Snail mail

 Does anyone even write letters any more, except for the official ones that arrive in brown envelopes and usually mean money - sadly going out more often than coming in, at least in my house?

I remember being taught in school the correct use of salutations and endings - Dear Sirs - standard for a business letter, yours faithfully if you didn't know the name of the recipient, yours sincerely if you did and had used it. 

I haven't written one of those for a very long time. 

I've just finished reading two books where the story depended on letters. In both case love letters. One was the classic discovery of the faded and scented bundle, written in coloured ink, tied with a ribbon. The second, more contemporary, featuring a relationship that began with two pen pals and moved on from there. Before reading the book I would have questioned if that was still a thing, but now there are sites that will put you in touch with people to write to - I just Googled it. 

I am wondering though if that classic, the bundle of letters, will survive modern methods of communication?  A bundle of printed e-mails, texts, DMs? Doesn't have the same romance - and is it likely? You might save a special e-mail, but a whole correspondence? Will this invaluable plot device recede further and further into the past? 

And it is romantic. The keeping of the letters in the first place, their survival, sometimes a question over the identity of one or both of the recipients. Some classic novels are themselves a series of letters - epistolary novels - although they often contain diary entries and other fragments. These days their place is taken by those e-mails or even voice recordings. as in Janice Hallet's The Twyford Code. 

Authors are finding new ways of using a favourite trope/plot device. But somehow it doesn't have quite the frisson of that shoe box full of letters. 

Over the edge

 Regulars will know my enthusiasm for the British Library re-issues of Golden Age Crime. I'm not a great lover of short stories - prefer something to get my teeth into - but as the anthology Cyanide in the Sun, which is holiday crime, was on offer from Kindle unlimited, I did take a look. I enjoyed the stories, many of which were set in old fashioned British seaside resorts like the one I grew up in.  (And have moved back to - although it is a bit different now.) What struck me about the whole selection was how many revolved around a crime resulting from a fall - usually over a cliff - there being an abundance of those at the seaside. 

I've commented before that I seem to have rather a thing about pushing people off high places - and it seems I am not alone. Actually I am doing it again, as the cosy crime I keep waffling about would start with a car going off a cliff. What is it with high places? 

Thinking about it, there are elements to appeal to a writer - if you have that sort of mind, of course, and if you write crime, you do. My excursions into falls from high places have twice been from buildings, not in nature, but certain principles apply. Always a possibility of an accident, or self harm. to muddy the water. It's a fairly effective method of murder, the human body being a fragile thing when in contact with gravity. and if you are talking cliffs, then there is always potentially the added ingredient of the sea. If the fall can be engineered rather than involving a hefty push -by misdirection of a dangerous path, an obstacle to be fallen over, even the intervention of the weather in storms or fog, the murder doesn't even have to be there. And the up close and personal method, the time honoured blow to the head with a blunt instrument can easily be disguised in other injuries.

Disadvantages? The victim has to be lured to the site. OK if that is a keen walker who frequents the path, but what if they are not? And the experienced hiker would know the dangers of the place where they were walking. And, of course the murder has to go to the location themselves to do the deed, or set the trap. Always the possibility of being seen. 

A fall seems like an easy solution - and it's certainly a popular one. But it actually needs just a much planning as shooting or stabbing - maybe more. But that is what crime writers like to spend their time doing.

Now - about this car, going over the cliff ...

Workshopping

 As regular readers will know, I am a bit of an academic nerd. Not quite -Never seen a course I didn't like - but always open to suggestion. When I was trying to make it as a writer there were a lot of craft courses - some of them useful, some not so much, but a great deal of that was to do with the way I finally found out that like to work, rather than the course and it is always useful to know. 

These days I don't do craft stuff so much. Arrogance? Maybe. Laziness? Probably. More comfortable that I know what I am doing? Probable, if slightly delusional. Research, now that is a completely different ball game. I love that. Huh - who at the back whispered procrastination? 

But yesterday I did do a craft workshop. It was a meeting of the writers' group I attend in Herford and the inimitable Alison May, who is a member of the group, treated us to Plotting, Planning and Theme - at least that's what I think the official title was. And it was a treat. I signed on because I knew it would be an enjoyable morning with friends, followed by lunch, and if that had been all it was, that would have been great, but listening to an expert, which Alison is, is inevitably going to produce some useful insight. 

In the event I got a lot out of it, some of it very unexpected. Alison's approach is plot through character development so we did quite a bit on that. I chose to focus on the currently nebulous heroine of the equally nebulous cosy crime I am sort of threatening to write. I don't find those traditional 20 questions models that used to be taught as a way of getting to know your characters are helpful to me. But Alison's questions were not like that. What does your character have under her bed? gets you thinking in a way that What is her favourite colour? doesn't. As least it does me. Possibly it gets my sub conscious moving. My answer was a hat in a hat box, that belonged to her mother. Now where that came from I don't know. but it has started a lot of interesting trails. I'm not sure that everything I found out yesterday doesn't make the idea of a cosy more complicated rather than easier. But I have got food for thought, so we shall see. 

I'll be sure to let you know. 

All in a name

 Most fiction authors will confirm that choosing the right name for a character is vital. It's beyond any logical explanation, but if you don't have the names right for your protagonists then the whole book can feel wrong. I have a book idea that is sort of brewing, but the name I wanted for my heroine has been used by a friend in a similar style book. The books won't in the end be anything like each other, but that name is out of bounds and until I can find another my book is, sadly, going nowhere. Writers are weird - but you already know that. 

As a reader, a name that feels old fashioned can seriously damage my enjoyment of a book. But fashions change - a couple of decades ago a character named Wilf (Wilfred) or Ava for a child or a teenager would have suggested to me that the author was elderly and not up to speed with current trends. Now it is all turned around and the old names are fashionable again. Even so, it's not all old names. I don't think Gladys has had a revival yet. 

Finding the name is therefore a small but vital piece of research. Googling popular names for a specific year can be a starting point. Writers of historicals of my acquaintance find a walk around a cemetery can be very useful. Baby name books, newspapers stories, eavesdropping on the bus - they are all sources of inspiration. Now you can use name generators!

So, that's the choice. But what about what the name says.  The idea for this post came when I read yet another book where the villainess was called Yvonne. Alright, I don't spell it that way, but I would like to know why the traditional spelling of my name always has to be the nasty girlfriend, vindictive ex or village battle axe. Huh - maybe you shouldn't answer that. 

Short names are popular. John or Jack is a stalwart for a hero. Shakespeare can give you the unusual - Hero, Orlando, Bianca. The Bible is always reliable for hero names. Millionaires are often foreign and exotic  - Niccolo, Bruno, Raphael. Advice suggests names should not be difficult to pronounce - although I'm not sure where that leaves some of the inventions I've read in fantasy novels. Using names that are too similar is a no-no, and I have been picked up for using names with the same initial letter! I've googled and there is a vast amount of advice out there on choosing names if you need it  But I'm still wondering why Yvonne gets such a bad press.

Travel by the book

 At this time of the year newspapers and magazines are making a feature of books to take on holiday with you. Reading on the beach or by the pool - or on deck - is a well established thing. But a book doesn't have to be something that accompanies you on your journey - it can be the journey. Escape  by book is possible even if actual travelling isn't, for reasons of money or circumstance. And it does not have to be just places - time travel is also totally achievable. All you need is the book.

In the last few weeks I have been to the Lake District (Sarah Morgan's A Secret Escape), a small town in Maine (Melinda Leigh's Midnight Exposure), Norfolk (Kate Hardy's The Body at the Vineyard), Provence (Veronica Henry's One Night at the Chateau)  and Siena (T A Williams' Murder in Siena). I've travelled back in time to attend the Congress of Vienna (Joanna Maitland's His Reluctant Mistress), and to Yorkshire  in the 1990s (Stuart Pawson's Chill Factor.) I've been to a couple of places that don't actually exist  - a invented Welsh Village (Liz Davies's The Ticklemore Treasure Trove) and a world where even the heroine has no idea where she is (Kate Johnson's The Promised Queen).  I enjoyed them all.  

Looking at the list, you can see I have catholic tastes. Romance, romantic suspense, police procedural crime, cosy crime/amateur sleuth, historical romance and romantacy. Several of the books  were written by friends, some of them I stumbled on by happy accident. The majority were part of a series, or linked titles, which reinforces the view of publishers that readers like series. Some I paid for, some were part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription - paid for, but not by direct hard cash!  That has been a good investment. I'm a fast reader and I read a lot. I've sampled things I would not have tried if I'd had to buy them, or carry them home from the library, with some enjoyable results. Also some complete turkeys, but that's life. 

I was wondering if there was a common theme - I enjoy reading crime. I like puzzles and mystery and a bit of excitement, but I certainly like to have at least an element of romance - and a positive ending. Fully fledged crime readers do not like romance messing up their crime. I have been told that often. I was amused to read a review of Stuart Pawson complaining about this, when to me hero Charlie's romantic failures were only an element of the story. And they were failures. Poor Charlie! They would not like mine! Romantic suspense is my favourite genre, which is why I write it, but it is not the only thing I read. Location is important. I like scenery and I love food. TA Williams is especially good for that. Lots of delectable Italian grub. Many of the books have animals in them, also enjoyable. I think there might be a post in the future on elements that make a romantic/cosy crime.  I was thinking too that the books divide between real life situations - contemporary or historical - which involve research and those with imagined settings which require world building. They all take the reader on a journey. Which is what reading is all about.