writing technique

Debaleena Mukherjee and her work

/ Caron Allan / Leave a comment

Debaleena and I have been friends for many years now, having bonded on Facebook over a shared love of mystery books especially those of Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth. Debaleena has also been very supportive of my writing. For a long while now she has been writing and performing and publishing her own work in the genre of poetry although she also writes short stories.

I first had the pleasure of interviewing Debaleena on this blog back in 2021. You can read that interview here.

A number of years have passed and it seemed only fitting to have a catch-up with Debaleena; I was keen to find out a bit more about her creative process and to share some snippets with you.

Caron: Hi Debaleena, it’s so good to have a catch up – it’s been a while. You’ve shared manyof your peoms and information aobut your books on social media, but how do you go about creating your work?

Debaleena: My creative process is a very cobbled together process. A line or a word capture my attention or captivates my imagination and I pursue it till I have given it a shape or a form however shaky or wobbly it maybe. But it’s a structure. That settles that urge to create the entire poem/ story/ commentary that I had built around it. It is very often a small simple kernel like a fleeting scenery through the window, or a glance at the sky as I am cooking, or a flower that’s bloomed and is now going to wilt. I am very very curious hence I observe people specially strangers. And I weave a life story about them in my head. Sometimes I write rather type something then and there on my phone. I don’t wait for any right time . The time is always right to write.

Caron: I’m very fond of a notebook, and have dozens of them. Do you write in a notebook?

Debaleena: Very rarely. I use a notebook only if I want a very personal journal entry. I make it a point to use a notebook— notes for Shakespeare that I prepare for my students. I do online coaching classes. When I write every detail from every Act and scene, teaching his plays become easy.

Caron: So does that mean you put the words directly into a computer document?

Debaleena: Yes. I open a fresh “page” and label it and directly type the words. But I can’t do the “without looking typing” that many do. However I have become very comfortable with the writing options on documents directly. Maybe it’s because I don’t rely on autocorrect or predictive text. I write as I please without looking at those tools. So my spellings are not an endangered species.

Caron: Do you write a rough draft then work on it and revise it until you’re happy?

Debaleena: Yes. I am firm about the technicality of the writing process. I write without skipping words, correct spellings and grammar as I write. Then I do a thorough heck of spellings, syntax, punctuations. Especially with vocabulary. I do not settle for a word that’s suitable, I hunt for a word that is closest to the description and expression of the emotion, experience and even the object. For example I try not to use the word high for both. mountains and buildings. It’s the character of the subject that the adjective has to describe. Here synonyms with their nuances are needed. I constantly refer to the dictionary, thesaurus when I am dissatisfied with the word I have chosen. And I never take spellings and meanings for granted. Check check and check.

Caron: As a lot of your work is in the form of poetry, do you worry about line length or the number of syllables?

Debaleena: Not if it has not been stipulated or fixed. What I worry about is repetition of the idea using an extensively misleading vocabulary. English has an immense scope of embellishment of the same idea in different ways in the same writing. Ornamentation can become a burden to the theme and the characters.

Caron: How do you feel when you look back at your early work. Do you feel satisfied and grateful, or do you find yourself revising it or tweaking odd bits, or do you find it difficult to read work from an earlier time?

Debaleena: I respond with emotion— I’ll use the word emotion–that of gratitude. Gratitude that I could write this and then discovered the tools with which I could build upon these works. They may read too immature, or pompous, pedantic or too much like a school homework essay, but I feel good that I had overcome the mind block and written it. Then instinctively I work at alterations and tweaking it.

Caron: I completely see what you mean there, that’s been my experience too. And what were your earliest influences?

Debaleena: Reading whatever I could lay my hands on. Enid Blyton to Nancy Drew. Then Little Women; Shirley, Jane Austen’s books. Adventure stories, although I veered towards mystery and detective fiction more: Agatha Christie. Romance of course— I don’t like the phrase diehard romantic. I prefer unapologetically romantic. So Mills & Boon. I discovered Mary Stewart at 14 and it’s my personal enchantment. Much later in life Ellis Peters, Elizabeth Peters, Georgette Heyer. Mystery, and delightful Regency repartee. And of course both our shared interest Patricia Wentworth. I think we could do an exclusive session about her. Thankfully I am never short of books. One series gets over, something new is there. Reading is that domino effect in reverse. Nothing collapses, the tower gets higher

Caron: Yes that’s very true. Reading is addictive! My actual shelves and my eBook shelves are groaning under the weight of them! Then finally, Debaleena,  what’s next for you and your amazing poems and short stories?

Debaleena: Thanks for the kind compliment. Right now I am very involved in anthologies that are published both here in India and abroad. I send my poems to whatever publication appeals to me. If accepted I am surprised each time and equally thrilled too. Never ceases to thrill me when my poem/poems or short stories are accepted. That mail from an editor is like a certificate of fulfilment to me. Maybe I will publish another slim volume (slim being the highlight) of poems, postcard fiction, Nano fiction and Drabbles.

Thanks so much, Caron, for sharing your platform with me. Like we had done when my first book had been published. You are my first “writer friend” and always so supportive. Hope we carry on our shared writing stories and our earnest discussions about Patricia Wentworth.

Caron: I’m so very grateful to have you here to find out more about you and your work. Thank you so much.

 

About Debaleena Mukherjee:

Debaleena is a homemaker, who has also been a teacher and college lecturer over the course of years. She grew up in Jamshedpur and did her schooling at Sacred Heart Convent School, Jamshedpur, and Rajendra Vidyalaya, Jamshedpur. She has a Masters degree and M.Phil in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.She lives with her husband in Bangalore, and she  has a grown-up daughter. Reading is Debaleena’s way of life. That’s what she is always doing. She enjoys the moonlight-and-roses kind of music. She loves travelling to places from the pages of history books. Haunting bookstores is her pastime. She loves going on shopping expeditions for shoes, bags, and bling.  Observing people as they go about their lives, fascinates her. At the end of the day she needs her recliner, her books, and coffee. With some cake.

Debaleena’s social media:

Instagram: @mdebaleena

Facebook: debaleena.mukherjee

The books:

Ink Smudged Dreams – by the Reading Light

Qwerty and Quiet – by Candlelight

She Achieves (short story collection)

She Seeks (short story collection)

 

 

Night and Day: ten years old this week!

/ Caron Allan

This week saw the 10th anniversary of the publication of my book Night and Day: Dottie Manderson mysteries book 1.

Aww! My baby will be off to senior school soon! Because when you write a book, it’s a tiny bit like having a baby: maybe a little less poo and vomit, but not much less!

Night and Day was my 6th book – and the first to feature my 1930s setting with a young female amateur detective. It still remains one of my top sellers, I’m pleased to say. In the 10 years it’s been available, it has sold paperbacks, including large print paperbacks and regular ones. And a few hardbacks. And a large number of ebooks. The book is also available in German, as are a number of my other books.

I’m very grateful to all those people who have invested their money and their time in reading something that I thought of sitting on the front step of our house in Australia in the late 1990s. To readers everywhere, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Dottie is nineteen years old in book one. She lives with her parents in London, somewhere not too far from the area of Covent Garden. She has a married sister, Flora, who is two-and-a-half years older than she is. On her way home from the theatre one evening, Dottie takes a taxi to the wrong address. Her sister has only just moved into the house and Dottie forgets the number. She decides to walk the short distance.

Dottie finds a man lying on the pavement. It’s late at night, and it’s late November, and she wonders if he’s simply drunk, but it quickly becomes clear he is injured, attacked by someone with a knife. She daren’t leave him alone, knowing any moment could be his last. As she waits for help to arrive, she tries to find out what happened, but all he can do is sing a few words of a song to her.

And so begins Dottie’s journey as an amateur detective. She feels she just has to know what happened. This leads her, of course, into the path of a young police officer, William Hardy.

And the rest… Well…

You’ll just have to read the books to find out!

To read a bit more about the series and Night and Days specifically, click here.

To find it on Amazon, please click here.

On Ingram Spark, here

And on D2D, here.

***

 

Right here, right now

/ Caron Allan / 5 Comments

When I’m starting out with a new story idea, I have to ask myself these two questions:

Why here? Why now?

These are essential questions to answer for a murder mystery of the type that I write. In a psychological thriller, for example, a killer may kill for reasons of their own, totally unrelated to the victim(s). They may kill for fun. Or as a test of some kind. Or just out of curiosity about the process. They may kill a specific type of person based on their gender, race, religion, political beliefs or occupation.

That is not usually a feature of a cosy or murder msytery. Aside from the occasional accidental death due to, say, mistaken identity (oopsie!), mu

rderers usually have very personal, very pressing reasons for killing the person they do.

So that brings me back to my initial questions; why here and why now?

There has to be some compelling reason why a victim must die at this particular point in the book, in this particular way.

Is it due to time pressure? Murderers are notoriously busy people :D. If the victim is not dispatched, will that leave them free to take some action that is detrimental to the happy continuance of the killer’s life?

Is it due to opportunity–also linked to time–was this the only time-slot available in the killer’s busy schedule, one where they knew they could fake an alibi convincingly?

Or is it because everything in their life comes together in what for them is the perfect moment: the means, the opportunity, the victim, the alibi, all here together in this one moment in time?

There’s only one way to find out…

You’ve got to read it.

***

 

 

Portrait of a Writer

/ Caron Allan

She found a corner table, one where she had the wall at her back, and the whole cafe there before her eyes, the entrance to the left, the service counter to the right.

Nearby, two people chatted over their cappuccinos at one table, whilst a middle-aged gentleman tapped away on his laptop at another, his headphones blocking out the world.

She got out her notebook, her pen, and stirring the foam on the top of her cappuccino in a meditative otherwhere manner, she began to plot the next chapter of her book.

She already had it settled in her mind where the story would end up. The murderer was one of two people, and she was still trying to decide which of these would work best: which one had the necessary–not motive, not yet–more like, a necessary ‘something’ in their character that made murder seem like the best, the only, solution to their personal situation.

She stirred the cappuccino one last time, took a sip, then, the first words of the first paragraph springing to her lips, to her mind, she took up her pen and began to write…

The cafe, its gentle hubbub of frothing machine and coffee filters, the chatter, the stirring of cups, the scraping of chairs, melted into one warm, comforting back-drop, like the curtain on a stage, and the characters stepped forward.

With hindsight, as she lay dying on the hard floor of the dining-room, Katherine Henshawe realised she should have expected this to happen. She should have been on her guard. She’d been a fool, she saw that now. She had allowed herself to be taken in. She’d believed every word of what had been a cleverly devised story. And now, if she’d had any doubts about the severity of her situation, the gently spreading pool of blood on the floor in front of her gave her a good indication. She tried to call for help, but of course it was pointless. No one came.

‘Save your last few breaths,’ her killer—for she knew now that was who this smiling person really was—told her with a wink. ‘Not that it’ll do you much good. Not long now, as I expect you can see for yourself. And with you out of the way, I shall be very rich. Very rich indeed. I hope you enjoyed your holiday; I certainly did!’

At the door, there was a slight pause, a quick backward glance, a merry chuckle, then the door closed again.

No one would find her in time now. She knew too that she would never see her home in Berkshire again. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the crucifix on the wall. Katherine Henshawe spent her final moments praying.

Not for a miracle. Not for the prolongation of her life, not even for forgiveness and the chance for an eternal life in Heaven.

With her last breath, she prayed that her killer would suffer horribly for what they had done to her.

***

 

A little more about Through Dancing Poppies: release date: 24th April.

/ Caron Allan

Only two weeks until Through Dancing Poppies launches: it’s book 3 in my 1960s-era murder mystery series the Miss Gascoigne mysteries. In case you’ve missed me banging on about it for yonks, here’s a quick recap:

Through Dancing Poppies: Miss Gascoigne mysteries book 3: an intriguing cosy mystery set in the swinging 1960s

Poppy Bell is a teenage singing sensation about to ‘hit the big time’ and newly engaged to a man old enough to be her father. Everyone says she’s a gold digger. But then…

Dee Gascoigne, now a fully-fledged—or nearly fully-fledged—private investigator working for the law firm of Montague Montague, meets Poppy a couple of times and can’t help but notice she is a very talented musician who is young, naive and on the brink of something incredible. But she is also surrounded by people who know exactly what they are doing, they’ve done this kind of thing before, are used to the spotlight and the glare of media sensationalism, and know how to present the perfect image to grow a very public career. Then there’s a near miss in a car park, and suddenly Dee has an intense feeling of danger lurking in the shadows. But who is the target? Poppy or her new fiancé, wealthy entrepreneur Teddy Reynolds?

Research for this book mainly consists of remembering my early childhood, and trawling through old photos, or watching Juke Box Jury on YouTube!

Who is Dee Gascoigne? Well, she is the baby born in book 4 of my 1930s Dottie Manderson mystery series. She used to be a modern languages teacher at a posh girls’ school, but was sacked because the school board objected to her leaving her husband with a view to divorcing him. Yes, honestly, that kind of thing really happened. A divorced or separated woman was genuinely treated badly by many people who saw her as immoral or dangerous or subversive in some way.

Almost by accident, Dee falls into an investigating role when she lets her curiosity get the better of her in a village where she is convalescing. She solves the case, and at the end of book one, she is taken on by a family friend’s law firm as a fully fledged professional private investigator. A job she is very well suited to, in spite of her former mentor’s attempt to woo her back to the school.

It’s been great fun writing this book, and I’m already getting ideas together for book 4 of the series, called All That Glitters. As you no doubt guessed, that’s going to be set at Christmastime.

Meanwhile, here’s a short extract for Through Dancing Poppies:

She was about to tell her brother Rob how glad she was that he was with her, but immediately she was distracted by a couple a short way ahead of them, standing under a streetlight. An older man with, she presumed, his daughter. The man appeared angry about something, and the girl, arms folded across her chest, was glancing about her anxiously.

Dee was on the point of asking in her best schoolmarm voice, if there was something the matter, but the girl turned back to glance in their direction. Only then did Dee realise it was none other than the school’s former pupil and new media sweetheart, Poppy Bell.

‘Poppy?’ Dee said, and the girl fixed a look on Dee and Rob, wide-eyed, fearful. ‘Whatever is the matter, dear?’ Dee asked, falling into her role of responsible teacher.

Dee was aware of Rob looking in surprise first at Dee then at the young woman Dee addressed, but Dee fixed her attention on Poppy and the man with her.

‘Didn’t I meet you recently?’ Poppy asked, a frown creasing her brow as she tried to recall.

‘That’s right. I was coming out of the Holly Tree restaurant in London with Miss Evans two weeks ago, just as you were going in. Is everything all right?’

‘I don’t know…’ Poppy glanced at her companion, who turned to look at Dee and Rob. Dee realised he was angry. He said,

‘Some bloody fool just tried to run me down as I got out of my car. Luckily, I leapt back smartly enough, or I’d have been done for. The bastard—excuse my language—the devil wasn’t even looking where he was going. Probably drunk. Had to have been doing fifty, and in a car park too! Anyway, it shook me up a bit, that’s all. No harm done.’ He brushed his suit jacket down as if he’d been rolled in the dirt.

Dee’s hand went to her mouth in horror. Instinctively she glanced around her, as did her brother, but it was too dark to see if anyone was lurking, and they certainly didn’t spot any cars on the move.

‘Rotter’s already gone. Scared of getting into trouble, I don’t doubt. Anyway… Excuse me, where are my manners. I’m Teddy Reynolds. Poppy and I are—well, we’ve just got engaged to be married as a matter of fact.’

Dee, confirmed in her judgement of his appearance on the television, calculated that he was old enough—easily old enough—to be the girl’s father, nevertheless remembered to smile, and said,

‘Oh my! Congratulations! How exciting.’

He put a proprietary arm about the girl’s waist, pulling her close to his side. Poppy smiled up at him, leaning into the crook of his arm, but casting an anxious glance about her from time to time. Further away, another couple had just got out of their car, whilst more cars were pulling in at the gate.

‘Is this your old teacher, lovely?’ Teddy Reynolds asked Poppy.

Dee didn’t care for the old part, especially from him. She said,

‘That’s right. I used to teach here, though I never had Poppy in any of my classes. I taught modern languages: German and French, basically. Now I’m just a visitor like everyone else.’

‘Poppy said she’d met you recently. And this gentleman is your husband, I assume?’ Reynolds said, turning to hold out a hand to Rob. Rob shook the hand, but added,

‘No, no, I’m just her brother. Just come along for the fun of it.’

‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you both. I do hope you’ll join us at our party tomorrow evening. It’s at my sister’s place. She’s married to Poppy’s manager, my good friend Ivor Norton. You may have heard of my sister. Valerie Blackshaw? Anyway, we’d be delighted if you could both join us. It starts at eight o’clock, it’s not anything formal, no need to ‘dress’, haha. I’ll just jot the address down for you.’ He reached into his pocket for his wallet and drew out a small white card. ‘Do say you can make it; everyone from dinner this evening is invited.’

‘Of course, we’d be thrilled,’ Rob told him.

‘Valerie Blackshaw? My goodness, she is my absolute favourite actress! She was just incredible in A Fatal Redemption, and in The Younger Sister,’ Dee couldn’t help bursting out, though she knew it was probably silly of her. But Teddy smiled indulgently and she could see he was pleased. Putting away what appeared to be a gold-plated fountain pen, he handed her the card.

‘Well, you’ll be able to tell her that yourself tomorrow. She’ll be delighted to meet you. Miss Evans from the school will be there too, and others you’ll know. But thank you both for your kind concern this evening. Not everyone would bother. And now, look here, Poppy my lovely, we need to get a move on, or you’ll be late.’

‘Right,’ said the girl, calm enough now to slip back into the usual bored tones of a teenager. ‘See you,’ she added to Dee and Rob, then turned on her heel and walked away.

***

 

 

Torn between three loves

/ Caron Allan

As you might be aware, I’m putting the final touches to my book Through Dancing Poppies. It’s the third book in the Miss Gascoigne mystery series, set in the 1960s in the UK, and the release date for this book is 24th April. Not long now!!!

As one book nears its end–production-wise, anyway–other books call their siren song. It’s so tempting. Because when you’ve worked on the same book for one year, two years, more, you can start to feel a bit like someone waiting for the last guest to leave at a party. Just, go, already! I mean, you love them to bits, and will definitely invite them again, but right at this moment, you just need them to leave. That’s what it’s like as you near the end of a book you’ve worked on, in this case, for a little over eighteen months.

So the idea of another book to work on is very tempting.

But which one? Something totally new, like my roughly planned out Ain’t Misbehavin’ a kind of caper set in 1931, featuring a couple of clever con-artists, a mother and daughter who scam people out of a ton of money and are always a step ahead of the law.

Or the next Dottie book – book 9 of the series which is due out in December and still needs final revisions and proofreading? This book is called The Rough Rude Sea, and its appeal is very strong–a ship-based setting travelling between the Canary Islands and the Channel Islands in the summer of 1935. Here’s a teeny extract from the beginning. To set the scene, Dottie and William are about to return home from their honeymoon (spoiler! Now you’ve got to read the first 8 books! 😀 ) but they turn up at the docks to board the ship and…

‘This is not what I was expecting.’ Dottie Hardy gazed mournfully up at the small steamship moored a little ahead of them. The nameplate attached to the bow claimed this ship to be the SS Icarus. Dottie felt this did not bode well.
William paid the taxi driver and turned. He frowned as he looked at the ship. ‘Must be some kind of mistake.’
There was an official of some sort standing at the dockside, by the roped gangplank that led onto the ship. He held a clipboard and had a red pencil in his hand. William went over. The young man looked up, gave William an uninterested look and said, boredom oozing from every pore, ‘Name?’
‘Hardy,’ said William without even thinking. Then he said, ‘Hang on, what happened to the SS Tigris?’
The man yawned, and scratched his chin. William was aware of an urge to shake him. William shoved his hands in his pocket just in case.
‘The company’s gone bust. Three days ago, in fact. This vessel has been courteously provided to bring the first class passengers back to British shores, with no expense to yourself, I might add, all costs have been generously covered by SeaSteamers. Was that William Hardy? And er…’ He paused and looked Dottie up and down in a wolfish manner that had William shoving his free hand even deeper into his pockets, ‘I suppose that is the delightful Mrs Hardy?’
‘You suppose correctly,’ William growled, and thrust his tickets and the passports at the man.
The man perused them with minimum attention and handed them back. ‘Seems fine. Cabin 27, middle deck. Dinner’s at eight, in the main saloon bar and dining-room, top deck. No need to dress.’ He yawned again and turned away, all interest in the passengers lost.
William turned to find Dottie was coming up behind him, the taxi driver bringing their luggage from the back of his car.
‘What’s going on? Has our ship been delayed? Or is it moored up somewhere else?’
William, hardly believing it himself, explained.
She looked at the little ship in disbelief. ‘This is it?’
‘Yup.’
‘Really? It looks so small. You’ll never get five hundred people and crew on that.’
‘Nope. He says it’s just for the first-class passengers. I’m guessing there aren’t many of those.’
She stared at the vessel for a full minute. ‘And are we happy to go on board this little thing?’

OR… I could have a stab at the more contemporary book Dirty Work, which is book 1 of the new Families Can Be Murder trilogy, a spin-off from Friendship Can Be Murder, my books Criss Cross, Cross Check and Check Mate, which feature posh Cressida and her determination to get rid of annoying or nasty people. She confides all to her diary, so it’s not exactly a murder ‘mystery’. In the new trilogy, it’s her husband Matt who is keeping the diary and confessing everything on paper:

In the front of my wife’s old diaries, there’s always some romantic, sweet dedication, full of love and promises of devotion. I did one for her, years ago, but her first husband Thomas, did loads of them, and they were all flowery and romantic, the kind of thing posh blokes always do, and in really expensive diaries, too, you know the sort of thing, designer stationery. She still keeps them in a drawer of her bedside table and she gets them out now and again and sits there all emotional and lost in the past, and… It makes me wonder if she loved Thomas (she never ever called him Tom) more than me. I get a bit jealous when I think of him. Which isn’t fair, I know, but I can’t help it, I just do…
Oh yes. So now I’ve got my own diary, and all it says in the front is ‘99p from Last Chance Book Bargains: your last chance to buy ’em cheap!’ Really cheap too, there’s a calendar in the front, and there’s two 27th Februaries. Is that for some kind of late Groundhog Day, or in case I need a do-over?
But instead of sitting in comfort in the sunroom at home like she does, here I am, stuck in the cab of my van, writing a quick sneaky note as I wait to find out what my dad is getting up to.
‘Matt,’ he said to me one day last week, ‘Could you give us a lift to the New Mills Business Park? I’ve arranged to see someone about something next Friday afternoon, ’bout twoish.’
Well, I don’t mind doing things for my dad—we get on really well, he’s not as young as he was, and he’s always been there for me, even when I was in prison—but he was acting dead cagey, so naturally I was onto him.
‘What’s it about?’ I asked him.
He just tapped the side of his nose. ‘No need for you to get involved, mate. I just need a lift, and don’t for the life of you go mentioning it to your mother.’
Nothing sets off alarm bells like my dad telling me he’s up to something I can’t tell my mum. What’s the old bugger getting up to now? At first I thought it might be some kind of birthday surprise he’s got planned for her. But to be honest, I doubt he even remembers when her birthday is, after only forty-nine years of wedded bliss. It’s like the pin-code on her phone. He needed to use her phone, and it was locked. So he asked her for the code, and she (very cleverly as it turns out) said, ‘Just tap in the code. It’s our wedding date.’
So obviously he was completely stumped. Not big on remembering anniversaries or birthdays, or… just anything really.

So tempting, all these writing/rewriting options. And then there’s a new series idea I’ve been thinking about for several years, The Runaway Policeman. I’ll just leave that with you.

***

 

Coming soon: The Cousins

/ Caron Allan

I’m always a little bit surprised when I meet a deadline. Not quite sure why, maybe it’s because a book seems such a huge thing to undertake, until, bit by bit, it’s done. I imagine it’s the same with any project – you break it down into small chunks and that makes it easier to handle. It’s also easier to measure progress, and you don’t (sometimes!) get overwhelmed by the enormity of the thing.

So with more than a little relief, I’m pleased to announce that The Cousins will be released on 12th December as planned.  It will be available in eBook format, paperback and large print. It’s not part of a series, it’s a stand-alone book.

Please be aware that it contains some emotional scenes, and some description of memories of child sexual abuse.

Here’s a little bit about it:

The Cousins.

Secrets. Everybody has them.

When Caitlin sits by her grandfather’s side as he lays dying, she thinks she’s about to lose her entire family. Before he passes, he makes an odd comment, leaving her with something to puzzle over, along with a set of old black and white photographs.

Then at his funeral, she meets her long-lost cousins, and soon there are even more questions to answer and puzzles to solve. Where have they been all these years? Why haven’t they been in touch if they care so much about ‘family’?

The past holds secrets. Everybody seems to have something they are keeping to themselves.

And that includes Caitlin.

Intrigued? Click here to read more.

If you’d like to order this book, please click here.

‘So, where do you get your ideas?’

/ Caron Allan / 3 Comments

I know I’ve written on this topic a couple of times before, but it’s one of those questions that never goes away.

‘Where do you get your ideas?’

This is one of the first questions people usually ask me – and I’m pretty sure it happens to other writers all the time. It kind of makes me want to groan, because it’s next to impossible to give a sincere and considered answer to this question without boring the pants off everyone by talking for an hour. The short, somewhat trite answer might be, ‘Everywhere!’

But if we really want to answer the question, it takes a minute or two longer. Because really there’s no single answer. Ideas don’t come from one unique, unvarying source. Nor do they come in the same way each time. Anything from the world seen or unseen can come to my attention and lead me to think, ‘Hmm, that’s interesting…’

Inspiration, which is what ideas really are, comes from everywhere and nowhere. A snatch of song, a news story, a little patch of colour on a card in the paint section of the DIY store, the turn of a person’s head making you think just for one split second it’s someone else, someone from another time, someone who should be dead. An unexpected view of yourself in a shop window, that odd moment before you recognise yourself, that brief second when you think, slightly puzzled, ‘I know you.’

An overheard snatch of conversation, ‘Don’t lose my hat, man, my hat’s my identity,’ and ‘Of course she never did find out who’d sent it.’ A film, a book, a taste, a smell, a memory, a story your mother told you – you’ve known her all your life yet this is the first time she’s ever mentioned this particular incident.

I have based two full-length stories on dreams, three short stories and one novel on songs, a poem on a piece of art, a novel based on a documentary I saw on TV about ancient tapestries, (Opus Anglicanum: Latin for English work), and another about the Reformation. I’ve written a short story about an arrowhead, and another about ancestral bones and the relevance they might have to a Neolithic man, about a couple of  trips to Skara Brae in the Orkneys.

I’ve written a whole series of stories about the fact that all too often people think it’s okay to take the law into their own hands. (I’m looking at you Cressida, MC of the Friendship Can Be Murder trilogy!) I’ve written about work situations, about hopes and plans for the future, about family tree research, about children, and pets, and parents. About love. About the absence of love. About Faith. About fear. About books I read as a child. And books I read as an adult. I’ve written about identity and what it means to be who I am, who you are. I’ve written about death – loads.

I saw a gorgeous man on the bus many years ago and wrote a story about him, (The Ice King – still not ‘available’, but if you’re intrigued, here’s a link to a short bit about him.) I’ve read news reports and been inspired to create my own story around some of those. I’ve written in hospital having just given birth, in hospital awaiting treatment for cancer, at work during my lunchbreak when I felt so depressed I just wanted to run away and hide. I’ve written when sitting on the loo, sitting in the garden, on holiday, in bed with flu, and in cafes all over Britain, Europe and Australia. I’ve written on buses and trains and planes. I’ve written when someone I cared about has died. I’ve even got inspiration from sitting down at my desk every day and just making myself write. Sometimes I’ve written page upon page of ‘I don’t know what to write’, like lines that we had to do at school, and still nothing has come to me and I’ve gone away desperate, feeling that the well has not only dried up, but was only a mirage to begin with.

If you are a writer, you squirrel away in the eccentric filing cabinet known as your brain EVERY single thing that you ever experience, and a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle or creating a patchwork quilt, you keep trying pieces together every which way until something fits and makes a pleasing and meaningful picture. There’s not really a pattern to it, there’s not a system or a set of regulations to follow. You just do it.

That’s where I get my ideas.

***

Criss Cross: Friendship can be Murder: book 1

/ Caron Allan

I first published Criss Cross in Feb 2013.

It wasn’t the first book I wrote, but it was the first book I decided to take the plunge and self-publish. An early reviewer said it was the worst book they’d ever read, which made me feel quite proud. It was an achievement of sorts, though maybe not in the way I’d hoped! 😀

I suppose it’s not for everyone–stylistically, it doesn’t suit a lot of people’s taste. It’s written in the first person, in diary-entry sections rather than chapters, and the character herself, our narrator Cressida is ‘posh’ (which is why the trilogy was, to begin with, called the ‘posh hits’ murder series).

But I like to think the story has heart. and it’s not so much a murder mystery as a murder confessional – throughout, Cressida tells us–more or less–exactly what she’s up to. Of course, the joy of first person narration is the reader can only know what the narrator knows, so if she doesn’t know everything, well, well, well…

Some people liked it though. One reviewer seemed to ‘get’ it. To my great joy, they said:

“…the heroine is completely without morals…You really should not like her, but you find yourself wishing her every success in her increasingly bizarre schemes and personal entanglements”

Whilst another (I’m bragging now – sorry!) said,

“Outstandingly witty, daft, exciting and so enjoyable!! This is the best book I have read in a long time. Exquisite!!”

And someone else said,

“…enables the reader to enter into the twisted world of the main character … reading her journal … you take voyeuristic pleasure in her inner thoughts, plans & audacious exploits”

Why am I going on about it? Well, I’ve just started writing a new book for a new trilogy, which is a ‘twelve years later’ spin-off of the Friendship can Be Murder series. The new one is called Families Can be Murder, and book 1 will be called Dirty Work. You can find an extract from the book on this page:

These books are quite different to my Dottie Manderson and Miss Gascoigne series. It can be helpful to write something different. I don’t want to get into a rut with my other two series, and it’s nice to write something that feels new and different, and gives me scope to write outside of the historical periods of the other books.

The first books, though, Criss Cross and the other two books in the series were a bit of a leap of faith for me. Could I really do it? Could I actually write–and publish–books that would sell? It was scary, and 12/13 years ago, self-publishing was still quite a new concept to many people.

Some people told me I was kidding myself, that I was just a wannabe, that if it wasn’t published by a traditional publisher then clearly my book was rubbish, and a mere hobby or wishful thinking. Oh well, you can’t please ’em all!

Just in case you’re interested though, let’s go back to the beginning. Here’s what Cressida had to say in book 1:

(Caution: contains bad words!)

Blurb:

Spoilt society girl Cressida Barker-Powell wants to murder her interfering mother-in-law. In her diary she carefully plans the perfect murder but when she arrives at the scene, she finds the old woman already dead. Soon it becomes clear that her Hitchcock-Movie-loving best pal, Monica, has carried out the deed for her! Taking the murder-switch idea from their favourite Hitchcock movie, Cressida decides the only real way to show her gratitude is by killing off Monica’s philandering husband and his bimbo girlfriend. Monica should appreciate the idea of swapping murders. That’s what she wants, right?
Wrong!
Cressida quickly discovers this was not what her friend had in mind, and a devastated Monica is now hell-bent on revenge. Which means their friendship is definitely over. Isn’t it?

Criss Cross:

Sun 24 June

To my darling Cressida

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart! Have fun writing down all your thoughts and plans and dreams, then when we’re old and grey we can sit together on that terrace in Capri and watch the sun go down, drink a glass of wine and you can read me the spicy bits from this journal and we will have a good laugh and talk about the old days!

With all my love forever and ever

Thomas xx

Same day: 10.35pm

She must die!! I hate her!! I refuse to put up with her a moment longer, she is an evil, conniving old bitch without a grain of family feeling and it’s time she was dead!!

Mon 25 June—2.35pm

Have you noticed how some people just never seem to realise they’ve gone too far?

I was going to start off my new journal with something terribly erudite and wise. Like a new school notebook, I particularly wanted the first page to look lovely. But I suppose it really doesn’t matter if the first page isn’t perfectly neat and everything: the whole purpose of a journal is to pour out one’s innermost thoughts and give vent to all the frustrations that, as a nicely brought-up person, one can’t give full reign to in ‘real’ life, and so obviously even the first page can get a bit messy. And now just look at it!

But I digress. I must explain from the beginning…

It was my birthday yesterday. 32 already. God, I’m old! I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning and even in the flattering south-facing light and all steamy and fresh from the shower, I’m absolutely certain I could see the tiniest line down the left side of my face from my nose to the corner of my mouth—I’m convinced it wasn’t there yesterday. Wonder if I’ve left it too late for Botox?

Among a number of very extravagant birthday gifts, my Darling Thomas gave me this sweet little journal. I’d mentioned weeks ago that I used to keep a journal when I was a melodramatic teenager, and how nice it was just to write down everything that happened and to really get it out of my system and add in lots of ‘grrr’ faces and heavy underlining, and lo and behold, the dear man, he surprised me with this journal for my birthday. So here I am.

It’s an absolutely beautiful book. It has a hard cover with a weird kind of gothicky design in the most gorgeous shades of black and purple and gold, with a magneticky bit in the front flap to keep it closed, and the pages, somewhere between A5 and American letter-size, are edged in gold too, so it feels very glamorous to write in—In fact I was a bit afraid to begin the first page, hence all the fuss about it looking nice and neat, I almost got a kind of writer’s block!

But all my good intentions and deep thoughts and years of accumulated adult wisdom and the desire to create something really special went out the window when my cow of a mother-in-law turned up on a ‘surprise’ visit and now my first page—well second really, under that really sweet little message from Thomas—Is absolutely ruined! I only hope to God Thomas doesn’t read it!

Not that she’d remembered it was my birthday any more than my own mother had—oh no! One can’t expect her (or either of them in fact!) to keep track of trivial little details like that. No, she needed Thomas’s advice about some financial matters, and thought she’d pop over. After all what’s an hour and a half’s chauffeured drive here or there? Of course she didn’t bother to ring first, see if we were in or free or anything. Clarice is used to everyone falling in with her plans.

‘I knew you wouldn’t be doing anything important,’ she says as she breezes in, dropping her coat in the middle of the hall, frowning around at the décor before settling herself in the drawing room, demanding tea. Not just the drink! By ‘tea’ she means that Victorian/Edwardian meal between Luncheon, as she calls it, and Dinner. She expected crustless sandwiches, crumpets, cakes (large and small), scones, jam and cream, the works. And copious amounts, of course, of tea-the-drink. China, not Indian. With lemon slices in a dainty little crystal dish, not 2 litres of semi-skimmed in a huge plastic container.

Thomas reminded her that it was my birthday and that consequently we had plans for the evening. She waved a negligent hand. Her hair, a shade too brave, was salon-perfectly waved if somewhat stiff-looking, and her clothes were at least one generation too young for her, but hideously expensive as well as just—well, hideous. Did I mention I hate her?

‘Oh that can be set aside. You can easily go out some other evening. My financial affairs are of the first import.’

Thomas looked at me. He didn’t want to fight with his mother and I knew there would be no point in trying to push him to resist the onslaught, so for poor Thomas’s sake, I sighed and shrugged and he sat down next to the old dragon and asked what she wanted to know. Meanwhile I dashed off to ring Monica Pearson-Jones and a few others, to let them know that we would either be horribly late for the theatre party, or quite possibly not turn up at all. I have to admit I was feeling quite cross and rather sorry for myself. However, Huw and Monica’s machine had to take the terrible news, as they were out. I hoped to God they weren’t already on their way.

***

Thanks for reading!

Quick catch-up!

/ Caron Allan

Writing.

It’s one of those things that everyone you meet says they could do too if they only had the time. Maybe they are right. but I’ve always felt that if something means a lot to you, you find the time, you make the time, you figure out your priorities and squeeze your passion into every crack and crevice you can.

I can remember grabbing time on my commute to work, or during lunch breaks, in the evenings when my better half was watching something on TV that didn’t interest me, or just any spare moment or snatched ten minutes I could find. Ten minutes, several times a week can give you one or two thousand words, times that by 52 weeks in a year, and you’ve got a novel.

These days, I’m officially old, and I no longer work outside the home, so I can spend quite a bit of time every day (not as much as you’d think, there are always distractions…) writing or thinking about what I’ve just written or what I might write next.

My latest book, Midnight, the Stars, and You: Dottie Manderson mysteries book 8, came out in September. And in December, I have two books being released, The Cousins, a sort-of mystery, a stand-alone novel, is one of them, the other is the German language edition of my book A Wreath of Lilies: Miss Gascoigne mysteries book 2. The German title is Ein Kranz aus Lilien.

I’ve already started looking ahead – I’m always doing that – and have plans to publish Miss Gascoigne mysteries book 3 Through Dancing Poppies in maybe April next year.

Then after that… well, so many decisions to make, so many books to write…

We’ve just come back from holiday. In fact, I’ve been lucky enough to have a couple of holidays this year and they had elements in common: a seaside location, and a large number of diverse people in a small area. This is exactly the kind of thing that breeds ideas in my head. I made COPIOUS notes, did a ton of people-watching, took hundreds of photos, and now I’m sitting at my desk thinking, ‘Hmm… what if…?’

It’s too soon to make any announcements, but something is definitely brewing…

 

cover image by Agalaya.

***