Pauline Rowson's Blog, page 38

Pauline Rowson explains how she chooses the titles of her crime novels

I'm often asked how I come up with titles for my crime novels and the
answer is usually with great difficulty. Some titles are like pregnancy, taking months
to develop and evenwhen the novel is finished I might still have no idea what
to call it. Other titles can come
instantly, almost the moment the novel hits the page although that is rare. Dead Man's Wharf was one such case, mainly
because it is set around a wharf where a dead man is found.



Read more

Five films from the 1940s that have inspired me - Part 3

In this series of blogs I reveal five films that have influenced me and
my style of writing.  There are so many great films to choose from that I
have selected five from the 1940s.  My first was The Big Sleep, the novel written
by Raymond Chandler, with the film starring the wonderful Humphrey
Bogart and lovely Lauren Bacall.  The second was another
classic Raymond Chandler crime novel, Farewell my Lovely (Murder My Sweet in the USA) and this time the film featuring a
different Marlowe but an equally great actor who gives a perfect
performance,  Dick Powell.



Here is my third film with yes, you've guessed it another private eye but this time not based on a Chandler novel.

Five films from the 1940s that have inspired me- Part 2.

In
this series of blogs I reveal five films that have influenced me and my
style of writing.  There are so many great films to choose from that I
have selected five from the 1940s.  My first was The Big Sleep, written
by Raymond Chandler, with the film starring the wonderful Humphrey
Bogart and lovely Lauren Bacall.  Here is my second choice, another
classic Raymond Chandler crime novel and this time the film features a
different Marlowe but an equally great actor who gives a perfect
performance,  Dick Powell.



Read more.

It's Cowes Week and Horton has a missing man and a brutal killer to find

Cowes
Week 6-8 August is one of the highlights of Britain's summer sailing
sporting events
when countless number of yachts take part in the racing in the Solent
and many in the yachting world descend on the small town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight for
a week of festivities.  And it's Cowes that features in DI Andy Horton, Death Surge



Read more

Five films from the 1940s that have inspired me - Part 1

A
while ago I was asked to write an article for a website blog on the
films that have inspired me. I was to choose five films that have
influenced me and my style of writing. There are so many great films to
choose from that it is almost impossible to do so. I therefore decided to focus
in on one particular era, the 1940s.



Here is my first choice. The other four will follow in subsequent blogs
this month. I wonder if they are some of your favourites.



Read more

What's on in August

It's August and the summer is in full swing in Britain. Traditionally it is a quiet
month for talks and radio interviews so it is a good time to take a
break, except I find that very hard to do because I am always working on
the next crime novel and thinking through plots and characters. 



I can leave off pounding the keyboard though on those very hot days and
sit in the shade of the garden or the summerhouse with paper and pencil
in my hand to sketch out my characters or draw up plot lines, and
sometimes just to sit, knit and think. Writing involves a great deal of
thinking.



Read more

On location with DI Andy Horton in A Killing Coast

Horton's investigations into his mother's disappearance and the arrival of a former girl friend complicate a complex murder investigation for the troubled detective, DI Andy Horton in A
Killing Coast, the seventh in the DI Andy Horton series of police
procedural mysteries. It opens with Horton at Lee-on-the-Solent on the
south coast of England where he is visiting the former copper, PC Adrian
Stanley, who was detailed to cursorily investigate Andy's mother,
Jennifer's, disappearance thirty years ago. Can Stanley tell Horton more
about what happened to Jennifer on that foggy November day when she
left their council flat in a tower block in inner city Portsmouth and
abandoned her ten year old son to the mercies of social services, and a
succession of children's' homes and foster parents?



As
I happened to be over at Lee-on-the-Solent recently before giving a
talk about my crime novels to a lovely audience at Stubbington library I
took the opportunity to take some photographs of the Solent.



Here are some location shots for A Killing Coast set against the
atmospheric backdrop of the Solent, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight on the south coast of England.

The secret of successful writing is in the revisions

So
you've finished writing that novel, well done. You're immensely proud
of yourself and so you should be. Writing a novel of 80,000 plus words
is a huge achievement but far from being the end it is probably only the
beginning.  I say probably because yes, there are some writers past and
present who can write a perfect first draft but even then I'll bet they
will have revised as they've gone along, or their editor has suggested
revisions. I've learned over the many years of writing (and the many
years of struggling to get published) that the secret to successful
writing is in the revisions.



Read more of this article.

Video- Pauline Rowson talks to the audience at Bookham about the idea behind DI Andy Horton Undercurrent

In this video extract taken from a talk I gave to Bookham U3A in Surrey
in July 2016, I am talking about how locations inspire me and how one
particular location became the idea for the DI Andy Horton crime novel,
Undercurrent, number nine in the Horton series.



Watch the video.

Watch the video book trailer for Silent Running now out as an audiobook

Silent Running,
the first in the fast-paced, action-packed marine crime series featuring Art Marvik, the troubled
former Royal Marine Commando, turned undercover marine investigator for
the UK's National Intelligence Marine Squad (NIMS)  has been
published as an unabridged audio book by Soundings and is read by Paul Noble.



Tough, fearless and fit,Marvik is not bound by the rules of the law. His
first civilian mission is to act as bait  to catch a ruthless killer.
It's a mission that will put all his skills and training to the test- a
dangerous assignment that could cost him his life.



Watch the video book trailer for Silent Running