An Update from the Dark Side

Dark deeds among the trees...

It’s been a while since I blogged, although as always my intentions were good. But the regular updates on my crime writing…they didn’t go well, did they?

Still, here I am. It’s eight months since I stared in the mirror and realised that despite what I thought I actually am a crime writer. And believe me, a lot has happened in that time. First up, I’ve validated  myself. I applied for membership of the Crime Writers’ Association and after a review of my published works they decided that, yes, I qualified. So it’s official. Even without having written what I thought of as a crime novel I was a crime writer. 

The next step was to write the book. I chose my setting — Cumbria. I chose my protagonists — DCI Jude Satterthwaite and his-newly-arrived sergeant, Ashleigh O’Halloran. I set up their back stories — he struggling it the balance between his job and his relationships, she still trying to break free from an unhappy marriage. Then came the plot, hinging on the discovery of a child’s body after a wildfire on a Cumbrian fell. 

It was easier than I thought. It’s probably because I still thinking of myself as primarily a romance writer, so that the shackles were off. I had fun. I experimented. I tried things I’d never tried before. I played with many points of view. I made characters do things that romance readers  would never forgive them for. I broke the chains of the romance genre and left a relationship unresolved. 

Book three is set in beautiful Grasmere.

I wrote the next book, about the murder of a centenarian in an old people’s home. I sent the first one off to make its way in the world and (as you may have seen elsewhere) it found itself an agent. I planned the third book, in which a controversial and outspoken US professor outrages all and sundry and doesn’t care who she offends — until it’s too late. I have ideas for books four, five and six.  

Quite where this series will go remains to be seen. I’ve been in the writing game long enough to know that there are no certainties. But I’m enjoying the ride, and at the very least it gives me the excuse to undertake research and to post some photographs of a beautiful part of the world.