery and highly recommend it.

About the author: 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland’s scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland’s distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women’s suffrage in Shetland. She’s also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.

Click here to buy now from Amazon!

Catch up with Marsali Taylor on Facebook – click here

Or take a look at the author’s website here!

And the author’s page on Amazon can be found here

Don’t forget to check out these other blog posts too:

#DEATHATASHETLANDFESTIVAL

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Job vacancy: armchair sleuth required (readvertised)

/ Caron Allan / 3 Comments

 

We at LaughingAtLife.org (not a real company!) have a new part-time vacancy for the role of armchair sleuth.

About this role:

You must be ready, willing and able to deliver timely advice to all suspects and potential victims. (But not too timely. Whilst we agree that forewarned is forearmed, if you’re too good at your job, you may find the number of victims drops alarmingly and you are left with no one to investigate/suspect which will lead to everyone at LaughingAtLife.org moving into the genre of romance. Or maybe Fantasy. No one at LaughingAtLife.org wants that to happen.)

You should be highly experienced in delivering comments such as ‘I knew that was going to happen’ or ‘You could write this (insert offensive vocabulary here) stuff yourself!’

If you have fancied taking part in shows such as Gogglebox, this job could be for you!

Essential qualifications:

Eagle-eyed attention to detail.

Nerves of steel.

Ability to pick locks with a hair pin or safety pin. Or a lock-pick.

Suspicious of everyone and everything. Make remarks such as ‘Oh really?’ and ‘Feel free to be open and honest with me, I will discover the truth in the end.’

Be liable to take all alibis with a pinch of salt. Or snuff.

Able to sniff out spurious motives and supply educated guesswork.

Must possess own monocle or pince-nez or (misplaced) reading glasses (on colour-coded ribbons or fine cord – not too long though, you don’t want someone to strangle you with said reading  glasses cord, do you?).

Should be able to demonstrate a long-established habit of putting your fingertips together in a thoughtful manner before speaking.

You must have a luxurious moustache which you continually fondle or trim or dye a suspiciously dark colour. This role is open to all genders in our commitment to non-discrimination.

Or, failing the moustache, you may have a knitting fetish, and take knitting everywhere with you so that you are ready at a moment’s notice to disarm suspects with your apparent inoffensiveness and the sense of calm rationality that you radiate.

Must be able to recall a long series of villagey anecdotes you can crowbar into any conversation.

Must know the difference between a colonel and a major. Must equally be conversant with the differences between life-peers and the other sort, whatever they are. And of course, ministers of religion and local politicians. Must know how to address a Dowager without causing universal embarrassment at the knitting circle or Ladies’ Bright Hour.

Must be able to shake your head sorrowfully from time to time and say, ‘The world is a very wicked place’ or make some quote about the universal fallibility of mankind.

Additional desirable qualifications:

Knowledge of Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible useful. Possibly also Tennyson. (but we at LaughingAtLife.org do not insist on Tennyson.)

Must not be liable to scream or faint when confronted with a gory scene. Must know exactly where to place fingers on the neck to discover the non-existent pulse of a victim.

Encyclopaedic knowledge of deadly fungi and herbs could come in handy. Ditto household chemicals. Or medicines.

Must be able to dip fingertip in any powdery drug and taste it without dying, and also must be able to identify said drug.

Salary:

There is no salary, just the reward of knowing you did your best, and served your country. Or, failing that, completed at least one matinee jacket for the new baby of a friend of a friend of a friend.

Perks:

Sadly, neither are there any perks. There is no holiday allowance, as every time you go on holiday, someone will do something stupid and you will find yourself ‘embroiled’ in a new murder case. Even if you have a staycation, the grumpy colonel in the Old Manor House will upset someone who will then disguise themselves as a vicar and whack the colonel over the head 47 times with a fire-iron. You will of course realise that this was almost inevitable given the colonel’s generally offensive manner, and also it will be just what happened with Mrs Castle’s little boy in Northampton when he skived off school that day in 1948.

There is no sick pay, apart from the satisfaction that your last days will be repackaged and sold as Mr X’s or Ms Y’s Final Cases with a picture of the actor who plays your role on the front cover.

How to Apply:

Seriously?

***

Rewriting a novel – a nuts and bolts approach

/ Caron Allan / 4 Comments

(This post first appeared in 2017 when I was invited to do a guest spot on Pink Glitter Publishing for my dear friend and author Emma Baird.) And sorry, it’s another really long post this week…

I love rewriting. There, I’ve said it. I think I could be the only person in the history of the world who actually enjoys rewriting. In fact, I like it a lot more than writing the first draft. I hate that bit. Okay, maybe not hate. I love the thrill of writing the first 50 pages or so, when it’s all fresh and exciting, and it begins to unfold on the page. Love that. But…sooner or later I always hit the first-draft wall. I know it’s because I don’t plot. I’m a pantser. So sue me, I hate to plot. If I plan out my book, on some level I feel I’ve already told the story already and it loses it’s allure.

But that makes the initial experience of writing a draft rather an emotional, rivers-deep-mountains-high kind of affair. But… rewriting, oh that is a whole new thing. I LOVE rewriting. You are free from the ‘burden’ of creating and, taking a distancing step back from your work, you can begin to rethink, polish and tidy. I love to tidy. Sometimes I can only do this by laying all the pages out on the floor and wracking my brains over which order this mess is supposed to go in.

Hemingway famously said, ‘Write drunk, edit sober.’ I haven’t tried it, but it might work for you. I have to say, editing sometimes makes me feel like I need a little help…

Don’t revise as you go. I know there are always a few people for whom that system works, but trust me, it’s not for most people. You get so bogged down in the detail that you never progress. I know people who have spent literally years rewriting the same first three chapters and have never finished the book. It makes me so sad. Write the whole book, from beginning to end, always looking forwards, pressing on till you reach ‘The End’. If you can’t remember the names and places mentioned earlier in the story, just do what I do and put a massive X, or XX, or Mr Thingy, or What Was Her Name, The One With The Long Blonde Hair, in its place. Or refer to a list of names and places you create as you go along.

It’s so much easier to revise a whole book. Like creating a sculpture, you’ve got that solid block to chip away at. You’ve got the overall shape and idea to work on. Your book is your outline. (You can thank Mary Wibberley for that bit of advice in her book from decades ago, To Writers With Love.)

After finishing your first draft, don’t immediately start revisions. Unless you are on the clock and the deadline is almost on you (we’ve all done it), put the book away for as long as you can. This is the perfect time to write another book. Yes, really. Leave your first draft for at least a few weeks, ideally a few months, or even a year. You will need to approach it next time around with a good degree of detachment to get out of writer mode and into rewriter mode. Then, when you’ve finished the next book, while that is ‘maturing’, you can go back to the previous one. Or, if you’ve a) got all the time in the world, or b) you’ve decided to write a series and publish fairly close together, now could be the perfect time to write book three!

Gary Cooper pondering that tricky scene just before the end of chapter six.

So you’re ready to start. Read it. Don’t write, don’t type, don’t tweak, fiddle, twiddle or jiggle. Just read the whole story through from beginning to end. You are trying to get an overview, to reacquaint yourself with your story. Afterwards, make notes on how you felt about the book. Does the story hang together? Does the plot progress logically (unless an illogical plot is essential to your story)? Do you have that sensation of tripping up as you read—a bit like when you miss a stair and think you’re falling—that’s when there’s a problem, usually a plot problem. Try to pinpoint what it was that made you feel like that. Put a sticky note on the page, or if a computer file, highlight the section, or bookmark it, or make a note in the Track Changes feature if using Word.

If you’re frustrated by not being able to make changes as you spot them, or worried you might forget, again, as already suggested, make notes in the Track Changes feature of Word, or pencil notes in the margin, or use sticky notes if working with a paper copy, just don’t change the body of the book yet. Hopefully after rereading the whole book, you will be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of your draft. You will see what needs to go. If not, give it to a trusted friend or writing pal to read. Ask them to be honest and not just pat you on the back. Rewriting can feel very much like ‘fixing problems’ or putting right things that are wrong, and with this mind-set, this can be quite demoralising. Don’t get into this trap. Remember, you’re polishing, refining. Putting flesh on a flexible framework. It’s all good.

Save your original draft, and make a copy with a new version name, just in case in the end, you’re not happy with what you’ve done and need to revert and give it another go. Again, we’ve all done that, I think. Give yourself a fall back position.

Start tinkering. Start with the easy stuff like consistency of character description and behaviour, check the names, spellings, and personal details of all characters, check place-names are correct and consistent throughout. Then move on to point of view. With POV, consistency is everything. If you’re writing anything other than an omniscient third person viewpoint, then there will be things your main characters cannot know until it is revealed to them. Make sure you’ve nailed that.

Next, check for all those words you overuse. For me, that’s words like So, And and Also. A friend of mine uses Thus in almost every paragraph… it’s really annoying. If you use unusual words to describe something, don’t repeat them more than once (if that) as unusual words stick in the reader’s mind and break the wonderful spell you’ve created of suspending disbelief: the worst possible offence you can commit as a writer of fiction. Don’t rip your reader from the story and plunge them back into the real world. Make less use of unusual words such as coterie or Schadenfreude, these are words that stand out from the page, and stick in your reader’s mind. If you use clichés—please don’t—but if you absolutely must, do it just once, don’t repeat them. You also don’t need to show off all the big words you know. Nine times out of ten, the simple, direct phrase will work better than anything flowery, waffly or too complicated. Keep it simple.

And if like me you write books set in the 1930s or 1960s – check for anachronistic things – things that weren’t invented then, hadn’t been discovered, developed or couldn’t be done, differences of etiquette, speech patterns, all the stuff that has furious readers turning to Goodreads or Amazon and saying, ‘1*, couldn’t possibly get past the comment about using a zip! In 1920? Hardly!’ Because believe me, those little things make a big difference to a reader and can ruin the whole reading experience. If in doubt, ask someone, or ask Mr Google.

Brain boggle is a normal part of revising your book. Don’t worry about it. Have a nice soothing cuppa and relax for a bit.

Check hyphenation, apostrophe use, adverbs and speech tags. I don’t agree with the ‘don’t use adverbs, they’re evil’ approach, but use them sparingly. (See what I did there?) Keep metaphors and especially similes to a minimum, unless you’re writing poetry; they are also irritating. Don’t use fussy speech tags: he responded, she retorted, he espoused, she countered, etc. Once in a while is fine, but you don’t need to tag every speech, just enough so the reader knows who said what. The word ‘said’, 90% of the time, is the best speech tag there is, it’s invisible, the reader will pass on, aware of who is speaking but not bothered about how – that should be clear from the context and what they say. Again, keep it simple.

Tidy your grammar, get rid of typos and unnecessary repetition. Check your tense scenes or action scenes for long, meandering sentences that slow the reader down and take forever to read so that the reader can’t remember what you were talking about, and they have to go back to the beginning to reread, trying to figure out the meaning (like that, for example – four lines for one sentence??? Too much, unless you’re writing War and Peace). Check slow, reflective, emotional or romantic scenes for accidentally humorous clangers, (my often quoted, ‘and then he opened the door in his pyjamas’), or break-neck short sentences that rush the reader too quickly through the text.

Read it again. And again. Tweak as you go, now, but remember some changes will have a knock-on effect and need to be addressed multiple times throughout the book. Now pass the draft to your close friends/beta-readers/book group, for your first round of major feedback. You can’t, sadly, trust yourself entirely to write, polish, edit, proofread, proofread, edit and polish then proofread. you’ll need help. If affordable, get professional help, go with a recommended person or business, not someone you pluck from nowhere unless they have incredible feedback. Otherwise keep to a small trusted group of serious writers and readers who have excellent language skills and a kind, tactful way of letting you know when something’s not quite right. If you use more than one beta-reader, you might find they contradict one another – then all you can do is go with the majority and trust your gut.

Then—I hate to say it—you need to do it all again. I read somewhere that if you don’t hate your book by the time it is published, you haven’t done enough work on it, and believe me I’ve come so close to hating a couple of my books. Your book is not ready for your editor or proofreader until you are absolutely convinced that it’s perfect. Trust me, it won’t be. But it’ll be pretty close. Make sure you are not the only one to do the ‘extra final final proofread’ – you’ll definitely miss something.

As an editor, I’d say there’s nothing worse than getting a script that should be as close to release-ready as an author can make it, but turns out to be little more than a first draft. It’s like seeing a neglected child. And when you make your first sale or get a really wonderful review, it will feel like it was worth every minute.

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Is the 11th too late for goalsetting?

/ Caron Allan / 5 Comments

For various reasons I’m a bit late to the What I Will Accomplish This Year 2024 party.

I have goals – quite lofty ones really, but who knows what I will have the time and energy to achieve? But if I decided, you know what, I’ll take a year out, the danger is I won’t achieve anything, and what’s the point of that?

So here we go – this is 2024 as I see it, part of the way through the second week of January. this is what i would want to do, in an ideal world, if the sky was the limit and i didn’t have cancer treatment to deal with.

  1. Finish and publish Dottie Manderson mysteries book 8: Midnight, the Stars And You. This has to be this year’s main priority in terms of writing, because people keep saying things like, you know, when is it out? There’s only so many times you can nod and smile and say, it’s coming, honest. There’s a teaser for it on here somewhere. If you fancy taunting yourself with something that is still four or five months away, here it is. I promise it’ll arrive eventually.
  2. Because I felt pretty down about the whole ‘by the way, you’ve got breast cancer’ thing, apart from working on the 2nd book of the Miss Gascoigne 1960s mystery series (which came out on Dec 8th) I started playing around with a book I wrote over ten years ago, purely for fun, and it’s actually almost ‘there’ – almost ready for publication, and so although it’s not part of any of my three series, I will very likely publish that in February, just for fun. It’ll just be a one-off, stand alone novel like Easy Living. This book is called The Cousins, and again, there’s a teaser and a bit of info here.
  3. Now I know last year, in a fit of optimism I started banging on about a new story in the Friendship Can Be Murder series, which has been out for over ten years and I kind of thought was finished at three books. And I have written quite a lot for that new book, but it’s nowhere near ready, and so, let’s be honest, it’s not likely to make an appearance in 2024, or if it does it’ll sneak out at the very last minute. I tentatively called that book Dirty Work, and I do hope to finish it and publish it over the next year or two, but there’s no date as yet.
  4. And then, my second main priority will be to get to work and finish and publish book 3 of the Miss Gascoigne mysteries. This will be Through Dancing Poppies, and I hope/plan/rashly promise it will be out in November of December of this year. You can bang on my door and demand it if I don’t deliver.
  5. My next German translation of a Dottie book is due out at the end of this month. If you love to read a novel in German, this could be perfekt for you! Keep your eyes peeled for Rosenblüten und weiße Spitze: ein Dottie Manderson Fall: Buch 7. Zitat aus Rosenblüten und weiße Spitze: Ein Dottie Manderson Fall: Buch 7

And by the way, if I seem flippant about the cancer, I’m not. But I am open to talking about it – as they say, fear of the name increases fear of the thing itself, and I refuse to live in fear. I trust the medical team at the hospital where I’m having treatment, in fact they’ve been blooming amazing, and I believe them when they say that ‘eventually’ I will be okay. And so many lovely people are praying for me… And if only we could get proper funding for the NHS I’d be a happy bunny. I believe passionately in a national health service – good health is not something that should be the preserve of the wealthy.

So that’s how my 2024 is looking right now. What are you doing with yours? Got any plans for world domination or maybe a nice holiday?

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Publishing December 8th 2023: A Wreath of Lilies: Miss Gascoigne 1960s #cozymysteries

/ Caron Allan

As I may have mentioned 473 times this year, my new Miss Gascoigne book, A Wreath of Lilies is due out on the 8th December this year. It’s book 2 of my new series set in Britain in the ‘swinging’ (not like that, you naughty people) 60s.

The protagonist, Dee Gascoigne has actually been offered a paid excuse to go to a small village and be her normal nosy self. She can hardly believe her luck! That is, until a boring meeting turns into something for more dangerous…

If you’re intrigued, you might like to take a look here to read a bit from Chapter One (a big bit, it’s more or less the whole chapter…)

Or you could just carry on and read this scene from a later chapter:

It was a relief to leave the hot angry air of the pub’s meeting room and get out into the cooler air of the evening. Most of the villagers who had attended the meeting were well ahead of them due to Miss Marriott’s slow pace.

Only half past eight in the evening, but night was fast approaching. At the horizon the sky was still pale blue, but higher up in the atmosphere the blue velvet sky was growing deeper, darker, and already Dee could see a few scattered stars twinkling as silvery pinpricks. She would have loved to stand and gaze at the sky, to enjoy the hush as the night-time settled around her. A night for lovers, she thought, and dismissed the image of her ‘cousin’ Bill. There was no time for that sort of thing right now.

She couldn’t be sure he would ever be truly hers. Men liked to play the field, didn’t they? And he seemed to be committed to doing exactly that. Busty Barbara had given way to Leggy Pam, Giggly Susan, then Wistful Wendy, according to Bill’s mother, her Aunt Dottie. The last thing Dee needed was a man who changed girlfriends as often as his socks. Yet he’d sworn to Dee that he loved her… That he would wait for her. Perhaps waiting didn’t mean saving himself? She sighed. Why were things always so complicated?

Snapping Dee from these unhelpful thoughts, someone came running up and spoke to Miss Marriott.

‘You’ll never guess what!’ This newcomer exclaimed, excitement bubbling over as she giggled.

‘Well, out with it, Sylvia, what are you on about?’ Before Sylvia had a chance to explain, Miss Marriott was turning to Dee and grumbling, ‘I do hate it when people hem and haw, and hint and don’t say exactly what they mean. Hurry up, Sylvia, we’ve got to get to the churchyard!’

‘That’s where they’re doing a séance!’ Sylvia burst out.

Miss Marriott huffed. ‘We already know that, dear, that’s why everyone is rushing in that direction. Surely you realised that? Now do come along.’

‘It’s them beatniks, them seekers. They’re doing it again!’

‘We know that too, dear,’ Miss Marriott told her again, sounding exasperated by this new person. Dee glanced at Sylvia, a young woman in her early twenties, dressed in a housecoat over slacks and a blouse. Her hair was scraped back severely in a ponytail that hung over her left shoulder.

As they went along, Sylvia continued excitedly, ‘They’re holding hands in a circle and calling on the spirits to speak to them. Oh it’s so exciting!’ She broke off to look at Dee. ‘Sorry, but who are you?’

Dee introduced herself. ‘I’m Dee Gascoigne. I’m staying at Miss Marriott’s for a few days. I’m here to find out more about what’s going on in the village.’

‘Police? Or a reporter?’

‘Neither, actually. Miss Marriott’s legal adviser sent me. Shall we…?’ Dee pointed after Miss Marriott who was already some distance in front of them now.

Sylvia nodded. ‘Ooh yes, let’s!’ as if it was a treat.

They hurried after the old woman who was moving faster than Dee had so far seen her move, albeit aided by her walking stick. The other people from the meeting were also headed that way, though many of them were already inside the walled expanse of the churchyard.

By the time they reached the area where the séance was supposedly happening, Dee had already seen two people stumble over half-hidden gravestones in the dark and sprain their ankles, and one person had fallen headlong and now had a suspected concussion. Little knots of people offered assistance to the injured parties, but in general, the mood amongst the villagers had turned from mere curiosity to that of an angry mob. Dee’s heart pounded as she gave into the urge to hurry along. She had serious misgivings. And when she saw the mass of people crowding into the area and heard loud shouting a short way ahead, she halted, taking Miss Marriott’s arm.

‘I think we should just get you home,’ she said.

Sylvia on the other hand, was still trying to urge them forward more quickly, impatient with them for holding her back when she clearly wanted to run.

‘Oh what rot!’ Miss Marriott snapped. She rummaged in her coat pocket and held out a key. ‘Here, take this. You can go back, if you’re such a ninny.’

With an inward groan, Dee gave in. Thirty or forty yards ahead, she could see a bonfire burning in a brazier, whilst around it figures in silhouette were standing in a circle, chanting softly, their hands joined.

Even in the darkening twilight, Dee could see that their robes were saffron, or white, or purple, and of a floating light fabric that reached to the ground. There were, she thought, perhaps eight or ten of them, men and women, all dressed alike in these robes, some in white ones, two men in purple, and nearer to where she was now, an older woman and two men in saffron-coloured robes, then there was one person, already crouching down onto the ground in an emerald robe.

They wore flowers and strings of beads about their necks, and in their hair, and they sang a song without words, one that Dee instinctively felt she knew somehow. They touched no one, called out to no one, but were gathered by their brazier, arms raised now to rattle tambourines, or to beat a rhythm on a tabor or to chime cymbals together.

A saffron-clad man with hair reaching almost to his waist began to speak, and his cohorts stepped back and bent to sit on the ground, cross-legged and silent.

‘Again the unclaimed one calls out to you, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, and begs to be brought home, to be mourned and released, no longer to be cast adrift between this world and the next. They cry out to you for your pity. Do not turn away from their plea. We who seek implore you…’

But he got no further.

A couple of the men at the head of the rabble of villagers rushed forward to break through the circle of seated chanters, grabbing a couple of them by their arms or legs and dragging them away from the group.

Someone kicked the fire brazier over, and predictably instead of going out, the flames caught at the tall grasses and set them alight. People began to yell, the flames spread, someone threw a punch and within seconds there was a brawl. The flowing white robe of a young woman caught alight. Galvanised into action, Dee rushed forward to throw the girl onto the ground, tearing off her own jacket to quickly smother the flames. Mercifully, the girl was unharmed, Dee thought. She shuddered to think what might have happened had her jacket not been to hand.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked the girl, who appeared somewhat dazed. She nodded.

‘I-I think so… Thank you…’.

Dee helped her to her feet. Most of the robe had been burnt away now, as was Dee’s jacket, a sooty rag on the ground. The young woman hurried away, no doubt to rejoin her friends. Dee looked about her for Miss Marriott, worried yet again that the old woman was too frail to be out amongst this chaos. 

There was no sign of Miss Marriott and Dee began to panic. The shouting of the people, the billowing flames, and the orange-black smoke already hanging seemingly all about her made it near impossible to see what was going on. She became aware that she was breathing shallowly due to the smoke, her eyes stinging, her hands shaking. She had to fight down a sense of panic and force herself take her time to look about her properly. She stood for a minute or two in the midst of all this noise, looking about her.

There, she thought, there she was. She made her way over to Miss Marriott’s side. The old woman clutched at Dee with relief. Her bony fingers pinched at Dee’s arm, icy through the fabric of Dee’s dress.

‘Oh my dear, I thought I’d lost you. I tripped, and then somehow, I lost my bearings in all this smoke. And I can’t find my walking stick.’ She was looking all around her at the ground, hoping to spot it. But there wasn’t a hope of finding it. They needed to leave.

Dee put an arm around the old woman and tried to guide her away. ‘Don’t worry about that now, you can lean on me.’

The bishop and the woman from the local history group were standing together by the gate and watching the scene with horror. The bishop attempted to call for peace but he was shouted down. Dee once again tried to persuade Miss Marriott to return home. Sylvia was nowhere to be seen; it seemed likely that by this time she was much farther ahead.

A scream rang out—and finally people began to realise the scale of the problem, and at last began to back away to the safety of the lane. The fire had taken a firm hold and was snatching with greedy licks at the dry grasses, weeds and fallen branches. With lightning speed, it was conquering the churchyard.

Behind them, at the village end of the churchyard, police officers began to appear, running forward, waving truncheons haphazardly, and Dee grabbed Miss Marriott firmly by the arm.

‘We’re leaving now!’

*

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed that extract.

I do hope you’ll nip over to our old friend Mr Amazon right now and pre-order your eBook, but if like me you prefer something solid you can hold, the paperback, large print paperback, and hardback editions will all be out around the same time as the eBook on Amazon, or you can find a paperback copy on Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, Scribd and many other online book shops on or just after 8th December.

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Routine – the nemesis of creativity?

/ Caron Allan

I recently read somewhere that routine hinders the creative process. To really be creative, I read, we need to let go of organisation, routine and any kind of rigid preconceptions or framework, and allow ourselves freedom to explore in any direction and form that appeals to us.

I couldn’t disagree more strongly. If you think that routine is a hindrance and obstacle to being truly creative, I’d like to invite you to reconsider.

I suggest that it is routine that brings freedom and that freedom is often to be found within boundaries, not outside of them. Because parameters do one great thing for us, yes, even us creative types. They give us a sense of security. And if you feel secure, you can relax and have the freedom to be creative.

All art is created within boundaries. Or a framework of conventions, if you prefer to call it that. Mozart created wonderful music. Yes, undeniably, he was incredibly creative and had a flair for genius. But… Musical composition is, in many ways, one of the most rigidly ‘controlled’ art forms in that very deeply-held conventions dictate the agreed (not necessarily explicitly agreed) common elements that must be adhered to, in order to create any form of music. Sonatas have a specific set of rules, if you like. All sonatas have common elements that make them what they are. Similarly, concertos, arias, opuses and symphonies all have elements which dictate how they are created and underpin the very stylistic identity of a given piece of music.

Now I’m tempted to take a long detour at this point and show that this is exactly the same as the genre conventions in writing, that genres have their own conventions and that you can subvert or uphold these as you desire, but I won’t, as I’ve already waffled quite a bit, and I want to keep this blog-post fairly to-the-point.

Obviously we can all have an off-day. But you know when you are recharging and when you are simply wasting time or letting things slide.

Sometimes, I’ll admit, I do just go with the flow, letting words pour onto the page. There’s nothing actually wrong with that, but it doesn’t make for good reading, it rarely fits neatly into a novel, and I am a novelist, so that is what I need to write. Unfocussed, meandering writing, sometimes called ‘automatic writing’, is great fun, very cathartic and can help you to improve your writing overall. But for everyday ‘work’ writing, you need focus, not indulgence.

Within a framework, we have the freedom to be creative. Routine can be just such a framework. I’m actually not a very organised person with regard to my writing. But I have discovered that an established routine is my friend when it comes to cracking on with my WIP and meeting deadlines.

Why?

If you are organised, you can relax and focus on the job in hand. You make the most of your time, you crack on, (hopefully/usually) and have something concrete to show for it, so productivity is improved and you feel good about what you’ve achieved. Which makes it more likely you’ll do it again tomorrow. In addition, good output leads to increased experience, increased confidence and also positivity, and as many writers know, these are commodities that can be hard to come by.

Planned routine is anticipated, your subconscious inner writer is actually hard at work long before you sit down at your desk. You know what is expected, and what your intentions are. You’re prepared, in the zone. This means you ‘hit the ground running’ and are ready to go immediately with no need for warming up or getting yourself in the mood.

As I’ve said already, routine, planned writing leads to increased output and measurable results. You see the word count piling up and you see that you are moving towards your deadline or goal. This gives you the impetus you need to write through the tough sections of your book, those tricky little scenes and the mid-book blues, even through the ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’ sulks.

For me, one of the main advantages to this type of organised approach to work is that I remain ‘current’ with my WIP. I literally don’t lose the plot. By that I mean I don’t lose track of characters and plot strands and the atmosphere of the book the way I do when I’m here and there and all over the place writing whatever takes my fancy. The resulting draft is more seamless, the scenes transition more smoothly, and small details are less likely to be overlooked. I’m totally immersed in my story.

They say it takes six weeks to develop a new routine: three weeks to break old habits, and another three to establish new ones. Give yourself six weeks, starting today. Who knows, by the time we reach the New Year, you may be firmly in the Routine is my Friend camp.

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