New serial in The People's Friend - A Croatian Adventure - starts today

I'm delighted to say my new serial, 'A Croatian Adventure', has started today in The People's Friend. It is set in Vodnjan where we had a lovely holiday a couple of years ago and visited the harbour at Fazana and the amphitheatre and market in Pula. I found the country to be interesting and varied and although people say it can be like Italy, I found the whole flavour of Croatia somewhat different. A little less busy perhaps and the people less familiar to us, simply because we haven't met so many Croatians back in the UK, nor visited Croatia as much as we have Italy. I'd recommend Vodnjan as being a nice quiet place to stay and we were in a wonderful apartment just beneath the bells of the church. It was fabulous to open the kitchen window in the morning and have breakfast to the sound of church bells which I love. If you are adventurous, you can actually cycle into Pula. For us very unfit types mind you, it was a challenge as it's not exactly round the corner. One day, we cycled in, had lunch there, then bought fish in the market for dinner. This wasn't perhaps thought through very well, as we then had to cycle back in the heat of the day with a large raw fish in a steaming hot pannier. We worried all the way back about whether it would be fit to eat and cycled as fast as we could! It wasn't one of our best plans, but we ate the fish grilled with herbs. Not only was it delicious, but we lived to tell the tale! Vodnjan has a rather extraordinary collection of mummified saints in its local church which is an extraordinary thing to see. Dressed up to the nines and looking as black and as if they are made of leather I had rather wanted to weave them into my story somehow. I didn't manage it unfortunately but maybe another time! 'A Croatian Adventure' is my first venture into writing a series as it follows the life of one of my characters, Mel, who first appeared as a children's nanny in my last People's Friend serial. This time she has branched out to take a job with a Croatian businessman who has a vast array of lavender fields around his villa. But, there is something decidedly odd happening at the Villa Lavanda, with his Japanese wife Hiroko a virtual recluse, and one of the other staff at the Villa, Greg Brodie who is not all he appears to be. There is romance and mystery. I can see from having written my second in a series of stories, what a challenge it must be to write a long running series. For a start, you have to be organised - not one of my strongest attributes. I imagine that if you have many serial episodes or novels tied together with the same characters and places, you'd be required to operate a fairly robust filing system. Remembering how old everyone is, how they are related to one another, what their particular experiences are in case you have to refer to them again in a later story would take some doing. I might have to get my act together and create a proper rolodex file as I'm thinking I might take one of the characters, Izzy and transport her off for a gap year to Malaysia and Borneo. There will of course be romance, adventure and crime - that much will be common to all of this series of adventures!

Longlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Margery Allingham Short Story Competition

So, having for a long time avoided writing competitions like the plague, I thought I'd have a go. I wanted a new challenge and the Crime Writers' Association is a very reputable body. The Margery Allingham competition has an excellent brief which is to pen a mystery in 3,500 words. Simple, straightforward and wide enough to afford many possibilities. I had entered only a handful of other competitions. They're often designed to promote a particular product or place. One I entered promoted a magazine in Kent. It was a shorter length which can be more challenging, and had to feature a Kent landmark. Another asked for a story in 500 words about the Northern Lights. Narrow challenges like that are all very well but if you don't win the comp, are difficult to place elsewhere. So, with a nice 'loose' brief I decided to enter and... was delighted to receive the e-mail telling me I was one of 12 in the longlist. I was actually longlisted last year, but they didn't put it on their website so I didn't trumpet it to the world. This year they have and here is the link to it. Writing competitions are a mixed blessing. They are time consuming, most charge a small fee, and it's difficult to know exactly what they're looking for if they don't print much in the way of winning entries. The upside is that you can turn the germ of an idea that has been knocking around in your subconscious into something real even if it isn't something you could find a home for elsewhere. I'm sure I couldn't for example have placed my story in a women's magazine. I enjoyed writing it though and I now have a finished product. Even if it doesn't win, I am at present reworking it to form a chapter of the current novel I'm writing. I'd always envisaged that, as I was writing it, anyway. Being shortlisted has given me the confidence that it might just have legs and that it might possibly run as a longer work. I'd have my fingers crossed if it didn't stop me typing!

Searching for Witches in the 16th century

As part of research for a historical novel, I had the fascinating experience recently of going on a guided tour around Knole House in Kent while it was closed for refurbishments. The reason for the tour was to see some marks allegedly made during the 1500s to ward off witches. The house was to be visited by King James, a paranoid monarch (which Monarchs weren't in those times!) who wrote a book on hunting down witches and was responsible for much of the escalation in the persecution of hundreds of men and women. The day was freezing cold and the whole area, deserted and eerie, extremely atmospheric. The National trust which has preserved the building superbly (though part of it is still lived in by the Sackville family) have been checking electrics and had taken the floorboards up in a room which had been reserved for the King's visit. The mysterious marks like a complex W were placed on a floor board which would have been to the left side of the bed (left being known to be the more sinister direction than the right-hand). It is thought they were scored into the oak beams by the carpenter work in the bedroom that was to be the King's and they have remained hidden all this time. You can see the under floor board marks on the National Trust's website. There were other marks such as circular ones I photographed (see above) in the great hall downstairs carved into a fireplace. Fireplaces were generally reckoned to be weak points where witches could gain access to a dwelling. I also photographed these ones carved into a stone fireplace. The marks were thought to tangle the witches up in the circles and the W's preventing them working their way into the house. Other things that we take for granted today, such as the placing of bay trees either side of a front door were all designed to deter witches. It is difficult for us to understand such paranoia but there was huge persecution of witches during this time, not least by the self appointed witch finder general, Matthew Hopkins in the next century in England. I will shortly visit East Anglia to trace some of his rather hideous footsteps. The BBC programme 'In our time' with Melvin Bragg has a fascinating programme downloadable from iplayer on how the Reformation affected people's views on witches and led to the old magick which was primarily folklore and herbalism being feared and reviled as the times grew ever more uncertain during the period before, during and after the Civil War.

Accent Press - new anthologies

I feel very guilty at having not blogged in so long. Mainly though this is due to spending time writing, the result being short stories in two new anthologies by Accent Press. The latest anthology from Accent, 'Shiver', is due out early October. It is a collection of terrific, spine chilling Halloween stories. I love Halloween and remember one particularly brilliant party when I was around nine years old. There was the usual apple bobbing, cakes shaped like little ghosts and jellies set with plastic spiders inside. But the best bit was the storytelling. We were at the house of a girl called Camilla Bains (Camilla, if you're out there somewhere do get in touch). Her mum had sat us all in a circle in the dark while she told us the spookiest of stories. The best bit was that she passed around props. So, as she told of the tapping of the dead man's finger at the window we passed between us in the pitch dark, a cold sausage. I remember the clammy digit being thrown up in the air only to land on the head of another terrified kid who probably has nightmares to this day. The dead man's heart was a sopping peeled and squishy peach. At that age, I was both scared out of my wits and enthralled at the story, which is the sort of reaction we all hope to get from the best horror stories. They should be like a car crash - awful but compelling. My story in the Shiver collection, 'Your Number's Up', is a tale of be-careful-what-you-wish for when the unappealing and mean minded Kevin buys a lottery ticket, a series of (as Lemony Snicket would say) unfortunate events ignites his normally dull life in ways he could never have expected. Finally, my move into crime has been sealed with Accent's 'A Case of Crime' which is a collection of short stories of murder and mayhem. 'Goodbye My Darling' is my offering where a woman who thinks she's found the perfect mate learns to her cost that perfection can be hard to find in a marriage partner. I do hope people enjoy these, I'm now going to have a go at a Christmas story which may or may not be dark, dark, dark.......

PART TWO of my Recipe For Writing a Serial

Different writers approach the beginning of their work in different ways. I know very few who write to a perfect formula. A good place to start is: what would you do if....? My Woman's Weekly serial, Finders Keepers had centred around a question I'd asked myself a million times. What would I do if.... I found a stash of money, buried. Now, knowing me, I'd be so terrified of the consequences of keeping it, I would give it in just to avoid all the anxiety of benefitting from ill gotten gains. But I wondered what if, a previously upstanding member of the community, my scientist heroine Erica had a very pressing need for some cash at just the time she discovered some buried money. I then worked this through with my heroine, in exactly the way I think I would myself if the same situation arose in real life. My heroine's daughter had been dumped by her husband who had been managing his business badly and not paying their mortgage. That was a good start, but I wanted to heap more pain on my heroine, I wanted to give her motivation to do something totally out of character - that was, to be dishonest. I made her daughter very pregnant (ie near to her time) then I gave her pre-eclampsia so she was rushed into hospital in a terrible state and couldn't do anything about the impending threat to her house. My heroine mother is a total giver, she loves her daughter to bits and always wants to make the world right for her. Given this sort of scenario, I justified her position in eventually stealing the money. But, I had just read Therese Raquin. Zola's fabulous study of guilt is a tale in which two people who commit a crime are practically driven insane by their joint guilt. They are also torn apart by it when their original plan in committing the crime was to allow them to spend their lives together. I was able to play out a little bit of the heavy consequences of guilt in my serial. Thinking of my next one, I'm going to try and throw out a few of the what would you do if....? scenarios to see if anything sparks. This part of the creative process I find incredibly difficult. It's alchemy isn't it? It's creating something out of nothing. So, here goes. What would you do if the one person who had ruined your life by their deception or evil disappeared - and then came back? Maybe they falsely accused your mother or father and as a result your parent, the one person who cared for you was imprisoned or ruined. Hmmm, okay, not a bad start. But it needs ratchetting up. So, what if you were very lowly in life and the person who had done you wrong was very high up the pecking order, pretty much untouchable in fact? Recent cases in the press about rich and famous people who have done bad things to powerless people resonate here. How would you bring them down and get your revenge? Now THIS is looking more like a story. The reason that is the case is that the idea now contains a solid element of conflict and conflict as any author knows is the lifeblood of stories from Romeo and Juliet, to Atonement, to Cinderella, to Sleeping Beauty. Haven't they just made a film about Maleficent the evil fairy, you see, those conflicts run and run. That idea also ticks the odd box from my earlier Recipe post which concentrated on character rather than plot. In this plot idea, the main character is someone who has suffered misfortune through no fault of their own. We already feel sorry for them and we want them to triumph so, already our story has a journey and what are stories, if they are not journeys from a beginning, through conflict to a satisfactory resolution or end? Finally, as ratchetting up helps one build a story, lets tighten the plot a bit by saying that the revenge has to be had within a given timeframe. Maybe our rich/powerful/influential baddie is leaving the country (or the planet if this is a sci fi story) and going away somewhere else where they might be untouchable. Maybe they are ill and dying and our hero/heroine needs to elicit revenge before the baddie dies. Maybe our baddie who is rich and powerful is about to become even more rich and powerful by taking over a company, or becoming Prime Minister/President or .... whatever. Now we have a clear goal (see my earlier Recipe post) and we have a tight time frame so we have built tension into the plot. At last a story is beginning to emerge. I now have an idea of my characters and my plot. I know how the story is going to end. The revenge will be had - it is the three episodes in the middle I haven't worked out, but at least some of the ingredients for my recipe are now obvious and I even have a setting (I fancy ancient Britain as it is an unusual setting and I have done a bit of research). I also have a more specific setting because it is near where I live - the River Thames which has fascinated me for years. The river has been settled since prehistoric times and I recently went mudlarking on the Thames, where history is all around. You can literally pick it up, hold it in your hands and take a piece home. Finally, finally, my serial is taking shape..... It's got a long way yet but I may shortly put pen to paper. Finally, many thanks to my wonderful daughter for taking the snap of me that appears in this article in the latest Writers' Forum. I'm there with fellow serial writers Jennie Bohnet and Wendy Clarke with more tips about the craft of writing serials, and a plug from me for the Woman's Weekly fiction workshops which if you can get there are great fun.

Recipe for writing a serial

Hi - I am in the process of writing another serial aimed at Women's Weekly. It's been tough conjuring up the essence of what it was which got the last one accepted. As I plan my next one, I thought I'd share the thought processes which worked last time and at the end of this posting I've shown how I applied my thoughts to come up with the serial that WW accepted. For a pantster rather than a plotter, any sort of planning is difficult. However, I have tried to get myself in the mode which I did last time in order to try and wave that magic wand, and apply the same principles to this latest attempt. So, here goes. Hero(s)and heroines I am going to have two possible love interests in this serial and both must contain some or all of the elements which make a hero. I've just watched Gladiator and think Russell Crowe's character Maximus is totally a hero whereas Commodus is an archetypal villain. Don't we love to hate villains! Note to self - there was no villain in my last serial, perhaps one this time would be good. So my hero(s) and my heroine will have some of the following characteristics: People like/respect them. Maximus is shown after an epic battle which has knocked the stuffing out of him, congratulating his troops, spending time with them. Beforehand he was doing the same - he thinks of others before himself. He is loyal to the failing emperor who tells us that Maximus is the son he should have had, he has more virtues than his own flawed flesh and blood. Maximus is modest, he doesn't want the glory of ruling Rome, he just wants to go back to his wife and family. Here is another hero trait, he honours his own, he is faithful and constant. We are shown him repeatedly kissing the little clay models of his family - show don't tell is personified here. Maximus is an expert (this is a fascinating characteristic in a main character) in warfare and fighting, you know with experts that there is certainty. We are fascinated by them, entranced by the abilities they have to understand the world. We are drawn to them. This quality is true even if they are expert criminals, many taless have been told about expert criminals and while they would not make true solid gold heroes, they are compelling. A wounded hero is a sort of gold star hero because we feel sorry for him. Maximus is wounded internally/psychologically by the evil Commodus's actions and of course externally - who could forget the final fight scene where Commodus has stuck a knife in Maximus before they even enter the gladiatorial arena. Here is another trait which makes us care for a leading character - someone who through no fault of their own experiences misfortune. In fact, Maximus has done everything possible to attract good fortune and still, he is beaten down by life. We want him to succeed, he's challenged constantly by life - here is a universal truth with which we can all identify. Finally a main character has to have a goal, clearly defined, and if that goal has a time limit, that ratchets up the suspense element of a story. With Maximus his goal initially is to go home. Then, once his wife and child have been murdered, it is to go home having avenged their killings. Goals can and do change along the way, in Gladiator, his home eventually is Elysium or heaven as that is where his family is and we even see an image of him being welcomed by them. So in summary my hero(s) and my heroine will have at least some of these traits: Be liked/respected by others Be modest Be faithful and constant Be brave (Jennifer Lawrence as Catniss is the personification of the brave heroine - she does NOT let things happen to her, she makes them happen. She's also an expert with her hunting skills) Be an expert Be wounded internally/psychologically and possibly externally ie. bearing the visible memory of a wounding in the form of a scar or limp possibly (I love Jake Gyllenhaal as the hero of the film Prisoners - his twitch, blinking too hard, displays so much inner turmoil!) Have a clear goal, ideally time limited (eg. with the lovely Jake, it is to save the kidnapped girls before the crazy kidnapper murders them) In my serial Finders Keepers, the heroine, Erica is a scientist (there's her expert trait) whose daughter loves and depends upon her (ie. liked and respected by others). She finds a pile of banknotes buried and is tormented by whether to turn them in to the police or use them to help her daughter who is in hospital about to give birth and is in dire financial trouble. Erica takes matters into her own hands (so she is brave) and she acts to help her daughter who at one point says 'you always make things right' (faithful and constant). She has a broken marriage behind her (wounded internally) so she sort of ticks most of those boxes. Her goal is clear - to help her daughter. The hero, Logan Kershaw is very wounded as a soldier invalided out of the army. He doesn't have many friends, but this is okay, he still ticks the hero box as it's not because he's not likeable but because he is withdrawn. Part of his character arc, his changing character throughout the serial is that he gathers friends and a family to him in that he is eventually welcomed into Erica's family and one of the last scenes is of him with her daughter and grandchild. The fact that he befriends Erica and she takes to him is evidence of his ability to fulfil the first of the character traits above - to be liked/respected. He is modest about his bravery in the army and we know he's an expert from his past career. His goal is clear - he wants to stop Erica doing the wrong thing with the money and to catch the bad people who secreted it, before they catch her to get it back. Well, sorry this has been such a long post, but it has really helped me to get my head around what I need to plan in my new serial. If it contributes to anyone else's writing, so much the better! These are not all my ideas, I've rarely had an original idea in my life, but I am indebted to the two books Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and Michael Hauge's 'Writing Screenplays that Sell' - they're the guys with the analytical brains, and the big ideas! Woman's Weekly are still running their fiction courses which I can recommend, just Google them. Happy writing all!!!

My Writing Process #2

Many thanks to Christina Hollis for kindly asking me on her blog to take part in the blog hop about 'My Writing Process'. Christina is a very busy and successful author who writes wonderful romance for Harlequin and also tweets @ChristinaBooks. Thanks for this opportunity Christina. So, here goes. What am I working on? A number of things at the moment which I hope will make good summer reads (hence the gratuitous pic of a beach in Varadero Cuba where I will shortly be setting a crime story). I like to work on two or three things at once so that if I get into problems with one thing, I can go on to another. I do that in my reading too, I suppose I have a butterfly mind. At present one of my works in progress is a romantic suspense set in New England (very different from Cuba, that's one of the joys of writing, being able to jet away at a moment's notice, in your imagination of course). How does my work differ from others in the genre? I have chosen a hero who is a search and rescue officer working up in the mountains but who has also been to war zones and disasters such as collapsed buildings. He is everything I would want a hero to be, sensitive, courageous, sometimes bull-headed but always with the right motives. I've fallen for him so I hope my readers will too. The heroine is a total opposite. Office based, a city girl with a very cerebral career. It's always productive putting opposites together and seeing them a) attract and b) deal with all the differences being, well.... different, can lead to. Why do I write what I do? Total and utter escapism. I'd love to go New England but despite many trips to the West Coast, I've never been there.... yet. That's one of the glorious things about writing. You have the ability to visit places you've never been and also the ability to go back and revisit places you love. I often write about places I've been to on holiday such as Italy (the Lemon Grove) and Croatia where I am setting a current serial for People's Friend which will be titled 'The Lavender Field'. How does my writing process work? I'm afraid I'm a messy writer and my desk is testament to that. I leap in, fearlessly, with all the bravado of a total fool. I have an idea, a beginning and an end, I know what my protagonists' conflicts are but not how they will overcome them. Then, starts the magic. As the story unfolds, there come revelations, things I never thought would happen. Then, inevitably come the plot tangles which you get when you don't plan. I have tried planning and it just doesn't work for me. I have to get the first draft down and then undo the knots. In the end I get there though, but blood, sweat, tears and coffee are all involved. It's been great fun chatting about my writing process and reading about others' different ways of writing. I'm now handing the baton on to Kitti Bernetti who writes for Xcite and will blog next week.