David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 38

RIP Tom Sharpe, A Comic Genius

It’s with some sadness that I’ve read of the death of Tom Sharpe at the age of 85.

I first came across his books in the late 70s. I was working in Filey, escaping the pressures of a divorce, and on my day off, I was at a loose end, wandering round the pubs and betting shops of Bridlington. I nipped into WH Smiths and bought a copy of The Great Pursuit.

I wasn’t that impressed, and to this day it remains my least favourite of his novels. But a colleague on the holiday park where I was employed, saw me reading it, and offered to swap titles when I was through. I agreed, and in exchange for The Great Pursuit and he gave me Riotous Assemblies.

A farcical look at apartheid in South Africa, a blatant dig at the South African Police and their Bureau of State Security, it was brilliant, and from that moment, I became a Tom Sharpe fan. I still have all his comic novels on the bookshelf.

A putative writer myself at that time, I took many lessons from the absurd exploits of Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els, Lt Verkramp, Blott, Skullion and particularly Henry Wilt.

Wilt’s trials with the doll, his arrest and interrogation by an increasingly disbelieving Inspector Flint were, for me, the pinnacle of farce, and yet totally believable. Zipser’s unlikely disposal of the condoms in Porterhouse Blue may have been an extreme attempt to hide his embarrassment, but the cataclysmic finale had me in stitches. And who can ever forget Blott? A German posing as an Italian who could not speak Italian, and who insisted that Margate was somewhere in Mid-Wales, may stretch suspension of disbelief, but not when he was the star of a Tom Sharpe novel.

His passing reminds me that it’s a long time since I read the books. Time to bring them down from the shelves, dust them off and spend a few hours in his crazy world(s).

RIP Tom Sharpe, surely one of the finest comic novelists of the 20th century.

Very Pinteresting

I chat to a number of other authors over the internet and it was just last week when someone mentioned Pinterest to me. I’ve had an account there for some time and done nowt with it.

My wife and I get about quite a lot, and it’s no secret that the STAC Mysteries are set in places we’ve visited and enjoyed… or not in the case of Weston-super-Mare. To be fair to Weston-super-Mare and Bath, it was raining like hell all the time we were there, otherwise I’m sure we’d have had a wonderful time.

So what better than to dig out some of the thousands of photographs we’ve taken on our travels, and link them to the STAC Mysteries on the Pinterest boards.

Anyway, I ambled over there and pottered with it for a few days, and the results are not there to be seen by anyone… including you.

You can find my very Pinteresting boards showing many of the very Pinteresting places we’ve been at http://pinterest.com/dwrob96/

Your comments are, as ever, more than welcome.

***

The Summer Wedding Murder STAC Mystery #8 is released on Wednesday June 19th.

The Filey Connection

With two weeks and a bit to go before the release of STAC Mystery #8, The Summer Wedding Murder, the time is right to remind ourselves where we’re coming from, so I’ll spend the next few days recapping on the STAC Mysteries.

A year and some months ago, we were introduced to the Sanford 3rd Age Club with the death of Nicola, Knickers-off, Leach, the victim of a hit and run as she staggered out of the Foundry Inn two days before the club were due for a weekend outing to Filey.

Born with a suspicious mind, Joe did not believe it, and after visiting the scene of the accident, his suspicion are increased. Matters are made worse when one of the gang falls into the sea off Filey Brigg within twenty four hours of arrival, leaving Joe, Sheila and Brenda with a set of unanswered questions.

Who is the mystery woman who witnessed the hit and run which killed Nicola?

Why did Eddie’s basket contain no items of food or drink?

Who raided Joe’s room and what were they looking for?

Who attacked Brenda on the seafront at Scarborough?

Where do a couple of tough, Filey fishermen fit into the picture?

Set in the picturesque town on the Yorkshire coast, in the middle of a heatwave, doused in a the party atmosphere of a traditional weekend outing to the seaside, augmented by a visit to an Abba tribute show, The Filey Connection is a niggling problem for amateur sleuth Joe Murray and his companions, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump.

***

The Filey Connection, STAC Mystery #1 is available for download from:

Amazon UK (Kindle)

Amazon Worldwide (Kindle)

Smashwords (All formats)

Crooked Cat Books (MOBI, EPUB, PDF)

And in paperback from:

Amazon UK

Amazon Worldwide

The First of the Month

Here comes the bride,

All dressed in white

Here comes the murderer

To spoil the wedding night.

June the first and there are just eighteen days to the release of The Summer Wedding Murder, the eighth STAC Mystery. The previous seven titles have performed much better than I ever anticipated, so I’m looking forward to following the progress of this one, and I know a number of people are waiting for a fresh infusion of light-hearted mayhem.

A couple of other news items on this glorious sunny morning.

The Handshaker, that dark and gritty tale of hypnosis, abduction and murder, received another 5-star review a couple of days ago. The reader remarked that it is a ‘disturbingly good thriller’.

This tale, written in the days when I concentrated on darker work, is remarkably popular with women readers despite its theme which is the hypnotic abuse and murder of women. One reader commented to me that it serves as a reminder to women of what can happen.

And finally, Flatcap is giving away another title for the next three days. It’s the thinking man’s guide to sex from the man who thinks he knows everything. So misinformed, you’ll swear blind it’s the truth.

Flatcap’s Guide to Sex is exclusive to Amazon, and is FREE until midnight Monday, so help yourself.

 

Congratulations – We Have a Winner

After a spell of self-publishing I sign up with Crooked Cat Books about a year and half ago. They were very much new kids on the block. But never let it be said that they let the grass grow under their feet.

Last night saw the People’s Book Prize announce the winners of their annual awards and Amy Elliot-Smith, a fellow crooked cat author, won the prestigious Beryl Bainbridge Award for a first time author for her novel, A Guide to Becoming Distinctly Average.

Amy was not the only Crooked Cat author in the final round of voting. Tom Gillespie’s excellent novel Painting by Numbers was also in the frame. Hard lines, Tom, but I’m sure you’ll want to join the rest of us in congratulating Amy.

Like many small, independent publishers, Crooked Cat suffered the slings and arrows of sceptical eyes when they first set up. Oh, yes, another fly by night trying to cut it. Let’s watch them fail.

Fail? Amy is a winner, Tom was a finalist, and let’s not forget Frances di Plino, whose excellent, gritty novel Bad Moon Rising was a semi-finalist in the best Indie books of 2012 from The Kindle book Reviewers.

We’re not all award winners, or even semi finalists, but Crooked Cat has a cradle of fine authors turning out high quality works across all genres, to suit all tastes.

And right now, they should be raising a glass of champagne to toast Amy’s success and the prospect of many trophies to come.

Three Weeks From Now…

And it’s the launch of the 8th STAC Mystery, The Summer Wedding Murder.

When I first dreamed up Joe, Sheila and Brenda, the three central characters of the STAC Mysteries, it was as a diversion, a bit of fun to drag me away from The Handshaker, a work in progress which was dark, forbidding, and in its own way, quite frightening.

I needed an antidote to all that gritty rape and murder, and what better than three born again 50-something teenagers travelling the country with their gang of middle-aged rockers?

The STAC Mysteries allow me to drift off to places I’ve visited and enjoyed, or in the case of The Chocolate Egg Murders, places I’ve been and haven’t enjoyed because the weather was so crap. They allow me to indulge my love of puzzles and they let me throw in a bit of humour.

I never dreamt they would enjoy such success.

It’s just over six months since Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend poked its nose into the Amazon UK Kindle British Detectives chart and apart from odd occasions when it drops out for an hour or two, it’s still there. Better yet, the other six are all in there, too.

Will The Summer Wedding Murder join them? We’ll have to see.

In the meantime, here’s a snippet from the new title. Joe is on his way to join Sheila and Brenda for a trip to Hill Top Farm, the home of Beatrix Potter, but as he walks down to the road, he spots a woman taking pictures in the graveyard next door.

***

“You could use your mobile phone again, and bell him.”

The voice came from his left. He looked around and into the smiling face of the woman who had been taking photographs of the gravestone.

“How did you know I have a mobile?” he asked.

She gestured towards the trees. “I saw you talking on it when you came round the trees. You dropped it in the pocket of your vest.”

“Gilet.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr Gilet.”

Joe grinned and fingered the garment. “This is a gilet. I’m Joe Murray.” He offered his hand through the railings, and she shook it.

“Madeleine Chester. Most people call me Maddy.”

“Nice to meet you, Maddy.”

Joe estimated her to be in her mid forties. A buxom blonde dressed in shorts and a skimpy top which showed a little more flesh than was good for his blood pressure. About his height as near as he could judge, her smiling eyes were shaded by a denim, plant pot hat.

Determined to show her that his powers of observation were a match for hers, he asked, “A hobby, is it? Taking pictures of old gravestones?”

Maddy laughed. “Good God, no. It’s for a client.”

“Right.” Joe’s agreement was swathed in puzzlement. “You have clients who want photographs of old gravestones? Who are they? The Draculas?”

“Could be. I’m a genealogist.”

“Ah. You dabble with DNA.”

Her quizzical look questioned his sanity. “No. Family trees.”

He smiled. “I know. I was only joking. So, Maddy, what prompts you to look at this particular gravestone? One of your client’s long lost relatives, is it?”

“It might just be. There are a number of burials recorded here bearing my client’s name, and this is only one of them. I have to check the parish records to be sure. But it’s all part of the service. Here. Let me give you my card.”

She dug into her bag and came out with a plain, white card, handed it through the railings, and Joe studied it.

Madeleine Chester, Genealogist.

Stanhead Road

Cragshaven, N Yorkshire.

Underneath it were several contact numbers.

“Cragshaven? That’s near Scarborough, isn’t it?”

“In a little cove a few miles up the coast towards Whitby,” she confirmed.

Joe was surprised. “You’re a fair way from home, then.”

Maddy shrugged. “The client foots the bill. I’m staying at the Waterside. How about you? You’re obviously not local with an accent like that, and you must have money to burn staying at The Lakeside Manor Hotel.”

“I’m from Sanford. West Yorkshire. I own a trucker’s café. The Lazy Luncheonette.”

“Oh, I’ll bet I know it. I’ve been to Sanford a few times. On business, of course.”

“It would have to be.” Joe laughed. “Sanford is not the tourist capital of the county. Listen, Maddy, did you say you were staying at the Waterside?”

***

Why is Joe so interested in her hotel? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

The Summer Wedding Murder STAC Mystery #8 is published by Crooked Cat Books on June 19th. Join the Facebook party

Video, Video, Video

Words are my medium. I can’t draw to save my life, and although I dabble with photography, I’m not very good. Every picture I take lists dangerous to port until I put it through Photoshop to correct it. I’m even worse with video.

Never let it be said that I lack courage. Brains, yes, but not bottle. For all my shortcomings in the field of visual media, I’m still willing to have a go, and I’ve been doing so for these last two days.

And you can see the result below. A short video trailer for the release of STAC Mystery #8, The Summer Wedding Murder.

Have you got your invite yet?

If not, go to https://www.facebook.com/events/128856733982628/ and if that doesn’t work, don’t assume that you’re not welcome. Just send me a message on Facebook and I’ll invite you.

 

Cover Reveal and an Invitation

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It’s the wedding of the year on Wednesday June 19th. It starts at midnight BST and ends twenty four hours later. It’s:

The Summer Wedding Murder.

The eighth STAC Mystery hits the virtual bookstands in a little under four weeks, and here is the cover revealed for the first time (almost).

First the wraparound cover for the paperback.

And then the front cover for the e-book.

You want to know what it’s about before you make you up your mind? Well it’s summer, there’s a wedding and there’s a murder.

What more can I say?

It couldn’t be simpler to gatecrash this wedding. Just go to the Facebook Launch Page and invite yourself. If it doesn’t work, put a note on my timeline and I’ll invite you.

We expect to see you in your wedding finery. I’ve asked my missus to wash my flat cap and press my muffler especially for the event. And naturally, you’ll be expected to bring a gift for the bride and groom, but being as how this is a virtual wedding, you can bring a virtual gift. There’s only one rule about gifts. They must be as useless as possible. Forget about the combined barbecue and fast breeder reactor. I’ve already ordered it, but anything like that will be most welcome.

Don’t forget Wednesday 19th June. We’re looking forward to seeing you.

Repeating Rules for Writing Whodunits

Over the last two years, I’ve posted night on 400 pieces to this blog. It was no surprise to learn that the most popular post is “Home”. The second most popular with is a post entitled “One Small Click of the Mouse” which was a promo post from May last year, covering the early chart progress of The Filey Connection.

I was quite surprised when I discovered that the third most popular, way ahead of the pack, is a piece I put in February 2012, entitled Rules for Writing Whodunits.

I repeat it here in full, with the links updated.

***

Exchanging emails with my very good friend Maureen Vincent-Northam the other day, she suggested a plot for the STAC Mysteries. Here’s an outline:

The Sanford gang of middle-aged rockers are on a week’s holiday at a caravan park in Cornwall. A mob of hippie type travellers invade the field next door. Someone is murdered, Joe, Sheila and Brenda investigate and solve it.

Do you like it? Are you frothing at the mouth with anticipation? Hmm. You need to know more before you can make your mind up? Sorry, but you may have quite a wait because it’s all I know right now.

The purpose of that little exercise was to demonstrate just how little I know about my titles when I start work on them. I don’t know who was killed or why or whodunit.

There are rules to producing whodunits. The crime should be carried out very early on. The detective and the killer should both appear no later than chapter two. The text should be sprinkled with red herrings and false trails. The clues should be laid out in the text so the reader has a chance of solving it.

All very laudable, but whoever laid them out should have checked on a few titles from the Queen of Crime. In Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, we’re well into the book before we meet the killer and we meet him/her before the crime is committed. Poirot himself doesn’t show up until page 101 in my copy.

I’m not comparing myself to the genius that was Agatha Christie, but from my point of view, there are no rules.

In my current WIP, another STAC Mystery, the real crime is not committed until the end of Chapter 5 (ish) and in The Filey Connection (published by Crooked Cat on March 2nd, plug, plug) it’s even later. In The Handshaker, there is no clue to the killer’s identity until very late in the novel, and in Voices, we don’t meet the real nemesis until near the end of the book.

So what am I doing while leading up to all this? I’m doing what my reading of Agatha Christie taught me; building up the background, inking in pictures of the location, establishing the various motives and possible suspects… oh and I’m chucking a few clues about, too.

I don’t have anything against rules and using them to plan my work. It’s just that even when I do, the story and characters take over from me, and usually, half way through the book, I learn that the person who I thought dunit, didn’t. It was someone else and for entirely different reasons than I first suspected.

Compare it, if you will, to route planning. I spent years of my working life travelling up and down the UK, so much so that there is nowhere I haven’t been and I know the roads like the back of my hand. As a consequence, I don’t own a satnav, and the result is I get there without running into narrow back lanes where traffic has been banned for the last year.

If I start with the STAC gang at a caravan park and a bunch of hippies moving in next door, it means that anything can happen. And it frequently does.

There are rules. I ignore them without fear. Joe and his pals will sort it out for me.

***

The popularity of this post has led me to conclude that there are people out there eager to learn how to write whodunits, and in order to assist, I’m going to tell them.

But I can’t tell anyone how to write a whodunit, because I don’t obey the rules. So instead, I’ll tell them how I write whodunits.

Watch this space.

An Author Without An Editor Is Like…

Like an author without an editor, quite honestly.

Self-publishing is here to stay, so we might as well get used to it. Along with self publishing comes self-editing and frankly, it’s not a good idea. Editing is not just about correct spelling and grammar, it’s about looking at the big picture and suggesting amendments where necessary.

It’s difficult to read your own work and be objective. When I proof my work, I tend to speed read and that means skipping whole chunks of it. In addition, when it comes to a complex explanation, I know what I’m trying to say, so it’s easy for me to say, “fine.” Having an editor read through, gives me another viewpoint.

I turn out the STAC Mysteries for fun. You’ve probably noticed. An idea hits me, a few scenes come together, the final clue which tips the scales dawns on me and I start writing. Before you know it, another STAC tale is complete.

Only it’s not complete. It’s only half way there. It has to pass the stiffest test yet: Maureen Vincent-Northam.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I’ve mentioned this lady many times. Maureen is a Herefordshire lass, but she can still write and speak good English, innit? More than that, she can spot a typo at a thousand paces, and she’s a whodunit aficionado. She is, in short, the best editor I could get for the money… I mean the best editor I could get for whodunits. If the plot doesn’t quite hang together, if the protagonist is acting out of character, if the murder itself is impossible, Maureen will spot it.

As a case n point, consider the next STAC Mystery, The Summer Wedding Murder, due for release quite soon. I finished it, sent it off to Maureen, she pottered with it, dealt with the typos and the other bits and pieces, then sent it back with her report. She guessed whodunit too early. I thought I’d been smart, but I wasn’t smart enough.

Along with this shocking news came a few recommendations to correct the problem. I set to work and it needed another 4,000-5,000 words to put it right, but we did so.

Had I decided to edit the book myself, I would have left it, sent it off to Crooked Cat, and they might have picked up the problem. Like any publisher, they work to fairly tight deadlines in a crowded schedule, and such an event could have resulted in major upheaval.

So it goes the editor before it goes to Crooked Cat. It costs me. Hard cash. And regulars will know that I don’t part with money easily, but it’s worth it in the long run. By the time Crooked Cat receive the manuscript, it may need a couple of tweaks here and there, but no more.

So if you’re considering self-publishing, or you want your M/S in tip-top condition before you send it off to a publisher, do yourself a serious favour and get an editor.

***

Click to visit Maureen’s Website