Frances di Plino's Blog, page 12

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As the title says, be the first to know whenever there is something new and exciting happening in the world of Paolo Storey and his creator (that's me, Frances di Plino). Get all the inside info on the characters and the author. Find out what makes them tick and win prizes.

Yes, that's right - be in with a chance of wining prizes in FREE competitions, simply by subscribing to the newsletter. From time to time I'll be giving away free books, offering entry into fun competitions and sending out advance notice of what will be happening next in the Paolo Storey series.

The first 100 email addresses will go into a free prize draw to win an e-book copy of Bad Moon Rising, published by Crooked Cat Publishing. If you are already the proud owner of the first in the Paolo Storey series, don't worry, there is a prize for you, too. Should your email address be pulled out, and you already have Bad Moon Rising, you will be sent a free e-book copy of the next in the series, Someday Never Comes, as soon as it is released.

So, what happens next? Simply fill in the form below and hope that your email address is one of the first 100 to register.

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An interview with a kind-hearted hunk

Detective Inspector Paolo Storey has found a few minutes to answer some personal questions. Paolo is the hero of Bad Moon Rising (published by Crooked Cat Publishing) and is currently midway through solving more crimes in the second in the series, Someday Never Comes, which I hope will be available later this year.
Describe yourself to me.I’m just over six feet tall, have dark brown hair, hazel eyes and scar on my cheek in the shape of a crescent. I have my Italian mother’s olive complexion, but my Scottish father’s features.
How did you get the scar?Many years ago, a criminal I was chasing threw a full can of beer at me as he ran. It hit me in the face and the rim cut into my cheek, leaving me with the scar. It bled so much, by the time I caught him I looked like I’d been through an abattoir.
What would you say was the defining event in your life?My daughter was killed in a deliberate hit and run. I had my back to the car, but Sarah was facing it and saw the driver aiming for me. She pushed me out of the way and the car hit her instead. She saved me but died in my place. I haven’t yet found the driver of the car, but I will one day.
Did you turn out the way you expected? The way your parents predicted?My mother died when I was quite young, so I don’t really know what she would have predicted for me. My father wanted me to go to university and become a doctor, so I definitely didn’t live up to his expectations.
What moves you, or touches your soul?Seeing my other daughter, Katy, smile. She looks like my mother and when she smiles the entire world lights up.
What are your strengths?I never give up. I cannot bear to let criminals get away with anything and want to hunt down every last person who has preyed on another human being in some way.
What are your weaknesses?I never give up. I don’t know how to let go of lost causes.
If it were possible, what superpower would you have?That’s a difficult one. I think I’d like to have super hearing, so that I could eavesdrop on lowlifes and stop them before they commit their crimes. But that would also mean I’d hear things I shouldn’t, so maybe that’s not such a good idea.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?I shut down and wouldn’t let anyone get close to me after Sarah died. As a result, my ex-wife had to deal with her grief alone. She has never forgiven me and I don’t blame her. I’ve never forgiven myself for adding to her pain.
What are you most afraid of?Losing my other daughter. It’s a bad world out there and she’s already been through so much. If I could wrap her in cotton wool, I would, but she wouldn’t thank me for it. She’s very feisty.
What, if anything, would you change about your life?I’d go back in time and give Lydia, my ex-wife, the support she needed after Sarah died.

An interview with … me!

Nancy Jardine, author of The Beltane Choice and Topaz Eyes, interviewed me on her blog, She said, He said. Find out more about my writing, my other persona, my characters and what happens to Detective Inspector Paolo Storey and his team in Someday Never Comes, the sequel to Bad Moon Rising.
The interview can be read here: http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com.es/2013/01/an-interview-with-frances-di-plino.html

Review of The Drop

I have to start by putting in a disclaimer – I have read every one of Michael Connelly’s books and love his style of writing, so I might not be as unbiased as I should be when writing this review. No surprise then that I loved The Drop!
Harry Bosch, now back after a brief retirement, is working on open and unsolved cases. His current workload consists of an old sex crime, with some very suspect DNA results, and the (apparent) suicide of the son of one of Harry’s old enemies, a local politician who has made no secret of his dislike of Harry – a dislike bordering on hatred.
We move through both cases as Harry’s private life becomes increasingly difficult, in the shape of his teenage daughter with whom he is trying to build a relationship.
When Harry’s investigations uncover some dark doings in the force and local government, he is encouraged to look the other way. But that has never been Harry’s path through life. When he sees corruption, he has to root it out and this book is no different in that regard.
Added to his troubles are his doubts about his partner, David Chu. Something else he has to resolve in order to get to the truth.
There is more soul searching than in most Harry Bosch novels, but that simply adds to the enjoyment of the story.
As I said, I might be biased, but there are few writers on a par with Michael Connelly and this book is right up there with his best.

Interview with a killer

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be interviewing the main characters from Bad Moon Rising , published by Crooked Cat Publishing.
I’ve decided to conduct the interviews in the order in which characters appear in the novel. As Bad Moon Rising open with the killer in the act of saving someone’s soul, he gets to go first.
Obviously, in this interview he won’t want to tell us who he is, but we can find out a lot about how his mind works.  Describe yourself to me.This is so typical of the way the world is today. Why would your first question be to ask about my looks? What I look like isn’t important. What is important is my work – my reason for being on God’s earth. I am here solely to do his will.
What would you say was the defining event in your life?The day my mother showed me how to keep myself pure. It was on that day I discovered that she loved me and wanted to keep me free from temptation.
Did you turn out the way you expected? The way your parents predicted?I have no idea what my father wanted for me. He was a weak man. He couldn’t control his base urges, which caused my mother great heartache. I am fulfilling my mother’s destiny by purifying the souls of sinners, so I think she would be proud of my work.
What moves you, or touches your soul?The only time I am moved is when I mark a former sinner to guide her into God’s arms. At that moment, my soul soars upwards with hers.
What are your strengths?I am single-minded, determined and let nothing stand between me and my goal.
What are your weaknesses?I would rather not answer that.
I’m sorry; I have to insist you answer all questions. What are your weaknesses?I … I have … urges like my father. Sometimes it is hard to hold back and wait to mark the sinners. Sometimes … my Dearest Lord, I’m so sorry, but sometimes I am weak. I want to do more than mark them. Dear God, I feel so ashamed. Sometimes I want to enter their foul bodies.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Let’s move on. If it were possible, what superpower would you have?I would choose to fly, so that I could simply swoop in and carry off the souls to be saved, rather than picking them up by car. I’d be able to work faster.
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?In the past I allowed lust to take over my mind, but I have since found ways to control and use my urges to carry out God’s great plan.
What are you most afraid of?Nothing. I have the Lord on my side. As long as I do his bidding, I have nothing to fear.
What, if anything, would you change about your life?If I could go back in time and change just one thing, I would have started God’s work earlier. Tell me, Ms di Plino, are you pure enough to live, or would you like me to help you find the Lord?
Um, thank you for your honest and unflinching answers. I think it’s time I found somewhere safe to hide until you’re caught.God has made sure that I can never be caught because I don’t exist.
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Next week I’ll be interviewing Detective Inspector Paolo Storey. In the meantime, I’m going to barricade myself in a safe room.

Reader Feedback

Reader feedback – that’s what every writer craves. We want to know that our words have reached into the minds of others and created a link. We want to know that the people who have lived for so long in our heads have come to life for our readers.
Today has been a great day for me as a writer, because I’ve had two lots of very positive feedback. A neighbour stopped me while I was out and said he’d finished Bad Moon Rising in a day. He hadn’t been able to put it down. Did I mind if he talked to me about it? Did I mind? What a question. Of course I didn’t mind. I was delighted.
The second thing that happened was being alerted to this review site, where Bad Moon Rising made it to the ‘Special Mentions’ list, sharing space with some wonderful books, such as Dominion by C. J. Sansom and the Booker Prize long listed The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.
Happy days.

Review of Before I Go to Sleep

When reviewing a book that others have been raving about, as with Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson, it’s hard not to let the hype spoil the read. The theme dealing with amnesia isn’t that original, but having the protagonist also having to cope with short term memory loss gives it a new twist.
Christine wakes each morning knowing who she is, but not realising she is at least 25 years older than she believed (apparently, sometimes she thinks she is a child on waking, but that isn’t shown in the book, we are only told about it). Each day her husband has to explain what happened to cause her loss of memory and bring her up to date.
So far so intriguing – but then Christine receives a phone call from a doctor who tells her she has been keeping a journal and that she should read it. From this point onwards we follow Christine’s life through what she writes each night before going to sleep, gradually realising that all is far from well within her marriage.
The journal entries are long and incredibly detailed when one considers she writes them while her husband is in the house. I found this slightly irritating because she seems to be able to spend hours writing and yet her husband never asks what she is doing or why she goes upstairs for hours at a stretch.
Later, when she has found out that she shouldn’t believe everything she is told about her former life and has met up with a friend she has known since they met at university, the journal entries reflect her concerns and mounting confusion.
For me, the beginning is the best part of the book. The ending, although shocking, was a touch predictable. The middle got a bit tedious and it was confusing at times trying to work out when the various events had taken place – was she reading about them, or had they happened that day?
Having said all the above, it is a powerful debut and I would certainly read another by the author.

I am, therefore I kill

When I’d completed the first draft of Bad Moon Rising I knew it needed quite a bit more work before submitting it anywhere, so I went through my usual routine of rewrite, leave for a few weeks, rewrite again, leave for another few weeks, and so on. Normally after five or six rewrites I’m fully inside the heads of my characters and know them as well as I know myself.
In Bad Moon Risingall the characters were there on page, well fleshed out, and the story flowed, but I still wasn’t happy with the novel as a whole. Even though he had a unique back-story my killer was too generic – he could have been any serial killer from any novel by anyone writing in the genre. In short, he wasn’t my serial killer; he was a painting by numbers character. I knew if the book was going to have any chance whatsoever in what is a very competitive market, I had to turn him from a cardboard cut-out into a living breathing person, who just happened to be a monster when he gave in to his desires.
I stopped trying to write what I thought he would think and feel. I decided I had to become him. I had to put myself so firmly inside his head that what he said and did came from him and not from me.
We all have a dark side to our nature, but we suppress this so that we can function in society. Generally, I’m described as a kind-hearted person, always ready to lend a helping hand, so to become one with someone who is not only on the borders of insanity, but is the complete opposite of my own character wasn’t easy. I had to allow my mind to let that dark side out – and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
In fact, it was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever done as a writer – or as a human being. I found myself not only understanding the killer’s actions, but almost applauding them. My husband soon learned not to interrupt me when I was in killer mode because I would snarl even when asked something as innocuous as would I like a cup of coffee. I began to have nightmares where I acted out my killer’s fantasies and even found them disturbingly erotic.
The day I cried while writing a flashback showing how he had been abused as a child, I knew the killer and I had become one. I completed the final rewrite convinced my killer was alive in a way I couldn’t possibly have foreseen. He wasn’t just a killer, he was a man who could easily have turned out very differently had circumstances decreed otherwise. 

Did I succeed in making him unique and bringing him to life? I hope so. Crooked Cat Publishers believed in himand it seems, so far, my readers do as well.

Meet the author behind A Limited Justice

Today we have a real treat - a reader's chance to see the background (and peer inside the mind) of a crime writer. I recently reviewed A Limited Justice. You can read it here: A Limited Justice Review
Hi, I’m Catriona King, author of the new Belfast-based D.C.I. Craig detective series. My background is as a doctor living and working in London. I did the forensic medical examiner (F.M.E.) training and worked with the Metropolitan Police  on many occasions. I returned to live and work in Belfast six years ago.
I suppose that I first got the idea for the series about four years ago, when I was taking some time out from work for family reasons. I had always read and watched crime series, and I especially loved Ian Rankin’s series of Rebus novels, set in Edinburgh. Not only were they great stories, but I felt as if I grew to know Edinburgh through them. So, when I eventually visited it, I knew exactly which places I wanted to explore, real and fictional.
Then it occurred to me, why isn’t there something similar based in modern day Belfast? The answer probably seems obvious to someone looking in from outside…’The Troubles’. Except that everybody who lives in Northern Ireland can see at first hand that the Troubles have been over for years, and that Belfast has become a vibrant and modern European city, attracting visitors and business from all over the world.
That was when I decided to do my bit for the peace process and write a modern thriller series which had absolutely nothing to do with the Troubles of the past. I wanted to display a different side to Northern Ireland and show its lively cities, beautiful countryside and amazingly large and creative arts scene.  Four years later, I’ve written four novels centred around a modern hero, D.C.I. Marc  Craig, and his team and plan to write more!
I think that the rest of the world is now seeing on television how much Northern Ireland has changed, so the time seemed right this year to (hopefully) get the series published. I was fortunate enough to get a publishing deal with the innovative Crooked Cat Publishing based, as it happens, in Edinburgh! 
The first novel in the series is called ‘A Limited Justice’ and it was released in August 2012, with the second in the series, ‘The Grass Tattoo’, being released on the 11th December 2012.
I thought long and hard about what sort of core detective team I wanted to create, and inevitably I’ve incorporated some of my own interests in everybody’s back stories. Obviously I wanted the lead character to be charismatic, and I suppose that I’ve tried to make him that classic thing; a man that women would find attractive, and that men wouldn’t mind being. 
But more than that I wanted him to somehow reflect the fact that there are many other nationalities living in Northern Ireland nowadays; Chinese, Polish, African, eastern European, Asian, Italian. Of all of those nations I know Italy best, so I made Craig’s mother Italian, born in Rome and married to a Northern Irish man.  I also made her classical pianist because my father was a classically trained opera singer and I played the piano (very badly!). His father is a retired physics lecturer which reflects all of my brothers’ interest and professions in physics.
I also didn’t want religion to be a focus (as if has been too often in Northern Ireland’s past) so we will never find out what religion Marc Craig follows, if any. He went to an integrated school, because I firmly believe that integrated education is the way for future generations here to stop dividing themselves on sectarian grounds.
I was also very clear that I didn’t want him to be a stereotypical ‘sad’ male detective with nothing in his life but work. Yes, he has sadness in his life, but he has a loving family in the background and he is in his early forties, with lots of potential for romance and perhaps even a family in the future. He’s a very attractive, intelligent man who has a kind of wisdom, and that reflects many of the police officers that I’ve met, both in Northern Ireland and England. Beyond that, well he has his interests, quirks and flaws, like all of us.
His central team are a mixture of people and backgrounds. His right hand man, Liam Cullen, is a happily married father and long-time officer, with all the faults of joining up in a time when the police service wasn’t perhaps as politically correct as it is now! He has frustrations while coming to terms with that, creating the basis for humour and ‘banter’. 
His sergeant, Annette McElroy, was a nurse before she joined the police and she brings that knowledge and approach to things. She’s also a wife and mother and a bit too prissy for her own good at times. 
Nicky Morrison, Craig’s P.A. is a typical working class Belfast woman with her tan, false nails and interest in fashion. She’s as sharp as a whip with a quick sense of humour, and her relationship with Liam Cullen is one to watch. She’s also married with a young son.
Last but not least in the central team is Davy Walsh. A twenty-five-year-old Emo, with the fashion and humour to go with it. He is young, shy and has a mild stutter. He’s a highly intelligent I.T. specialist and attractive and Annette and Nicky mother him mercilessly.
Craig’s burden is his D.C.S. Terry ‘Teflon’ Harrison. He’s a fifty-something womaniser who is snobbish and political. He sees Craig variously as a threat and an asset.
Craig’s team and Harrison are based in the twelve storey Docklands’ Coordinated Crime Unit, based in the real and historic area of Pilot Street in Belfast’s Sailortown. I chose the area as a tribute to my mother’s family who had a business there, about which I heard a great deal as a child growing up.
The Director of Forensic Pathology, Dr John Winter, is Craig’s best friend from school and he is strange, nerdy and brilliant. With John Winter and Annette McElroy I got to use my medical background, as with the forensics at the crime scenes. Winter works with Dr Des Marsham, lead forensic scientist, in the Saintfield Laboratories. They make a quirky pair, working with Craig’s team to solve murders arising in the Belfast area.
So that’s the background to the series and the main players, but each book will bring in new people and sometimes say goodbye to old ones. As the author, even I don’t know where I’m going to send the characters next!


Here’s a little snippet from ‘The Grass Tattoo’, release date 11th December 2012.‘She watched and waited, her face expressionless, ready to morph into a facsimile of love as soon as he awoke. She knew what love was supposed to look like, God knows she’d been force-fed enough romantic movies by men over the years. Dragging her along to see them, as if it was hard-wired into the female psyche to like dreary stories of love and loss. All they did was make her yawn and long for a Wesley Snipes DVD.’
 

Catriona King was raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She moved to central London to live and work as a medical doctor where she trained as a police Forensic Medical examiner. She worked in General Practice, Paediatrics and Health Management, working with the Metropolitan Police on many occasions, and encountering many fascinating people and situations, in both Belfast and London. In recent years, she has returned to live and work in Belfast, basing her D.C.I. Craig crime novels in   the modern streets of Belfast and across Northern Ireland in 2012, and locating the fictitious crime headquarters of Docklands Coordinated Crime Unit in one of Belfast's most colourful and oldest districts, Sailortown. She has family links with the area, her mother’s family having had a business there. Catriona has written since childhood, fiction, fact and reporting. 'A Limited Justice' is her first novel. It follows Detective Chief Inspector Marc Craig and his team, in the hunt for the killer of three people. A second novel in the D.C.I. Craig series ‘The Grass Tattoo’ is due for release on December 11th 2012. Her publisher is an Edinburgh based company called Crooked Cat Publishing.Catriona is the founder/ director of a new amateur theatre company and is very active in Belfast's dynamic arts scene. 

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