C.J. Sutton's Blog, page 3
May 15, 2018
Writing Fear – Nicola Slade
Fears and how to deal with them by Nicola Slade
One of the downsides of an overactive creative imagination is that you picture the worst in every ghastly detail. Luckily, the upside is that, as a writer, you can use that overactive creative imagination to live out – and work out – your fears by projecting them on to a character. And sorting it all out at a distance.
The things I fear are legion. I am, or could be if I let rip, be frightened of everything, every single day. And night. I manage the fear by letting my characters work it out for me!
Along with most people, my worst fear is of something happening to the people I love. Shivery, scary idea, so what to do? My solution is usually to kill off the nearest and dearest of my protagonists and say: What will you do now?
My Victorian sleuth, Charlotte Richmond, has had several shattering tragedies before she even steps off the ship from India, so the first book (Murder Most Welcome) begins with her arrival in Southampton. Because she is resourceful and clever she copes well, and distraction arrives in the shape of the occasional corpse – always something that will take your mind off your troubles.
The woman who becomes her best friend is delicate and, by the third book in the series, is clearly dying – more loss, more anguish piled on poor Charlotte, who suffers so I don’t have to. (Fingers crossed). And to make things even worse, her potential love interest is married, which is not something I’ve ever had to worry about, but it gives Charlotte a change from tripping over those pesky corpses.
I’m scared of heights. I wobble and feel sick if I stand on a chair, let alone anything higher. How to make that one go away? Step forward Harriet Quigley, a splendidly upright and principled retired headmistress and star of three contemporary mysteries. On the face of it, you’d think nothing would faze her, but she too is afraid of heights. And lows – in the shape of being trapped underground and other claustrophobic situations. Solution? Trap Harriet underground and see how she gets out of that. She does, of course, whereupon she has to cope with being stuck on a high roof and confronting a villain who wants to shove her over the edge.
As people get older – and I admit to having grandchildren, so I also have to admit that I’m no spring chicken – they fear loneliness and loss of control over their own lives. I’m not worried about being lonely, but the stories of elderly people being abandoned, mistreated, and totally alone, haunt us all. My first published novel, Scuba Dancing, a romantic comedy, deals with this when a group of older people living in a village frankly admit to being lonely and set up a social club which soon sees them begin fundraising. But who is to benefit from this activity?
Another solution to the prospect of a doddery old age was to set Harriet Quigley’s first adventure (Murder Fortissimo) in a very upmarket convalescent home for older people. She’s recovering from an operation and doesn’t want her friends to know – but everyone there seems to be on edge because of one unpleasant resident. More bodies (including one spectacular murder weapon!).
Finally, my most recent novel, The House at Ladywell, has the protagonist, Freya, coming to terms with unresolved grief as she settles into an unexpected inheritance. Using glimpses from the past the reader discovers how Freya’s ancestors dealt with their own fears in periods of history when women had little control over their own destiny. My solution shows that these feisty women did what they had to do to survive and keep their families and home safe even if – at times – they had to resort to murder!
The House at Ladywell – click here to buy now
A hare carved in stone, and the scent of flowers in a house full of echoes – can Freya’s inheritance help her to leave the past behind?
‘Had I gone completely crazy that first day? To open the door, take one astonished look round, and decide on the spot that I would live there? To fall in love with a house?’
When Freya Gibson inherits an old, run-down property she has no idea she is the last in a long line of redoubtable women, including the Tudor nun who built the house. Unknown to Freya, these women, over centuries, fought with whatever weapons
came to hand – deception, endurance, even murder – to preserve their home and family.
Freya falls in love with the house, but her inheritance includes an enigmatic letter telling her to ‘restore the balance’ of the Lady’s Well. Besides this, the house seems to be haunted by the scent of flowers.
In the past, the Lady’s Well was a place of healing, and Freya soon feels safe and at home, but she has demons of her own to conquer before she can accept the happiness that beckons.
For more from Nicola Slade:
May 8, 2018
Writing Fear – Miriam Drori
A Fear of People by Miriam Drori
“Our fears define us,” writes C.J. Sutton.
“Whether they force us to be courageous or stop us from progressing, our fears often decide how we choose to live.”
I have to admit to the truth of that. Despite my assertions that I’m more than SA, that SA is just a small part of me, a layer that tries to conceal the real me, the fact is that it does define me, even now, after all the years I’ve lived with it, becoming acquainted with it and then getting to know it intimately.
Because, in my view, fear is exactly what SA – social anxiety – is. It’s a fear of other people, and in particular of what those other people think of me.
In this post, I won’t go into how or why it began for me, but I will say that it took thirty-five years from when it planted its unwanted seed in me until I discovered it was a known and common disorder. When I finally understood and joined an online forum for “sufferers,” I noticed that each person who joined after me wrote the same thing: “I thought I was the only one.”
That’s when an idea began to form in my head and grew into this:
I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT RAISING AWARENESS OF SOCIAL ANXIETY.
Because everyone should understand this common but little-known disorder, whether they have it themselves or know someone who has it or encounters someone who has it. Understanding would lessen the derision and raise compassion. It would enable ‘sufferers’ to meet others with similar thoughts and feelings, and to find help.
How has this fear defined me? Unlike most, it hasn’t caused me to avoid people or places or events. I like socialising too much, even though I often mess it up. It has caused me to be called quiet and shy – terms I’ve never liked having attached to me. It’s made talking anything from awkward to nigh impossible, the worst cases being job interviews.
But there have also been positives. Social anxiety is what motivated me to begin writing, because my most natural method of raising awareness is by writing, whether in non-fiction, as in my book Social Anxiety Revealed, or in my current novel-in-progress. It has also pushed me into giving talks, which I actually enjoy. I’m much better at giving a prepared speech to a hundred people than at talking spontaneously to one.
Yes, for good and for bad, the fear that is social anxiety has informed many aspects of the way I’ve chosen to live.
Social Anxiety Revealed – Out Now – Click here to purchase from Amazon on Kindle or Paperback
Fear of other people? Most of us feel this occasionally, when giving a presentation or being grilled in a job interview. This is not social anxiety disorder.
Fear of what other people think of you? We have all felt this, too. It is why we dress as we do and generally try to behave in a way that is expected of us. This is not social anxiety disorder either.
But when those fears become so prevalent that they take over your life? When they cause you to hide away, either literally or by not revealing your real self? When you keep quiet in an attempt to avoid those raised eyebrows and the possible thoughts behind them? That is social anxiety disorder.
And it is much more common than you might think. In the mental health table, it comes third after alcoholism and depression and yet most people don’t even know it exists.
If you have social anxiety disorder, this book is for you.
Even if you don’t have social anxiety disorder, you might have a friend, a relative or a work colleague who does. You might see it developing in your son, your daughter, or a child you teach. This book is for you, too.
Social Anxiety Revealed is created by people who yearn to ditch all these problems and live their lives to the full.
For more from Miriam, visit www.miriamdrori.com
May 5, 2018
Writing Fear – Joan Livingston
Fear Starts Somewhere by Joan Livingston
My mother spoke in a high, tight voice and shook the newspaper as if it were a weapon when she followed me into my bedroom. Three boys, she said, were found dead in the woods. She wanted to show me their pictures, so I would know it could happen to me.
I slid beneath my bed, landing near the wall, so my mother would have to reach to get me. I lay among the toys and clothes discarded there.
My mother’s slippers paced below the edge of the bedspread. The week before I got punished for taking a short cut home from school along the back stonewall of the cemetery. “That wasn’t safe,” she had yelled when my sister told on me. “Strangers could get you there.”
She began reading bits from the newspaper about the three boys, how they lived a couple of towns over. They were friends, all ten, one year older than me. They had been missing for days before the police found them, but not the person who killed them.
I shuffled my feet in protest. There was no way I was going to see a picture of their heads, bloody and cracked, or the white flesh of their dead bodies.
My mother insisted.
“You must trust me on this,” she said.
I wasn’t so sure. This was the woman who didn’t tell me I was going to have my tonsils out until we were standing on the front steps of the hospital. When we went inside, a nurse undressed me in a room with a high ceiling while a fat woman watched from her bed.
When the nurse rolled me on the gurney to the operating room, my mother followed halfway down the hall before she clung to the wall and said she couldn’t go any further.
I screamed until the ether put me under.
I didn’t get over that easily. Sometimes panic grabbed me when my mother asked me to wait in the car while she shopped or to stay in front of the store as she carried out the grocery bags. She was never coming back, I was sure. I must find the store manager to report her.
“You have to look at these boys’ faces, so you never do what they did,” she said, her voice rising. “They let some stranger trick them. They got into his car.”
It was no use. I slipped from beneath the bed. The newspaper was spread on my bed, and when finally I peeked, I felt relief. The boys’ photos had been taken in school. Their faces were clean and smiling.
“Never go with people you don’t know,” my mother said. “Promise me.”
Instead, I kept staring at the boys’ faces, so happy because they didn’t know how badly things would go.
I honestly don’t remember what happened to those boys, and now that I’m an adult, I am aware it could have been someone they knew who took them. I also know my mother meant well. She loved and didn’t want something bad to happen to me.
In my new mystery, Chasing the Case, a similar abduction is partly the inspiration for Isabel Long, a longtime journalist, to become an amateur P.I. Her first case is to solve a 28-year-old case of a woman who went missing in her town of a thousand people.
When Isabel was a child, her young cousin was abducted. The child’s remains were found years later but not the person responsible. Isabel remembers how her family felt. She recalls her intense fear it could happen to her and her sadness losing someone she loved.
Now, Isabel wants to bring closure to the missing woman’s family. And relying on the skills she developed as a journalist, she interviews people who don’t want to talk or who are unsavory characters.
She isn’t afraid.
Neither am I. Well, except for rats. They scare me something awful. But there’s a good story about why for another time.
Chasing the Case
New to the game. But that won’t stop her.
How does a woman disappear in a town of a thousand people? That’s a 28-year-old mystery Isabel Long wants to solve.
Isabel has the time to investigate. She just lost her husband and her job as a managing editor of a newspaper. (Yes, it’s been a bad year.) And she’s got a Watson – her 92-year-old mother who lives with her.
To help her case, Isabel takes a job at the local watering hole, so she can get up close and personal with those connected to the mystery.
As a journalist, Isabel never lost a story she chased. Now, as an amateur P.I., she’s not about to lose this case either
Joan’s new mystery, Chasing the Case, launches May 18. Here’s the link http://mybook.to/chasingthecase to pre-order the Kindle version or to buy the paperback now.
For more from author Joan Livingston, click here
Twitter – @joanlivingston
May 4, 2018
No Terror in the Bang
You’re sitting in the room, legs fidgeting, waiting for your name to be called. A cold sweat runs down your back, the edges of the room are hazy and all sounds are muffled as though filtered through a straw. You’re in no physical pain, but your mind is contemplating all that could go wrong in the next hour. Every possible scenario is overplayed, and every negative scenario is played twice. Your heart rate is jacked to the point that if you look down you can see your t-shirt vibrate. Nobody is taunting you, nobody is intimidating you; nobody but yourself. And then your name is called. You enter the new room, brighter than the last, and sit in the chair. Mouth open, the cold instruments examine each tooth. They apply the numbing gel. The needle, a mere prick, barely registers. In thirty minutes you’re walking out of that new room, calmed, wondering why you worked yourself up. The realisation dawns in the form of an Alfred Hitchcock quote: there is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. But the next time you wait in that room, the same feelings arise. This can be applied in many of life’s situations, but it can never lessen those feelings we get right before a feared event. That, readers, is a mystery of the human condition.
We’re more anxious as a society now than at any other time in history. Some may accredit this to the internet, or the rise of the Smartphone which has become an extension of our bodies, and both may be relevant arguments. Our fears are more accessible. Information is available with the press of a button. Ignorance is bliss, and there is no ignorance left when a child can enter YouTube researching topics that make them squirm. But shouldn’t the presence of information ease our minds somewhat?
Perhaps we can blame technology for allowing us to avoid human contact on a more regular basis. Does buying food and clothing online, which is then delivered to the door, erase necessary daily social connection? People argue over who goes up to the counter to pay; not in any way linked to financial loss, but of human interaction. Are our fears rising because there is an alternative to the daunting process of the physical conversation?
Technology has opened up opportunity. Those that do struggle in a social setting can work online, study abroad or meet new people through a range of apps; be they based on gaming, romance or via a shared passion. Nerves lower when a person feels in control of a situation, and people are in the most control when they thrive in a setting. A confident athlete, a successful businessperson, a champion driver; in other environments they may be quiet or anxious, but on their domain they rise. Yet as life puts us in that waiting room so often, there will always be times of anticipation. So what’s the answer? Unfortunately, it is unique to each individual.
We deal with scenarios in different ways. There is no overarching solution. But not shying away from an environment that may make you afraid is the initial rebellion.
First, in the anticipation and analysis period, ask yourself: what type of pain will I be subjected to? If it’s physical, it is likely that you’ve had this pain (or much worse) before in your life, and you conquered the problem. If it’s trauma from a previous experience, once again, you’ve been through this before and you can do it again. Odds are in your favour. There is a high probability that this time won’t be anywhere near as bad, and your last experience made you that much stronger. If it’s emotional, switch your focus to physical. Deep breaths. Movement. Exercise. This is all related to our brain, so switching focus will at the very least require your mind to be occupied alternatively.
The next time you’re in that waiting room, just remember that you’re already in the storm. Once your name is called, you’re free from your anticipation and you can face the fear head on. Look it in the face. The bang is merely a puff of smoke, because you’ve done all this before. And if you haven’t, even better; you’ve got nothing to suggest that it will be of any harm.
Finally, remember that fear is part of the process. It heightens our senses. It makes us feel present. Never apologise for feeling nervous or afraid. Everyone faces these feelings at one point or another. You are not alone. It takes courage to sit in that waiting room. There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it. Often, there is no bang. Our imaginations are far more powerful.
My debut novel, Dortmund HIbernate, is available for pre-order now
