Janet Gogerty's Blog: Sandscript - Posts Tagged "brief-encounters-trilogy"

What is the hardest sentence to write? The last sentence of a novel, especially if it is the last sentence of a trilogy.
The end of the year seemed like a good time to finish my latest novel and the last few weeks have been full of surprises for me and my characters.
Sixty chapters and 189,000 words, all printed out on paper, that is how I like to edit. As a Kindle reader myself I am coming more and more to think that shorter chapters are best in e-book format. With a paper book you can flick through to see if it's worth starting another chapter before you go to sleep, get off the bus or finish your lunch break. On your Kindle a chapter that ends with a cliff hanger or a question makes a good point to switch off and look forward to switching on.
The three books cover just over three years, three Christmases are celebrated, three very different characters narrate.
I have written the last sentence, but may change it or remove it. I don't have to decide for sure until it's time to press the 'Publish' button on Amazon KSP.
Look out for previews of 'Lives of Anna Alsop', the final novel in the Brief Encounters Trilogy' in future blogs and follow progress at my Facebook Author Page and see a preview of the cover.

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Sandscript in Step

We are staying at The Lying In Hospital, Waterloo; it has been here since 1767, but only a Premiere Inn since 2013. If you want somewhere to stay a few minutes walk from Waterloo Station and the London Eye big wheel, if mauve and purple are your favourite colours and if you want to visit some locations from my novels and short stories – this is the place for you.
Inside are the familiar purple carpeted corridors and mauve uniforms to be seen in Premiere Inns all around the country, but here the rooms are smaller, the windows even smaller and ours looks out onto a wall one foot away. But the staff are friendly and in the restaurant below on Floor -2, purple striped blouses and shirts flash by as the waiting staff serve dinner and breakfast at running pace.
London is at our feet and we walk everywhere, except when we go nowhere on The Wheel.
The unexpected is always welcome and at Piccadilly Circus we are amazed to find four floors devoted to M&M World – M&M the sweets, not some kind of sexual deviancy. Life sized plastic M&M characters in primary colours depict iconic human scenes. There are cuddly M&Ms and souvenirs of every description. We buy the cheapest – a plastic clip to seal your bag of M&Ms; the initials make it an appropriate gift for a young couple called Michael and Michelle.
In contrast we descend many steps down into the Criterion Theatre to see ‘The 39 Steps’, the hilarious and clever play of the Hitchcock film, of the novel by John Buchan written a hundred years ago… so many incarnations of one story and a reminder to authors how important it is to choose a memorable title for your novel.
In Trafalgar Square we see part of The Tweed Run, a tradition since 2009 – riding penny farthings or the oldest bike you can lay your hands on while dressed in tweed.
Our various wanderings around galleries are punctuated by coffee and lunches, mostly taken in the ‘Café in the Crypt’ below St. Martin’s in the Field, a pleasant retreat from the bustle above ground. In ‘The Gallery in the Crypt’ we visit a photographic and biographical exhibition of forty people, ‘Outsiders in London’ - http://www.outsidersinlondon.org/Outs... - ;
it gradually dawns on us that the man chatting to us about the pictures is the photographer himself, Milan Svanderlink. We enjoy an interesting discussion and I toy with the idea of telling him that the hero of my novel ‘Three Ages of Man’, very much an outsider, takes sanctuary in the crypt restaurant, but perhaps he would get confused if I launched into a description of my Brief Encounters Trilogy.

Can you keep a secret? Most authors can, often the plots of novels depend on them. A writer polishing her first book told me that in her next novel nobody would have secrets from anybody; it was too stressful remembering what each character knew and who they were keeping secrets from.

I have just finished reading ‘Behind the Scenes at the Museum’ by Kate Atkinson. You can read the review on Goodreads.
Kate Atkinson keeps secrets from her readers and from her main character Ruby Lennox. We follow Ruby from the moment of her conception. As the youngest in the family Ruby has many secrets kept from her including the big one that readers can only vaguely guess at. What adds to the delight of the novel is that Ruby the narrator is the only one who knows the future, sees when characters are making mistakes they will regret for the rest of their lives, knows when characters are about to have their lives cut short.

In 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' Susan Dexter has kept a secret for thirty years, she fears her daughter is not human. When at last she meets people who share her secret they find themselves wrapped in a further complex web of secrets and lies.

You can buy 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' this month for only

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Ninety Nine Pence
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