Wednesday 25 May 2016

The Romance of Writing

As a teenager I devoured Mills & Boon Romance novels. My mother read them, too, and while our tastes differed somewhat, I read nearly as many as she did. I loved stories set in Africa: those tales of sundowners on the veranda, lounging around in cane chairs and going to "the club" for tennis or cocktail parties and the hero in tropical whites (although I can't recall ever reading what the man of the moment was dressed in). Money never seemed to be an object, either.  I thought it was the ultimate in glamour and romance. To be fair, some of my interest was in learning about the jungle and the wild animals that inhabit it but for the most part it was boy meets girl, obstacles arise to keep them apart and they get together about two or three pages from the end - all under a tropical sun. Perfect!

I wrote my first Romance novel about two and a half years ago. Love at a Later Date is for mature readers. The idea came to me when I overheard two grandmothers complaining about having to look after their grandchildren all the time. They would have liked more time to themselves, they said. It got me thinking about grandmothers in general - I am one myself. Nowadays grandmothers are a young-at-heart bunch who like to enjoy themselves after raising their own families. Why shouldn't they fall in love, start a new career and live life to the full if that is what they want? And then I wondered what their families would think.  Thus the idea for Love at a Later Date was born.  I enjoyed writing it.  As a writer you often have to struggle with the blank page, the "what should happen next" syndrome as I call it. But Love at a Later Date just flowed along and I had to make very few changes to the manuscript - I always do between five to ten edits on my work.
I hope the fun I had writing it shows through. I chose a bright cover with yellow flowers to mirror the feel of the novel.
It is available as an Amazon Kindle ebook.






Monday 9 May 2016

Writing from the Heart

Every budding writer gets told to "write about what you know". We all know something about affairs of the heart so the rest should be easy.  But it doesn't work like that.  Theory and practice are always two different things.  Authors who set their stories in the past or in a future world are writing about what they can imagine.  Imagination is another word for creativity in my book. As long as you don't have heroines in their pretty crinolines taking a taxi to a neighbour's dinner party you are on the way to being credible. In fact, writers of historical novels have to do a great deal of research. The same goes for novels set in the future. They have more than a basis in current scientific developments.

Do you always need to do a bit of research before you write a novel? When I wrote Spate of Violence I was writing from my experience gained in the community I lived in at that time. None of the characters in it are based on people I knew. But I did know a lot about the darker side of urban crime.  For a few years I worked as a volunteer for an organisation which helped the victims of crime. This brought me into contact with many different people and their problems. As in all my novels, Spate of Violence is based on the "what if".  What if some outraged citizens decide to form themselves into vigilantes? It is not a moral judgement on society it is just a story from a few different points of view. I hope my readers enjoy it.


 Product DetailsLink to Amazon.com if you want to have a look.
Available from all Amazon sites as a Kindle e-book.


Monday 2 May 2016

Plotting Characters

I am currently reading The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson.  It's an exciting read with a massive plot twist - I am only half way through so there may be more twists to come, I'm pretty sure there are.

People sometimes ask me if the characters in my novels are based on people I know.  My answer to that is no, absolutely not.  For one thing, it would be impossible.  We really do not know people as well as we think we do.  We have very often little idea of what drives them, what their childhood experiences were, what really influences them and - most important of all - what they really think about important things.

Characters in my novels are probably based on bits and pieces of character traits I have observed over the course of my life.  I've met a lot of people from different backgrounds, people with a completely different view of life and its values to mine.  I've met people who have profoundly impressed me and people I didn't care too much for.  That is true of all of us, I guess.

The characters I create do what I expect of them, I can manipulate them, move them around the story like figures on a chessboard. Their role is to people the story and drive the plot. But I do like some of my characters more than others!  And yes, once in a while they want to behave differently than I planned.  This is all the fun of writing a novel. And it's hard work, too, of course. But that's what keeps me writing. 

Here is my latest novel, the second in the Sergeant Alan Murray series, now available as an e-book from Amazon.
ENDING IN DEATH (U.S. link) and U.K. Amazon link