The balance of the story

 I've been indulging myself recently in re-reading some cosy crime and police procedurals - Not as predictable an exercise as it may seem, as in a (possibly) alarming number of cases I have completely forgotten who committed the crime! 

I've been thinking about this. Why would my memory for denouements be so poor? I accept that old age and failing faculties may be a factor, but in mitigation, I would like to plead the balance of the story. Think about it - there are pages and pages about the crime, the characters, the setting, sometimes an overarching mystery that runs alongside the plot of the book in hand, drawing a series together and  keeping the reader hooked. And the resolution? Maybe a chapter, or not even that? 

The writer has to keep the reader engaged in the story on the way to the result, so it has to have plenty of interest. It's rare that I don't remember the first body,  or the second - usually the person who was the most obvious as chief suspect - or who has stupidly let it be known that they know something. I remember the setting - the village, the villa, the island, the library. I remember the romance, if there is one, because- hey - romance writer.  But after that, possibly because of my haste to actually find out, the recall faculty gets blurred. This may not be helped by those authors who claim not to decide who the guilty party is until the time comes for the reveal. If they don't know, how am I supposed to keep up? 

Actually I don't think the memory lapse is a completely bad thing. Apart from letting me re-read with enjoyment, a book is very much more than its ending. The portrayal of character in particular can often be much more engaging than knowing who actually stuck the knife in the Colonel in the gazebo.  Books with atmospheric settings are powerful things. How often have you been inspired to visit a location because you have read about it? Social attitudes and society can be tellingly revealed on the way to the ending. This is particularly true of Golden Age crime, which appeals to the historian in me. The revelation of attitudes in past times can be shocking - we've all read those warnings in the front of Golden Age re-issues - it is shocking, but worth knowing how far we have come.   

So - at the moment I am enjoying my excursions into forgotten territory - a case of the journey being just as satisfying as arriving at whodunnit. 

 

Into the dark

 The bright day is done and we are for the dark

That quotation from Anthony and Cleopatra is always in my mind at this time of the year. I hate the months that end in 'er'., because they are the dark ones. Ironic, considering I write darker things into my romance. Now that the clocks have changed it is all down hill until the solstice in December. It is only physical darkness not death, which is what Cleopatra and her followers were facing - but I still don't like it. 

Tomorrow is Halloween  - celebrated with pumpkins, trick and treat and apple bobbing. We always bobbed for apples when I was growing up - usually tied from a string attached to the indoor washing line. I don't remember apples in a bath of water, but that would probably have been considered too messy. As a teenager there were parties and the chance to dress up as something spooky and witchy.

Traditionally Halloween is a liminal space, when the veil between the world of the dead and the world of the living is meant to be at its thinnest, one of the pause points in the Wheel of the Year. I've been researching that - because it interests me, but also because I want to include a folk lore element in the WIP. At the moment I'm working on Yule, which is around 21st December, as the village I am creating will be celebrating that and I want the book to culminate in another festival with pagan roots. Not Halloween as it is a bit too obvious. I've thought about Beltane on 1st May, but Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight, uses Beltane fires on the Isle of Skye to very creepy effect. It is an inspiration, but I think I need to find my own festival. The Summer Solstice would be a classic but at the moment I am opting for Lammas which is 1st August and the first stage in the celebration of the year's harvest. The end of the book is very much in outline only at present. I'm not sure that it will be creepy so much as the chance for confusion with a lot of plot strands coming together and crossing - or maybe that should be tangling? I'm looking forward to getting there, and finding out, but there is a lot that has to take place before then.

Changing taste

 TV viewers and romance readers/watchers have dominated a lot of the news this week with the arrival of the adaptation of Jilly Cooper's Rivals on the screen. A quintessential 80s 'bonk buster' full of steamy scenes, and featuring all round cad, Rupert Campbell Black.  In the 80s Rupert was considered irresistible. Now - I'm not so sure. The idea of a romantic hero has changed. Rakes are not quite such a thing any more - except perhaps in traditional style historicals.  

That made me think of how fashions in reading have changed in general. Take size, for instance - and no, that is not mean as an innuendo - well, maybe, just a bit. In the 80 era of Riders, Rivals and others, like Shirley Conran's Lace, readers were looking for big books - ones that would last for a long haul flight and probably the holiday as well. Now you can load up a shed load of e-books and never have the fear of having nothing to read. Our attention spans have apparently got shorter, but with the rise of gaming and social media there are other avenues for entertainment. Reading has to cope with the competition. I don't think our appetite for extended stories has dimmed - but now they are more likely to take the form of series or trilogies - three books or more in place of one. 

The bonk busters had huge casts - I suspect that the number of characters in books has got smaller, but that is only gut feeling. They often extend over lengthy time periods too, which maybe is not so frequent now?

And then of course, there is the s.e.x. It really doesn't go out of fashion. What are currently termed 'spicy' books are still in demand. There is still a tendency for a particular book - or series - to make headlines, to be the one everyone is taking about and curious to read - Fifty Shades being the most recent example . Before that I'm thinking of Forever Amber and the Angelique books. Authors like Barbara Taylor Bradford and Jackie Collins are big names who have been known for writing sexy scenes, but romance writers who are not known outside romance reader circles write them too, it's just not so well publicised. Or perhaps that should be notorious? And now romantic relationships can be gay, sapphic or involving more than a couple. 

That's really what it is about - whether the bedroom door is open or closed - romance is about relationships. And that's never going out of fashion. 

Catnip for Authors

 You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Research. I've been posting recently about the up market kind - what I did on my holidays - but research can take all kinds of forms and be for all kinds of reasons. I just did a quick inventory of some of the things I've done recently that could be classed as research, if you use the loose definition of 'finding out'. 

The total comes to four classes and a catalogue for fruit trees!  A mix of planning and serendipity! You  never know where useful information will come from. 

The classes are a mixed bunch.

There is my regular gardens course, with the Lifelong Learning Department of the University, which is mainstream for the WIP. I am creating a garden for the book and am having soooo much fun working on the back story. Will it all get into the book? Possibly not, but I think that knowing it is there will add depth to the writing. And yes. It is FUN! 

I also did a lecture on divination. I have a character who is into this kind of thing and it was a good opportunity to find out the sort of tools she might use - observing natural phenomena, like bird movements and the sky. For things like that I think it is important to make sure that details are correct and plausible. 

Another one-off on-line course was craft - a webinair from the Crime Writers' Association on science and crime - very useful on the forensics that a writer might need and other practical stuff, - like the fact that poisons are not usually instantaneous in effect  and that someone hit in any part of the body by a bullet probably won't be running around chasing bad guys a few minutes later, even with an artistic sling.

The second craft class is this week - and in person workshop on characters which is being held by one of the writing groups I belong to. We don't do it often, but it is good sometimes to get together and consider the nuts and bolts of putting words on a page. I'm looking forward to it. 

And that fruit catalogue? I seem to have got on to the mailing list of a specialist fruit nursery. I'm unlikely to be planting any trees in the near future, although I have not given up on the idea of a tree in a pot, and I have managed to germinate an orange pip which might one day amount to something. My mother grew one that flowered, although I don't think it fruited - but Mum could have planted her walking stick and it would have rooted.  Anyway the catalogue has given me ideas for all sorts of unusual fruit - medlars, sloes, crab apples - that can be made into jams and jellies which fits into the ethos of the community I am also creating - and there is a bit of hedge witchery going on there. I'm enjoying that too, although I know I have to be careful, or it will be taking over the book. 

That's always the thing - research that gets into the book is almost always only the tip of the iceberg. 

The Hidden Garden - Plas Cadnant

The last post about my North Wales holiday. And this visit definitely qualifies as research. It was unexpected. I knew there was a garden on the schedule for the last day of the tour, but I had no idea that it would be a perfect inspiration for the garden I am creating for the WIP. On the Isle of Anglesey, overlooking the Menai Strait, Plas Cadnant has been reclaimed from an overgrown state and it is lovely - and exactly what I envisaged for the garden I am trying to create, a coastal setting with series of different moods - formal and much wilder. 

 I have a thing for writing gardens in my books, and happily readers also seem to like them. I have a half realised idea for a derelict garden sometime in the future, but the one in the current WIP is far from that. I have created a whole back story for it, and its past owners, which may not even make it into the book, except as passing references, but I have had so much enjoyment from imagining it. And now I know what parts of it  might look like. My creation has a stumpery, a number of follies and a lot of sculpture so it will be different, but I now have a reference point that I know is real. I took a ton of pictures. These are some of them. 

Topiary - there will definitely be topiary

Formal - and very pretty

A pond and a river god, lurking in an alcove. 
I'm thinking more on the lines of the green man -
or maybe Cernunnos, the horned god from Celtic mythology. 

Another pool lower in the garden - down a steep and rather scary path.
But I made it! 

One of the wilder areas. 

More wildness

Back to the formality and sunshine. 

Port Meirion

 This was a bucket list trip. It's been on that list since The Prisoner  TV series used it as a location - yes, I am that old.

It is colourful and a bit crazy - a little piece of Italy on a Welsh hillside, running down to the sea - a folly in the form of a whole village, and I loved it.

The sun shone, I rambled around, ate ice-cream and soaked up atmosphere. It has given me ideas for the colour scheme for my garden, when I finally get that sorted out and can paint some currently grey block walls. Next summer, now. I have a wooden container that holds the recycling bags that I painted blue and which came out a bit more vivid that I expected, Now I know that it is Port Meirion blue  and that I might be painting some of the walls terracotta. I'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime I have pictures. 

Archways were a thing

This could be on an Italian hillside 

See what I mean about the colour scheme. 

More colour here

This might be my favourite view -
 and you can just make out the sculpture in the exotic planting. 

Research Holiday?

 Regular readers will know that I'm taking a break from the Riviera and the next book, which is making very slow progress, is set mostly in Wales, although the location is one that I have made up. I live in South Wales and have spent time in West Wales - many childhood holidays for starters, but I have only been an infrequent visitor to the top end of the country.  I've never set a book in North Wales, but maybe that will change in the future as I've just had a very enjoyable holiday in Llandudno and its environs - an escorted tour with Great Rail Journeys. 

It was billed as railways and castles, both of which featured, but it was two other locations in particular that captured my attention - more of those in future posts. The castles were Conwy and Caernarvon and the railways were Ffestiniog, the West Highland Railway and the Snowden Mountain Railway.  The first two were steam - memories of my very early childhood - and the last one was rack and pinion, because of the gradient and was a bit scary with some jaw dropping sheer drops. It was a perfect clear day and now I can say that I have been to the top, (almost, as I didn't climb up to the summit) of the highest mountain in Wales, and have the pictures to prove it courtesy of Helen and Paul, my fellow holiday guests. 

I haven't been on an escorted tour like this for a long time and was a little nervous, but I really enjoyed myself and saw one place = Port Meirion - that has been on my bucket list for a long time, and also a lovely garden which was definitely research material. 

I'm not sure that steam trains and castles will be making an appearance in a book anytime soon, but never say never to an author. Port Meirion might - although I suspect it maybe a re-invented place by then. A bit like the gothic buildings I have written about in the past, which owe a lot to Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch.  And the garden ...

And I even managed to take pictures. 

Paragliders - and an amazing view

Proof I was there, plus the train. 

This one is steam.