Jennifer Thomson's Blog, page 13

5 Lessons I've learnt writing a novel (so you don't have to)

Writing a novel can seem like an arduous task.But there are ways to make it easier, especially with a bit of pre-planning and organisation.
This is what I learnt writing Vile City, the first book in my Detective in a Coma series.
Plan or you'll fail.
1. You need to be able to tell at a glance what's in every chapter. That includes plot and character development. Unless you're blessed with a photographic memory (if you are, I envy you) there are a few ways to do this. You can have a timeline on paper or a spreadsheet on your computer. I prefer to have a summary to go with each chapter on a Word document. I constantly update this and when I’m editing I print it out and constantly refer to it.
Get those character details right, or they'll be trouble.
2. If your characters are going to be in a series do a character profile for each character. This should cover character, background and appearance. I reserve several pages in a notebook I keep for DI Waddell, his coma stricken pal DC Stevie Campbell (who talks to Waddell even although nobody else can hear) & Co for each character in my Detective in a Coma books. I add details as I write each book. I've just finished book three.
You need to have pertinent details of your characters quickly to hand so you can access them without slowing down your writing by having to search through text for that one detail that you need.
How many times have they been married? Do they have kids and if so what are their names? If they were in an accident who'd be their next of kin? What colour is their hair?You need to know these things so you won't suddenly change your balding, thrice divorced, childless bachelor into someone with enviable hair, two kids and a first wife.

3. Keep a firm grip on the continuity.You need to be consistent. No changing characters names halfway through your book. Keep an eye on the details - is your character sitting down when they've recently complained of a back injury and said they couldn't sit down?
In one of my earlier versions of Vile City, I had Shelley Craig who gets kidnapped in the book, deliberately leaving behind a necklace with a charm based on a Monopoly playing piece in one of the places she'd been kept. When my main character DI Waddell finds it the charm on the necklace had changed.


4. Save your first draft and subsequent drafts to at least three places (or four or five...).We've all done it haven't we - toiled over our writing only to forget to save the new changes we've made or lost it all when our computer went nuts/was hit with a virus/decided that it hated us.
There is nothing worse than losing hours, days and even weeks of hard graft and somebody saying: "Hey didn’t you back it up?" when you sit there looking sheepish because you haven't.
That's why it's important to save your work at least once a day to at least three places - I send my work to two different emails, save it to Dropbox and save it on my laptop and tablet. That way if something goes wrong I won't lose work. I also save my WIP to all these places every time I do any revamping or substantial writing. 

5. Always edit on paper.Trust me on this, when you read on a laptop or tablet screen you miss mistakes and because it's your writing your brain can trick you into thinking you've written something different to what you have.

For example - I once wrote that a character was wearing a violent jumpsuit rather than a violet one. Major difference. Don’t let your jumpsuit get violent:)


About the author Jennifer's first novel, Vile City, which ironically will be published a few years after the second and third ones she wrote were is out on May 11th and will be launched at Waterstones in Glasgow’s busy Sauchiehall Street the same day starting at 7pm. 

Vile City is published by Caffeine Nights and available for pre-order now https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vile-City-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson/dp/1910720739  https://www.amazon.com/Vile-City-Jennifer-Lee-Thomson/dp/1910720739 
You can meet her on Twitter @jenthom72 or on Facebook

She also writes fiction as Jenny Thomson. 

Little Boy Lost - Scotland's Missing Persons Files - Sandy Davidson

The 3-year-old has been missing for 10 years
There's so much talk about missing Madeline McCann who was 3-years-old when her parents inexplicably left her and her and her and 2-year-old twin siblings in a hotel room in Portugal to go to a tapas bar with friends.

The little girl's disappearance remains unsolved 10 years on. But although it may be one of the most reported missing person cases of all time, it's by far not one of the longest unsolved disappearances of a child from the UK.


Sandy Davidson went missing 41 years ago


Visit the Police Scotland site and there's a grainy black and white image of a wee boy that's almost too difficult to make out because it's so old.

Sandy Davidson has been missing since April 23rd, 1976. He was last seen when he was just 3-years-old.

Sandy was playing in the garden of his grandmother's home in Irvine with his little sister Donna who was 2 and the family dog. It's believed that the dog ran away and Sandy chased after the pooch. The little boy hasn't been seen since.

Despite a thorough search by police and members of the public, they found no trace of the wee boy.

But the authorities have never stopped searching for Sandy and nor has his little sister who was with him that day. Police even released a photo of how Sandy would look today.


How Sandy would look now


So, what could have happened to the little boy lost? 
Theories abound. Could he have been taken by a stranger, a neighbour even? Sandy's parents believe a lonely man who wanted a son took theirs. A man was seen near where Sandy was delivering leaflets.

Work on the new building estate nearby was halted to search for Sandy. Could he have had an accident and ended up being buried in the cement? A new primary school was also being constructed. The school was demolished in 2004, but reports claim authorities refused to search for the missing child's body in the rubble.

Or, could he have drowned in a river close to his grandparents' home whilst he was chasing his pet dog? If he did, why has his body never been found?


New development
Two years ago, a man claimed he was abducted and violently abused by a teenage girl from the same area around the same time Sandy disappeared. See story here

Sandy would be 44 today. He could have had a family. Been a father. A grandfather by now.

But, Sandy Davidson is a wee boy frozen in time. A child who will never age. It seems almost certain that he met with a sad end. Whether it was an accident or someone caused that premature end to a lovely child's life we may never know.


Do you now what happened to the 3-year-old?
Anyone with information can contact Police Scotland on 101. They have the case listed on their website

The family also set up a Facebook page to try and find out what happened to Sandy.

13 Reasons Why 13 Reasons Why doesn't glamorise suicide

***Be warned, this article contains spoilers.***



Like so many people I've been engrossed in the show about a teenage girl called Hannah Baker who takes her own life and leaves 13 cassette tapes behind explaining why.

In some way it seems like the tapes are there to get revenge on everybody who's wronged Hannah and driven her to commit suicide.

There's also been accusations that it glamorises suicide. That is one accusation that I don't agree with.

Here's 13 reasons why 13 Reasons Why doesn't glamorise suicide in my opinion -


The loss of a young life isn't glamorous.
1- There's nothing glamorous about a bright, intelligent girl like Hannah with her whole future ahead of her killing herself because she can't take life any more.

2- The life of the teens depicted on 13 Reasons Why is terrible. The pressures on the students is immense and instead of supporting each other most of them tear each other apart. Bullying is seen as normal.

3- Anything you do or say can be twisted and around the school in seconds thanks to mobile phones and the Internet. Hannah has her first kiss, next she knows the seemingly nice guy turns out to be a jerk who claims she did more than just kiss him.


The obnoxious Bryce.
4- There's nothing glamorous about a girl being raped by her boyfriend's best friend whilst she's incapacitated by alcohol as her boyfriend who should be protecting her walks away. At a time when there's research showing that many young people have a difficult time knowing when rape is rape it highlights something very important.

5- The girls in the show can be real mean girls. One minute they're helping you get home safely, the next they're driving away from an accident that takes out a stop sign and very soon after causes an accident where someone dies.

6- It shows the effects of suicide on the ones left behind.
Watching the heartbreak Hannah's parents go through, especially her mother is gut wrenching. With Clay who loved Hannah, there's also a sense of great loss and of what might have been for him and Hannah.

7- The immaturity of the boys compared to the girls is frequently highlighted throughout the show. They rarely take responsibility for any of their actions or feel any guilt. There's always a sense that if you're good at sport and popular at school you can do whatever the hell you want to.

8- Girls face unbelievable pressure. Either they're frigid or easy. There seems to be no middle ground. And it's not just guys who are judging and rating them, it's the girls who should know better. So much for the sisterhood.

9- The students seem to live in a parallel universe to the teachers and parents and have no support system. They don't let their parents into their lives. Instead they bury all of their pain with drugs and alcohol and by being mean to their peers and oblivious to their pain.

10-  Teachers do try to help, but not near enough and they seem oblivious to what's going on right under their noses. The bullying, the peer pressure, the drugs and alcohol.


Even the seemingly nice guys screw Hannah over.
11- It shows the characters as they really are warts and all i.e not in the least bit glamorous or people we would want to be. Even the wonderful Clay, our main character isn't perfect. Throughout 13 Reasons Why there's a strong sense that if only he'd told Hannah how he felt she would still be alive.

12- We wouldn't want to be anyone in the show. They may be young but none of them seem particularly happy. Hannah killed herself, but it could have just as easily have been anyone else in the show.

13- You spend the whole time watching the show with a sense of deep sadness, a feeling that you want to grab all of the young cast by the scruff of the neck and tell them school doesn't last forever. You have the rest of your life.

Conclusion - Whatever anyone thinks, it has to be a good thing that teenage suicide is at least being discussed. Too many young people are taking their own lives. It's something we need to talk about and if shows like 13 Reasons Why make that happen it has got to be a good thing.

On a personal note, as someone who was bullied mercilessly at school and the place where I lived and who contemplated suicide, I found the show cathartic and grittily realistic. 

Scotland's Missing Case Files: Moira Anderson - The little girl who never went home

60 years ago Moira Anderson disappearedThere can be few crimes more heinous than the murder of a child. When that's compounded by that child's body never being found, it's particularly cruel to the child's family who are denied the chance to lay their loved one to rest.

Sixty long years ago, a wee girl called Moira Anderson left her grandmother's house in Coatbridge in Scotland to go to the shops. She never returned. It was during a heavy snowstorm and the 11-year-old was last seen boarding a Baxter's bus.

This is not so much a case of who killed the little girl because there seems no doubt about that.

Her killerConvicted paedophile Alexander Gartshore was driving the bus that day. The bus that tragic Moira got on. Later in the very same year, he was jailed for raping a 17-year-old babysitter.

But Gartshore will never confess to police that he killed Moira or be held accountable because he died in 2006. But there seems few doubts that he murdered the child.

Convicted child abuser James Gallogley said his former friend Gartshore boasted of murdering Moira. He wasn't alone in believing the former soldier took Moira from this world.

Gartshore's very own daughter crime writer Sandra Brown was convinced he was the killer and campaigned to have her father charged. Scottish prosecutors also announced in 2014 that he would have faced prosecution for the schoolgirl's murder if he were still alive.


Police search the canal for traces of Moira
Where he put Moira's body nobody knows. But the search goes on but it might not have had to. In 1957 a man was spotted carrying a large heavy sack towards a canal. The sighting was reported to police but they never acted on it.

The search for Moira In 2013, a grave was excavated at Monkland Cemetery in Coatbridge after it was believed that evil Gartshore buried Moira's body in the family plot of an acquaintance. But nothing was found.

As I write this, there's been another update. Along with divers, Police Scotland are retrieving objects from a canal for assessment by forensic experts in the search for the schoolgirl.

Maybe one day very soon, a little girl called Moira can make it home and finally be laid to rest at last.

Moira's memory will live on  Footnote - Moira Anderson's name continues to live on through the foundation that bears her name and helps survivors of child abuse. 

You can learn more about the foundation here.

Scotland's Missing Crime Files: The disappearance of devoted mum Arlene Fraser

This is another case that’s always haunted me and inspired to write crime like Vile City. 

Tragic Arlene - was she killed by her husband Nat Fraser?
Pretty mum-of-two Arlene Fraser was just 33-years-old when she was last seen in the Scottish town of Elgin in 1998. Since that day she was never seen again.

Picture the scene in Arlene's house. It looked as if it'd been abandoned suddenly. 

The vacuum cleaner was still plugged in and the washing machine had been recently used.
Could Arlene have left and be living somewhere else?This was a theory that was touted by Nat Fraser and his defence. 

If Arlene had left she hadn't been prepared.  

Her medication for Crohn's disease, her glasses and contact lenses were still in the house.
Would she really leave home without them? Then there were her children. Would the devoted mum have left without them? Not by choice.

Just weeks before her disappearance, her violent husband Nat Fraser had throttled her for coming home late. He was sentenced to eighteen months for that assault but that only happened two years after the assault on his wife which was first treated as attempted murder. 

Had he been convicted sooner she might not have been killed. 

Tragically, Arlene had been set to divorce her violent husband and start a new life. 

She was never given that chance.


What happened to Arlene?

Initially her disappearance was treated as a missing persons case. The detective in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Simpson said: "Something criminal has taken place here. Arlene has been the victim of a crime. I am of the opinion that she's dead. There's no indication that she's living somewhere else." 

The police believe Nat Fraser paid someone to wipe his wife off the face of the earth. During the search for her, he was accused of not being interested in her whereabouts as if he already knew where she was.

In 2003, he was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 25 years in jail. 

In 2011, he successfully challenged his conviction and it was quashed. But in 2012 in a new trial he was again convicted of Arlene's murder. In 2013, he lost yet another appeal. 


DOUBT So, why was there so much doubt over the husband's conviction?There was no body and Nat Fraser did not commit the murder himself. 

The prosecution argued that Nat Fraser accused his wife of having a lover and decided that he wanted her dead to avoid giving her half his fortune. What's more Fraser was willing to pay someone £15, 000 to kill her. 

Weeks before she vanished, Nat Fraser is alleged to have said to his wife: "If you are not going to live with me, you will not be living with anyone."

Chillingly that came true. 

After she went missing, her son Jamie, who was only ten at the time, left a heartbreaking note for his mum. It read."Mother, where are u?" 

He'd never get an answer to that question. 

Arlene's body has never been found so her children and the rest of her family don't have a grave to visit. It's believed that her body was disposed off after she was murdered. Maybe even fed to pigs or burnt. 
What do Arlene's family think? Arlene's mother Isabelle Thompson spoke after Fraser's last appeal: "Hopefully we can get on with our lives, it's been never-ending."In a shock documentary on Channnel 4, in 2013 Arlene's daughter Natalie Fraser who was just five-years-old when her mum went missing, said she was "100 per cent" sure that her dad's friend Hector Dick and not her dad Nat Fraser, who was guilty of killed her mum. 

Hector had testified against her dad. 
Why would Hector Dick kill Arlene? Did he think he was doing a friend a favour? Or, did he fall for Arlene and get upset when she spurned his advances? 

There has been no evidence pointing to that.

All of the evidence points to Nat Fraser arranging the murder of his wife. 

Read about the documentary here

I'm so excited - Vile City is NOW available on pre-order

Sorry, I haven't been updating you on my progress as regularly as I would like. 

I'd love to say that I'm really a superhero and have been whizzing around saving people and bringing down bad guys. Hey, we can all dream, can't we? 


Sadly, what I haven't been doing is being a superhero. 
What I've really been doing is working on Vigilante City, book 3 in my Detective in a Coma series featuring Inspector Duncan Waddell. A crime thriller where people who seem to have gotten away with murder are being targeted by a vigilante who kills them and shoves a newspaper cutting about the victim's alleged crime down their throats. 

Book 2, Cannibal City - where a killer goes around Glasgow kidnapping men, keeping them alive for weeks and then force-feeding them before killing them and eating their livers - is already written. 





Vile City Pre-order  
The good news though is that Vile City, the first ever book in the series is now available for your entertainment on pre-order in paperback. 

Sorry, but it's only available in the UK at the moment. Here's the link.

You can read an extract here. 




Vile City tells Shelley's story of how she tries to make it home.

What's it about then? Vile City tells two parallel stories - Detective Inspector Waddell who's trying to catch a killer dubbed as the Glasgow Grabber and two, Shelley Carig, one of his victims who'll do anything to stay alive. 

I also received my copies of Vile City today and I'm so excited. Not only is the cover amazing, its also the first book I've had published with my full name Jennifer Lee Thomson. 

All of my other books have been written as Jenny Thomson (my crime thriller trilogy featuring gutsy Nancy Kerr and her former special forces boyfriend, Tommy McIntyre) and Jennifer Thomson (my self-help books, including Living Cruelty Free: Live a more Compassionate Life and Bullying - A Parent's guide.

My first book coming out with my full name is very important to me as one of the last things my dad said to me before he died after a long, brave battle with cancer was "Why don't you use your middle name?"

So, Vile city and all the other books to come are for you, dad


My late dad in his Elvis wig.

Solved at last - The World's End Murders

Christine Eadie and Helen Scott 
It sounds like something out of a horror movie. Two best pals go out for a drink together. The 17-year-olds are having such a great time they didn't leave until closing time.

It was October 1977 and the two best pals were called Christine Eadie and Helen Scott.

That pub was called The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town and for two teenage friends it would be the last time they were seen alive. After they left, Helen and Christine were never seen alive again.

This case has haunted me ever since I first heard about it. I just couldn't understand why two young women with their whole lives ahead of them who did the safe thing that all girls are told to do by their parents and stick together, in a busy, public place could still come to such harm.




What made it worse was that years went by and their killer/killers weren't found. How could that happen in any decent society?

The next day, Christine's naked body was discovered in Gosford Bay, East Lothian, by people out walking. Helen's naked body was found in a field.

Both girls had suffered horrendously before they died. They'd been brutally beaten, gagged, tied up, raped and strangled. Their bodies were just left out in the open and they were naked, showing the callous disregard their killer had for them. Covering up bodies normally suggests remorse.

Heartbreakingly, the two dead best friends were found six miles apart.


The police even staged a reconstruction
The police diligently came up with a list of 500 suspects and took over 13,000 statements from the public. But despite their efforts, the killer or killers were never apprehended. Witnesses said they'd seen the girls with two men, but despite appeals from the police the men were never traced.

Police knew they were looking for two men as different type of knots were used to tie up Christine and Helen.

A breakthrough came in 1997 when the police's cold case unit decided that further forensic work needed to be undertaken in the case and they found the DNA profile of a man, discovered on both girls. Unfortunately all 500 suspects were eliminated.

It wasn't until 2004 after the DNA was retested that they got a match to Edinburgh man Angus Sinclair.

He stood trial in 2007 for the World's End murders but the case collapsed.

It wasn't until he was convicted after a trial in 2014 that tragic Christine and Helen got justice at last. And it finally came out what a truly loathsome individual Sinclair was and he was dubbed Scotland's Worst Serial Killer.


Vile Angus Sinclair
Sinclair's record -

1961 - aged 16,  convicted of raping and strangling neighbour Catherine Reehill, 8. He phoned for an ambulance himself saying, "A wee girl fell down the stairs."

1977 - Believed to have murdered six women in 7 months, including Helen and Christine.

1978 - murdered 17-year-old Mary Gallacher.

1978 - guilty of raping and sexually assaulting eleven children aged 6-14

2001 - Convicted of murdering Mary Gallacher, 17.

Happy dance time - Vile City gets a publication date

PLAY THE MUSIC AND DANCE:) 
Today it's happy dance time as the wonderful Darren Laws at Caffeine Nights has told me that Vile City will be published on May 11th, 2017. 

It's the first novel featuring tough Glasgow detective Duncan Waddell who is fast starting to despise the city he loves because of all the horrors he sees. 

I'm over the moon that my novel will finally see the light of day. 

It's been a long and winding road for Vile City. 

In 2013, I won the Scottish Association of Writers award for a novel and was delighted to win the Pitlochry Quaich ( a quaich is a Scottish drinking cup). 

The battle to find a publisher began and over the years I improved Vile city. 

Why Detective in a Coma? 
I've dubbed the book the first in the Detective in a Coma series. When I was writing the book and then re-writing it, one character wouldn't stop talking to me. A peripheral character called Stevie Campbell. 

He was a colleague and friend of Duncan Waddell and he'd been in a coma since he'd been attacked by a suspect and left bleeding to death. 

Tony Soprano spoke to his therapist, Waddell speaks to his friend who's in a coma. What's surprising is that Stevie talks back to him, but only when no one else is in the room.

Has Waddell gone mad? Or is Stevie playing mind games?



You can decided when you read Vile City when it comes out on May 11th, 2017. 

You can read an extract from Vile City here. 

Get the Crime Files box set for 99c or 99p (Limited offer)

For a short time only, the Crime Files box set featuring the first 3 books (Hell To Pay, Throwaways and Don't Come for Me) is just 99cents on Amazon.comand 99p on Amazon.co.uk

A bit about the box set 
HELL TO PAY - BOOK #1 

Nancy Kerr refuses to be a victim—even when she walks in on her parents’ killers and is raped and left for dead… 

Fourteen months later, Nancy wakes up in a psychiatric hospital with no knowledge of how she got there. 

Slowly, her memory starts to return. 

Released from the institution, she has just one thing on her mind—two men brought hell to her family home. 

Now they’re in for some hell of their own… 

THROWAWAYS - BOOK #2 

Huddled in a doorway, in a blonde wig, and my best Pretty Woman outfit, I'm already soaked to the skin. As downward spirals go, this was bad. 

But I wasn’t here because I was reduced to turning tricks for a living. I was here to catch a killer… 

Throwaways. 

That's the word they're using for the four Glasgow sex workers who've gone missing. But two people do care. 

When Suzy Henderson was found dead in a landfill site, her eyes pecked out by crows, they found the finger of another missing woman wedged in her throat. 

Nancy Kerr and Tommy McIntyre are on the case and they won’t stop until they find the missing women. 

But, how can they trust anyone when they can’t even trust each other? 

DON'T COME FOR ME - BOOK #3 

What if you were charged with your boyfriend’s murder, but you knew he wasn’t even dead? 

That's the position rape survivor Nancy Kerr finds herself in. Now, she faces a race against time to find Tommy before she’s convicted of his murder. 

But, someone doesn’t want her or Tommy’s Special Forces buddy, Eric from finding out the truth. 

And getting too close could get them killed. 

Why Glenn shouldn't Die in The Walking Dead

Don't let it be GlennWe've waited such a long time after being left in heartbreaking limbo over what's been a very long summer.

Will Glenn be the one to die like he does in the comics at the end of Negan's bat Lucille?

If you're asking me, the last thing I want is the TV show to follow the comics.

For one thing, it makes it too predictable and I want to be surprised.

Killing off such a major character as Glenn would be a death too far. Tyreeses's death in the show was pointless apart from letting someone direct a Tarrantino-esque episode. 

The show simply doesn't have enough major characters to lose Glenn, one of say only half a dozen characters that could have a stand alone episode and keep you interested. Apart from flashes from Aaron, the Alexandrians have been a boring, whining, inspid lot. 


When Rick's new squeeze and her two kids died, did we care? 


Glenn feel like he's the one person on the show who represents us. Maybe it's because we've been with him from the beginning.
From the minute the former pizza delivery boy arrived on the scene and saved Rick Grimes. To the moment he finally had to break his code of having never killed a human being at one of Negan's outposts.


So, who should Negan kill?
I love horror movies, so this is how I'd like things to go -

Negan swings his baseball bat like a pantomime villain and aims it at the man he perceives as the biggest physical threat.

Someone who glares him down whilst everybody watches on helplessly or looks away.

Somebody who doesn't quiver in fear.

That man's Abraham.

The shock of what's happening makes Maggie go into premature labour.

The baby comes out stillborn and starts to eat her. After the first bite, Maggie's fate is sealed.


Meet Maggie's baby 
As everybody watches on in horror, Negan merely smiles. When you're a sociopath and kill without any regret or emotion, watching a zombie baby eat it's mom ain't that shocking.


How would that change The Walking Dead universe?
1. It could mean that since the outbreak most babies cannot be born safely. Lori was okay because she might have become pregnant by Shane/Rick before the outbreak.

2. With Maggie gone, Glenn would have to find a way to carry on. Would he turn to the dark side? I sure hope so. It'd give us a chance to see another side to him.

3. Carol would come back in full psycho killer mode, something I hope she will do when she hears about what Negan did and how he steals men's partners and forces them to sleep with him in exchange for food (that's if his character follows the comic).

4. Morgan would need to realise his "All life is precious" mantra should be "Some life is precious and the other kind needs a bullet to the head." We could get to see more of that stick action.

So, what do you think folks, how would you like to see The Walking Dead premiere go?