David W. Robinson's Blog: Always Writing, page 39

Singing in the Shower, Talking in the Bath

I read this quote on Facebook a couple of weeks back. It ran something like; you know you’re a writer when instead of singing in the shower, you run through dialogue.

Facebook can be quite a pain with these quotes, and normally I dismiss them without a second glance. But this time, as opposed to the trite, allegedly inspirational crap, there was more than an element of truth about it.

With STAC #8, The Summer Wedding Murder completed and safely packed off to Crooked Cat Books, it’s time to turn my attention to the next STAC Mystery, number 9, working title, Costa del Murder. In case you can’t guess, it’s set in Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol. It’s not entirely coincidental that my wife and I spent a week there in January.

I’ve actually been working on this for a few weeks, but I was concerned with Chapter One, some (or all) of which will appear in the back of The Summer Wedding Murder. Now I need to write the rest of it, and I had one scene in mind; a conversation between Joe and a suspect, which takes place in an outdoor café on the seafront.

I’ve just written that scene. It runs to 2,000 words and it took me slightly over 90 minutes.

There are days when I struggle to write 1,000 words in eight hours. How come this one tripped so lightly out of my head and onto the screen? Simple. Instead of singing in the shower, I talked in the bath.

Whenever I took a bath I ran this scene over and over and over again, like an actor rehearsing his lines without a prompt. By the time I came to write it today, I knew it off by heart. All I had to do was type it out.

Naturally, this has not gone unnoticed in the Robinson household. My singing has been likened to the noise of an angle grinder cutting through rusty steel, only less tuneful. So the missus was quite pleased not to hear me, but rather concerned that I appeared to be talking to myself.

“I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” I said. “Every time I speak to you, I might as well be talking to myself.”

This may appear a priceless system for getting the job done. 80,000 words could come from 40 baths. But it would mean getting a bath every night for the next six weeks, and if I did that, Her Indoors would swear blind I had another woman somewhere.

Interviewed? Me?

I was supposed to flag this up yesterday, but I got bogged down with revisions to the next STAC Mystery, The Summer Wedding Murder.

Frances di Plino wrote this crime thriller, Bad Moon Rising. An excellent read, fully deserving of the plaudits it receives. It’s the kind of dark and gritty thriller I’d like to turn out, but I’ve reached that point where I know my metier is light-hearted fiction.

Frances also lives on the Costa del Sol. Marvellous, innit? Not only does she write better than me, but she lives in semi-permanent sunshine. Some people have all the luck.

Anyway, this smashing lady spends part of her time interviewing others, and guess who she turned to this week? Got it in one. Unfortunately, most of the cast of Midsomer Murders were busy, so Frances asked me to step in at the last minute.

“It’s fine as long as I don’t have to give away any real secrets, like the identity of the killer in the next book or the location of my wallet,” I said.

So if you want to learn 10 Facts About David W Robinson hop on over to Frances di Plino’s place now… before the Midsomer Murders mob come back off lunch.

Arrival

There are those moments in life you never forget.

July 17, 1970 was a warm, Friday afternoon. My wife was in labour, and back then, the father was not allowed anywhere near the delivery room, so I nodded off to sleep in a nearby waiting area. About four o’clock, they called me in to meet my eldest son.

I have four children. My daughter had been born a year before, and my other two sons would follow over the next four years. I recall hearing about their births, and I’m sure I was somewhere in the vicinity, but I don’t recall meeting them for the first time.

David was different. He was only a few minutes old, he hadn’t even been cleaned up. The midwife handed him to me, he opened his eyes, took one look at me, and screamed the place down.

That kind of thing tends to stick with you.

Well yesterday, 43 years on, it was his turn to take on the mantle of parenthood, with the arrival of his first child, Ava Rose, who checked in at 5lb 13 oz.

So I’m pinching space on the blog today to congratulate David and his partner Sarah and to welcome Ava.

What Does STAC Mean?

In a comment yesterday, Stepheny Houghtlin asked what does STAC mean? Well, Stepheny, it’s an acronym for the Sanford Third Age Club, but Third is usually written 3rd.

When I think about the membership, it’s not strictly accurate. The definition of a third ager, as near as I can ascertain, is one who has moved into retirement. Most of the STAC members are still working, or of working age.

When I first came up with the idea I wanted a group of people who were essentially old enough and wise enough to become amateur sleuths and have the necessary funds to take them all over the country and/or continent. I settled on folks who were over the age of fifty and members of a social club. It seemed natural to combine the two, and the Sanford 3rd Age Club was born.

The town of Sanford doesn’t exist and by extension neither does the Sanford 3rd Age Club, but I wish it did. I’d join tomorrow, and I’ve had emails and comments from other third agers who say they would too.

The STAC Mysteries don’t pretend to be anything but light-hearted whodunits. They’re certainly not slice of life material, but I do use them to demonstrate that us old gits are more like teenagers than teenagers. We still get drunk, we still argue amongst ourselves, we still sulk when things don’t go our way, and if any younger person is going to insist we’re no longer capable of bedhopping, well I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. By age group, older people have one of the highest incidences of STDs.

We tend to be wiser, but that’s because whatever is going on, we’ve probably seen it before. Age doesn’t make us any smarter. We’re just as capable of stupidity as younger people. It’s one of the reasons I remain unimpressed by celebrities and their antics. Whatever they’re doing, I did thirty, forty, even fifty years ago.

Why don’t we spell the Sanford 3rd Age Club out in full in the books? Well, we do. Every cover has a black logo running across the top right of the front, declaring it to be A Sanford 3rd Age Club Mystery. You can see it in the picture above (even if you can’t read it).

Most of the time it’s referred as STAC, however, and that was my doing. Joe’s grumpiness is a factor of his age, not his deductive abilities, and on that basis, the tales can be enjoyed by anyone of any age, provided they enjoy whodunits.

Busy Days

You may have noticed I haven’t posted for the last week (did I hear someone say, ‘Thank heaven for small mercies’?)

Fact is, I’ve been busy. The Summer Wedding Murder, STAC Mystery #8 was finished and sent off for final editing, I had to rough out a new competition using Pinterest (stand by for an announcement on that in the next few days) and of course, Sir Alex Ferguson retired. As a diehard Manchester United supporter since the 1950s, I couldn’t let that pass without at least a mention.

I’ve also been planning the future for the next year and a half.

With eight STACs written and several more planned, I need another distraction, and it’ll come from two directions.

In the course of The Summer Wedding Murder you’ll meet a genealogist named Madeleine Chester, Maddy to her friends. A buxom blonde in her mid forties, Maddy is about to get her own series. Stay tuned for further news.

I also decided it’s time to try and revive the tradition of farce in the shape of bumbling British berks who always come out on top. The first DDS mystery should hit the editor’s desk some time in the summer.

It’s too early to say whether my publisher, Crooked Cat Books, will pick up these series, but they have agreed to look at them. Given the success of the STAC Mysteries, I’m hoping they’ll look favourably on them.

In the meantime, today (Monday) is going to be a busy day. I have the media reports on Sir Alex’s finally appearance at Old Trafford to read, my granddaughter Hannah sitting her exams, and we’ve just heard that Sarah, my eldest son’s partner, is in labour, about to deliver another grandchild, so we’re waiting by the phone for news.

Busy, busy times.

Suffering For Your Characters

I spend most of my life in pain from one problem or another, mainly brought on by years of ignoring medical advice.

Now there’s a novelty: someone with health problems NOT blaming it on other people.

Unusual or not, it’s the truth. If I’d taken better care of myself when I was younger, I wouldn’t have most of the problems I have right now: arthritis, COPD, type 2 diabetes, being the three major culprits.

Right now, I have some muscle problems with my back. I’ve been in chronic pain since Wednesday afternoon, and matter reached a head in the early hours of Friday morning when I had to see the emergency doctor. We’re gonna start looking into it this coming week. In the meantime, the missus and I spent the day in Blackpool yesterday, and it was pure agony.

I always believed that pain is the body’s way of telling you you’re still alive, but yesterday, it was extreme, and I felt like saying, “Okay, I’ve got the message.”

As a novelist, however, there is a plus side to this. I can make my characters suffer the same problems.

I’m a boomer (born between 1964 and 1970) Joe, Sheila and Brenda and most of the STAC gang are boomers. It would be strange if they didn’t suffer the same trouble as me, although, aside from Sylvia Goodson’s diabetes, and Sheila’s gallstones, it’s never been addressed… yet.

In the near future Joe is gonna start feeling the pinch of too many cigarettes, too many late nights and early mornings, and not enough rest. And he’s gonna find out the same way I did, by suffering a suspected heart attack.

The only difference is, Joe is more intelligent than me. He’ll listen to medical advice (eventually) and he has two people at his side who will make him do as his told. My missus has tried to make me do as I’m told, but it didn’t work. Not because the missus isn’t forceful enough, but because I’m too stupid to listen.

***

The Chocolate Egg Murders, STAC Mystery #7, is available as an ebook from Amazon (Kindle), Smashwords (all formats) and direct from Crooked Cat Books (MOBI, EPUB, PDF) and in paperback from Amazon.

Chart Continuity

Dogged by health problems again, in continuous pain, I was at stupid o’clock this morning, pottering with bits and pieces and I learned that Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend has now been in the UK Kindle Crime, Thriller & Mystery/Mystery/British Detectives top 100 for 21 continuous weeks.

It’s not on its own.

The Filey Connection and A Murder for Christmas entered the same chart within a week or two of Murder Mystery Weekend, and both have been there ever since. By the end of January. The I-Spy Murders and A Halloween Homicide had joined them, meaning that all five STAC Mysteries available at that time were in the British Detectives top 100.

My Deadly Valentine eclipsed them slightly when it was released in February by entering the same chart on the day of its release, but it never really caught the imagination like other titles and it peak position was number 22.

The Chocolate Egg Murders was a different proposition altogether. This title also entered the top 100 on the day it was released, but it really took off, and within a week of the launch it sat at number 7, ultimately climbing to a peak at number 5, a position it held for almost a week. It’s beginning to fall off now, languishing in the 25-35 area, but it’s been creditable performance.

I’m sure that serious number crunchers could build a range of theoretical models to account for these performances, and I’m equally certain that my own ideas will fit in somewhere. If I knew why it was happening, I’d bottle it and make a fortune selling it to other writers.

But to be truly honest, I’m not asking why. I’m simply grateful that my characters, situations and their inbuilt puzzles have caught on.

Z is for Zeal

The STAC Mysteries first appeared as self-published titles in 2011. Throughout the year I sold less than 200 copies. In 2012, Crooked Cat took on the project and by the end of the year, I had sold something like 800 copies. In the first four months of this year, sales have gone through the roof. We’re talking thousands, not hundreds, and all seven of the current titles have been in the Amazon UK Kindle top 100 of their genre since the beginning of the yeas (or date of release).

Who is responsible for this?

Not me. All I do is write them, and let people know they’re there. I get help with that. The good people at Crooked Cat do their share, other Crooked Cat authors, and my internet friends help raise awareness, but that doesn’t sell the books.

It’s the readers. They have taken Joe, Sheila, Brenda, Les, Sylvia, George, Alec and Julia and the rest of the STAC gang to their hearts, with the result that, the STAC Mysteries can be considered a success. They’re not alone, naturally. Lesley Cookman’s Libby Sarjeant has endeared herself to the reading public, and so, too, has Andrea Frazer’s Falconer series.

This success has its effect on me, and it’s where the Z for zeal comes in. I tell myself I’m bored with Joe and the gang, that I need to work with fresh, new characters. Then I get an email asking when the next STAC is due, or complaining of withdrawal symptoms without a new STAC to read, and the fire re-ignites. Before you know it, I’m hard at it, working out a new puzzle for the team.

There is no end in sight. They have a wedding to attend very shortly, after which I’m sending them off to Spain for a week of murderous R&R. Then I’m having Joe do the catering for a large company’s Christmas party. I even have plans to burn down the Lazy Luncheonette and letting Joe solve the crime before rebuilding the place. Sheila and Brenda may yet get their own crimes to solve. No one is safe, nowhere is safe from the STAC Mysteries.

And all the while, Joe will be seeking that special someone to make life a little more bearable, Brenda will continue to have fun, fun, fun and Sheila will keep the pair of them in check, while Lee stays in the kitchen, dropping the occasional stack of plates.

And so I’ll sign off this A-Z Blog Challenge with a big thank you to all STAC readers. I hope you continue to have as much fun reading them as I do writing them.

***

The STAC Mysteries are available as paperbacks and as e-book downloads in all formats, from Amazon UK, Amazon Worldwide, Smashwords or direct from Crooked Cat Books in MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats.

Y is for Young at Heart

You’re as young as you feel. It’s a cliché, isn’t it? In the case of the STAC mob, perhaps it should read, you’re as young as the man/woman you feel.

Are they really trying to recapture their lost youth? Coming from that same age group my answer is “no”. They’re celebrating everything that was dear to them when they were young, and it’s the memory of those pubs, clubs, discos, dancing the night away, sowing the wild oats, with keeps them young at heart.

But it’s not simply nostalgia. Joe, Sheila, Brenda and the rest of the 3rd Age Club are just as clued up on the internet and mobile platforms like phones, iPads, etc. as their grandchildren. Alec Staines may have fond memories of painting walls with a brush, but it hasn’t stopped him settling for a spray gun, and if you gave George Robson the choice between a bonfire or a crusher to get rid of the deadwood of winter in the town’s parks and gardens, he’d opt for the latter.

If they knew it, they are one of the most powerful lobby groups. Technologically aware with immense spending power, baby boomers. But they’re far too busy having a good time to worry about politics.

The books try to transcend generations. STAC may be an acronym for the Sanford 3rd Age Club, but you don’t have to be a 3rd-ager to read and enjoy them. How many younger readers would identify The I-Spy Murders with Big Brother, and how many thirty-somethings enjoy murder mystery dinners/weekends?

You don’t need to be a crumblie to enjoy the STAC Mysteries. All you need is an enjoyment of mysteries.

***

The STAC Mysteries are available as paperbacks and as e-book downloads in all formats, or direct from Crooked Cat Books in MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats

X is for Xmas, A Murder for

 

A Murder for Christmas was the fourth STAC Mystery, and it’s the last one to be detailed in this year’s A-Z Blog Challenge.

I originally self-published it in November 2011, but as with A Halloween Homicide, the rights passed to Crooked Cat in the latter part of 2012, and it was reissued with a new cover under their imprint.

This was the novel by which the early STAC Mysteries came of age. A clutch of red herrings, several possible motives, and a subplot which revolved around the Middleton Penny, a rare and valuable coin, which was stolen from a church in South Leeds. I grew up and spent the first quarter century of my life less than half a mile from that church. My daughter was christened there.

The events of A Murder for Christmas take place in the fictitious Regency Hotel in the centre of Leeds over the Christmas period, and as usual grumpy Joe is on fine form.

In the following extract, Sheila and Brenda have dragged him all over Leeds Christmas shopping and he’s worn out by the time they get to the cafeteria of a large department store.

 

They tried several cafés on Vicar Lane and Boar Lane before turning back up Briggate and eventually deciding on Debenhams.

“You get us a table, Joe,” Sheila had suggested, “and Brenda and I will queue up.”

It was non-starter. The queue was so long that the management were refusing to allow anyone through to the tables until they were served.

“Leave it to me,” Joe told them, and doubled up convincingly as if he were struggling to breathe and walk.

Taking his cue, Sheila went into negotiation with the manager. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to be a nuisance, but my friend is disabled, and he’s suffering a little. Would it be possible for him to sit while I queue up for him?”

The manager took instant pity on them, and agreed to make an exception in Joe’s case. Under the envious eyes of some in the queue, he took their mound of purchases, and helped Joe through the multitude to a table by the window, where he now sat, resting his aching bones, waiting for his two companions, with only a grumpy woman behind and her male companion for company.

Even through the noise of the café, the sound of the Salvation Army playing Oh Come All Ye Faithful out in the street still reached his ears. The pavements heaved with people, one or two Santas stood in shop doorways welcoming customers, and those same doorways were packed with slow-moving whirlpools of humanity fighting their way in or out. And yet there did not appear to be much friction. It was as if everyone had taken on the seasonal air of peace and goodwill. Despite the comparatively early hour, the Christmas lights were on, dispelling the overcast gloom and bringing a feeling of good cheer to the retail revellers.

All except Joe. He passed the 20 minutes or so waiting for Sheila and Brenda by ringing the Lazy Luncheonette and hassling Cheryl (again) until she tired of his whining and cut the connection.

For want of something to occupy his mind, he checked the queue again and the pangs of hunger grew in his belly. At least Sheila and Brenda were almost at the checkout.

“All I’m asking is that you give me what I’ve earned. What I have a right to expect.”

Listening to the woman sat behind him, Joe was almost relieved to know that he was not the only one in a foul mood. He half turned in his seat, and demanded, “Are you talking to me?”

She glowered first at her companion, a tanned, stocky man whom Joe guessed to be in his fifties, and then at Joe. “Mind your own bloody business.”

It was for moments like that Joe treasured his high threshold of embarrassment and sheer neck. He feared nothing and no one, and if rudeness was the order of the day, he was more than capable of matching it.

“You know when people wish you a merry Christmas?” he asked. “Are they being sarcastic?” He cast a glance at the tanned man sat opposite her. “And you should do yourself a favour, pal. Suicide. It’s cheaper than divorce.”

***

A Murder for Christmas is available as a paperback and as an e-book downloads in all formats, or direct from Crooked Cat Books in MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats