Greenway - Agatha Christie's Holiday Home

 This is the last post from my recent trip to the English Riviera. As part of the Crime Writers' conference a number of extra curricular activities were organised, I jumped at the chance to spend Saturday afternoon at Greenways. It was a perfect day to visit, as I think the photos below will show - bluebells, primroses  and ramsons (wild garlic) were in bloom in swathes under the trees, along with magnolia and rhododendrons. The grounds were glorious, on a glorious day, and the house, which is now in the charge of the National Trust, was fascinating. It also revealed a slightly spooky, writerly "thing", which I am trying to get my head around.  

For the work in progress I have created a wealthy family of collectors - some of them rather eccentric - who have been amassing their own particular treasures over generations.  With some it was first editions, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, alchemical tracts. One very significant collection from the 1920s is of Egyptian artifacts, which is central to the story. I decided that at least one of the collections would be slightly unusual, so I decided on the theme of clowns  - art works, sculpture, theatre costumes and posters - anything that would attract a collector, with the idea that some of the things might have creepy overtones - thank you Stephen King.  When I began to research art work that would have been modern and cutting edge at the time it was collected, I found that pieces by artists like Picasso and Jean Cocteau that were labeled as clowns, proved to be Pierrots and other characters from the Commedia dell'arte rather than the red-nosed circus clowns we are more used to now. This fitted in with older collectable art from French painter Jean Antoine Watteau, whom I had just studied in an excellent on-line course from the Wallace Collection in London. Watteau had a fondness for the Commedia characters, including Pierrot and Harlequin.  This was fine - I shifted my focus and we were good to go. The "Clowns" have their own important part in the story.  

It was very disconcerting, on visiting Greenways to discover that not only were the generations of Christie family great collectors, but that Dame Agatha had a lovely collection of Commedia figures that she had inherited which were on display  at the house. I really didn't know any of this. Or did I? Had I heard about it and forgotten until something surfaced from the past? Was it coincidence? Was it some sort of ESP? I know didn't change my plan from the circus/Stephen King type clown until I saw those pictures from Picasso.  

Strange and disconcerting. But that's life as a writer.

Greenways, in Devon

Beside the River Dart

Bluebells and ramsons

The upper garden, with lawns. There is a walled garden and tennis court too. 

A Trip to the English Riviera

 Ever since I began the "Riviera" series I've had it in mind to set a book on the English Riviera. Now I've finally done it. The WIP opens in Torquay, which is not only on the Riviera but also has numerous connections with the "Queen of Crime" Agatha Christie. The book has Christie type overtones as it begins with a house party during which a valuable necklace goes missing. Add in that the necklace is alleged to have belonged to Cleopatra, among others, and you can tell how much fun I have had with this. And don't worry - the grand finale takes place in Monte Carlo/Monaco - so there is some Mediterranean sunshine in the mix too. 

My trip to Torquay for the Crime Writers' Conference gave me the opportunity to prowl the town and  get some pictures for atmosphere. I thought I would share a few of them below. 

The Pavilion that marks the entrance to the pier.

The harbour/marina - lots of fabulous boats

Dame Agatha herself comemorated in a metal likeness

A Criminally Good Weekend

 I'm just back from the Crime Writers' Annual Conference - an "annual" conference that has been in abeyance since 2020! It was good to finally see friends and visit the English Riviera - Torquay - which I really wanted to do for research for the work in progress. What can I say - the welcome was warm, the weather was perfect, the company was excellent and the speakers ditto. I prowled around the town, getting the pictures I wanted, visited Greenways, Agatha Christie's old home - the town and surroundings are inescapably linked to the Queen of Crime - I ate super meals that I didn't have to cook, including posh hotel breakfasts and locally caught fish, and generally had a perfect weekend. I now have builders demolishing my bathroom, so I'm glad I enjoyed it!

What did I do? 

The conference location was the Imperial Hotel, a grand old fashioned place, of the kind I adore. A little faded now, but still impressive. Agatha Christie was a native of Torquay and attended many social functions at the hotel, and also used it in a number of books, under the guise of "The Majestic" Poirot and Miss Marple have sat on its terraces

The "Majestic" Imperial

Dame Agatha is celebrated with a plaque
 in the foyer

The impressive interior -
my idea of the perfect hotel 

The dining room - a view of the sea - and just look
at the linen and silverware!

I arrived on Friday afternoon to find I had a lovely room, with its own balcony and sea view, and treated myself to afternoon tea sitting in the glassed-in lounge with another sea view. 

The hotel grounds 

The view from my balcony

Amazing afternoon tea

The tea was amazing, arriving in it's own set of shelves -  sandwiches, sausage roll and crab tart, scones and  cake. 

Friday evening was taken up with a reception at the local museum. As I had decanted my essentials into a tiny handbag I didn't take the camera, so was not able to photograph the Egyptian exhibits which I had not expected and which would have been very appropriate for the WIP. You will just have to imagine statues of gods and a sarcophagus. 

On Saturday morning we had a selection of speakers covering law enforcement from a number of angles. Saturday afternoon was a trip to Greenway Agatha Christies' old home, now run by the National Trust The house was fascinating and the grounds were beautiful - full of spring flowers. I'm going to post next week on that - I think it deserves special attention. Ditto the pictures I took on my ramble around Torquay - I can tell you about the WIP too. 

Saturday night was the gala dinner during which the long lists for the CWA Dagger Awards were announced. There were several friends in the line up and I got a special buzz being in the room to hear Alis Hawkin's name as a contender for the Historical Dagger. Alis is a guiding light for Crime Cymru - the collective a Welsh Crime Writers of which I am a member 

The Torquay marina

All too soon it was Sunday - speakers from the Society of Authors and an interesting presentation on self publishing from CWA members who are doing it for themselves. All too soon the official weekend was over, but I was able to go on the town to prowl  for location shots and then sat for a while in the sunshine on my balcony, reading. 

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. 

The nature of the crime?

The Crime Readers' Association, which is the readers' arm of the UK Crime Writers' Association, has a swish new website. A poem in monochrome and red. There's a link at the bottom of this post if you're looking for some last minute ideas for Xmas gifts. Or suggestions for something nefarious to curl up with yourself,  after the port and the turkey. The site has an A to Z of authors (including me ) which got me thinking of the many different types of crime novel there are. As many as there are authors? Whole theses could (and possibly have) been written about our interest in crime as a form of entertainment, but it's a fact the for large numbers of us, a good crime novel is the one of the best kinds. No one wants crime, especially violent crime, in their home, but we're all prepared to import it from the library and the bookshop. Clearly there's excitement in reading about it. And the CWA has member who write all sorts of genres - police procedural, historical, elegant puzzles, thrillers. Whatever you fancy, the Crime Readers' site will probably have some ideas.

Me - I'm a hybrid. (That's posh for mongrel.) For a start, my books have a romance in them, with all the attendant ups and downs.  And they are thrillers. I was thinking about what makes a thriller. I'm sure screeds have been written about that too, but for a rough and ready start point I'd say that the germ that kicks it off has to be something out of place, that has the potential to cause fear  and/or harm - that might be crime or possibly something paranormal. After that the author just has to keep you turning the pages. 'Just '- she says nonchalantly! I like the danger and excitement element - and it's also useful for keeping the romance on the boil. Staying alive and running away from the bad guys is an excellent way of keeping the hero and heroine together. But I also like the puzzle part - I'm a fan of Agatha Christie and Robert Goddard in that respect. I have to say that puzzle plotting the best way in the world to paint yourself into a corner and tear your hair out until you find a way out. But when it works ...

So that's my take - romantic suspense.

But there's a lot of other stuff out there ...


http://www.thecra.co.uk/

If it's good enough for Agatha Christie ...

I mentioned on this blog, on 16th January, that I seem to have been ambushed by a new idea for a book. I'm happy to say that it is still hanging in there and getting more complicated by the minute. It's staking a pretty strong claim to be the next thing written. It arrived with quite a bit of the story in place, but with the inevitable holes that need filling.

I've joked a lot since then about a necessary part of creating a book - staring into space and calling it plot planning, but actually that is not so far from the truth. I do like having the shape of the book, many of the scenes, and details of dialogue fixed in my mind before I start to write anything down. But I've never been quite sure where planning ends and procrastination begins. Am I fooling myself, saying that it has to be pretty much organised before I put pen to paper?

I recently re-read one of my old library of Agatha Christie classics - The Man in the Brown Suit - and in order to find out some of the background to how it was written I looked up the references in John Curran's brilliant book Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks - which uses the notebooks she left to give fascinating detail on how the author planned and drafted her stories.

Imagine my delight when I found a passage (on page 67) quoting from a radio interview, recorded n 1955, when Agatha Christie confessed that she didn't have much method in her writing - that the real work was done before the book was written. (My italics) It was then that she spent time 'thinking' and 'worrying' about the development of the story, and that the process might take a long time.

Which is more or less what happens to me too.

So - my method of working is not as unusual as I thought it was. Which is very nice to know.