Kelly Creighton's Blog, page 3

Launch in the Time of Corona

So, it’s almost here, at last. The launch of my next book, THE SLEEPING SEASON. Which is book 4 for me but book 1 in my DI Harriet Sloane series. (Book 2 is coming November.)

Unfortunately it has arrived at an uncertain time, when we are distancing, isolating and checking the news repeatedly.

Because I know how hard this is – I am ‘homeschooling’ 4 kids at the moment – I have decided to put my first novel, THE BONES OF IT, on kindle for free for the next few days. So get yours here.

Now we are staying at home and avoiding packed places, my physical launch in No Alibis, which was supposed to happen tomorrow, is no more.

But despite that, there has never been a better time to lose ourselves in stories. For escapism, for our sanity.

[image error]That new book smell!

I want to thank Sharon Dempsey and Simon Maltman, who were going to help me launch TSS. (Hit their links and stock up on their fab books.)

I also want to thank every book blogger who is letting me use their blog to chat about the book. Follow the blog tour on Twitter.

Everyone’s health is far more important, but it’s only natural to feel disappointed if the thing you have been working for a long time is now postponed. You all have my sympathies, I know this has affected people in many ways.

With timing how it is, the book has not made it to bookshops like it would have. But you can buy your copy online, ebook and paperback.

If you would prefer a signed copy, drop me an email and I will happily post it to you.

If you are based in the States you can enter the Goodreads giveaway to win a kindle copy.

I have included the first chapter of THE SLEEPING SEASON here for you to test drive.

I won’t be having a launch tomorrow, I’ll be putting my feet up, bathing in champagne – yeah right!

Stay safe, stay well! x

Detective Inspector Harriet Sloane is plagued by nightmares while someone from her past watches from a distance. In East Belfast, local four-year-old River vanishes from his room.

Sloane must put her own demons to bed and find the boy. Before it’s too late.

CHAPTER 1

I wasn’t supposed to be on shift that Monday in October. I was supposed to be off, and free to wake on my sofa at some senseless hour as usual, then potter about my third-floor two-bedroom apartment in St. George’s Harbour overlooking the Lagan and the towering yellow profiles of Samson and Goliath beyond it.

My living room was a rectangle partitioned off by the dining table where I completed my casework. The window had no blind, letting the sun stream in when it was ready to.

I never knew my neighbours: the young English couple renting the top floor apartment above and the older local couple living below, nor the ones below them. But I knew their sounds. The people above liked to listen to The Strokes. Last Nite was a favourite; they always played it before going out. Their footsteps were noticeable but soft and beating. I knew that the woman had the manners to take her high heels off when she entered the apartment. I learned this when the woman from the floor below commented on my mine the morning after I staggered home from a night out. Did I know the clacking stilettos made on my wooden floor? After that I avoided her.

Family never visited the apartment. Father would have called, only I put him off in case Greg was there. Charlotte didn’t call because the place was unreasonably small if she had her kids with her – five, like we’d grown up with. And Brooks would have dropped in any time, but he’d disappeared off the face of the earth. Greg was the only person who came by invitation.

Jason Lucie, on the other hand, liked to surprise me. He was the most charming man I had ever known, with his pale skin, eyes the colour of sandy silt, red hair and a wide smile that put people at ease. When he stood on the bridge looking up at my window he would be wearing a hoodie, the hood pulled up, his smile imperfectly still, sending a message to me. He wore that hoodie because I bought it for him, and because sometimes I slept in it at our house in Osborne Gardens when I was cold in bed.

Jason knew my routine, so when I jogged along the Lagan, he would be standing on East Bridge Street, doing nothing but staring. For over a year – once he found out where I’d gone – he was there almost every night. That’s why I liked to shake up my work shifts and my runs. I wasn’t giving anything up; I was just timing it differently.

At other times the thought of going anywhere outside of work terrified me and I would sit at home and wait for Greg to call. My life became like that – a waiting game. Waiting for people to give up on me, you could say.

Anyway, I was supposed to be off that day. I was eating breakfast when Detective Inspector Diane Linskey, my partner, phoned with the news.

‘I said we’d take it. Is that alright, Harry?’ Linskey paused hopefully.

‘Yep. Of course,’ I said.

‘It’ll get us both out from behind the desk.’

‘Oh yeah, we’ve been getting much too cosy behind our desks.’

Linskey laughed.

An hour later I pulled into Strandtown PSNI station, then went inside and put my handbag in my locker. Outside Linskey was waiting by our navy-blue Skoda hatchback.

‘Hello, stranger,’ she said with cheery routineness. She put on her sunglasses and attempted to stare through the low, strong October sun.

‘Tell me more about this boy,’ I said as we drove down the Holywood Road.

‘A missing four-year-old – River, you call him. He’s gone missing from his home in Witham Street. His mother called it in.’

‘Anything strange or startling?’

‘The mother was hard for the operator to get much more from. An officer has been out, but I thought this was one for us.’

‘Great.’ I yawned.

‘You need an early night, Harry.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ I yawned again. I hadn’t slept for a couple of weeks.

‘You can drive on the way back to the station,’ she said. ‘It’ll stop you falling asleep on me.’

‘Aren’t you funny!’ I said.

We stopped at the lights at Holywood Arches from where there was a glimpse of CS Lewis Square, a small community garden with murals of long-haired hippy women dancing through fields, a welcome replacement for ones of men nursing rifles and resentment.

Fronting the Newtownards Road, a fair old smattering of shutters were permanently down, only unlocked for potential buyers. Or there were fake shop fronts that were trying to dupe those not paying full attention. The road was a graveyard for businesses in their infancy; the only shops awake were those that had always been there. But this didn’t stop the constant pulse of traffic. It was a go-through, get-past place as much as anything, reminding us Belfast people that there’s life beyond our floating city.

In between the Gold Buying Centre and the Charter for Northern Ireland office, turning right into Witham Street, we toured a lane of small red-brick terraces, ending with five relatively new three-bed homes that sat proudly facing the hunched shoulder of the old graffiti-scarred transport museum. Four of the newish-builds were semi-detached, but the address we were going to was a detached property with a tasteful dim pink door and a topiary plant either side of it and without the small audiences of weathered garden gnomes that adorned most of the houses in the street.

‘This is surprisingly cute,’ Linskey said.

We got out of the car. A woman with short red hair came out hurriedly to greet us. She was still in her pyjamas.

‘Mrs Reede?’ Linskey asked.

‘Yes.’

‘We’re here now and we’ll help you find your boy.’ She shook the woman’s hand and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. This kind of case got Linskey going; the stakes were high – a child was involved. She loved cases where she could help a family.

We followed Zara Reede into her home where she clawed the cream-coloured throw off the sofa and placed it around her shoulders like a shock-absorber. She raked her fingers through the tormented locks of her hair and told us what happened. After she woke that morning she went downstairs, made a cup of tea, had a smoke at the back door and got back into bed, thinking that her son River – the missing child in question – was being unusually quiet.

‘I called out to my partner Raymond,’ said Zara, ‘asked if he would check in on Riv. I thought Raymond was shaving in the en suite bathroom. But he didn’t reply when I called him, so I called Riv. But he didn’t reply either. Then I knew something was wrong. I got up, looked out, saw Raymond in the garden. When I went into River’s room he wasn’t there. So I went downstairs again … usually River puts the TV on soon as he gets up. I don’t like him to, but you know how wee boys are.’

At this Linskey nodded, being the mother of two boys now aged eighteen and twenty. ‘Yes, I remember,’ she said.

We watched Zara pace. Linskey grew her eyes at me and gave a slight tip of her head at the banging coming from the back garden.

‘May I take a look around?’ I asked.

‘Yes, Detective.’ Zara pressed her lips inside her mouth, a dimple forming in each tear-stippled cheek. ‘But you’ll not find River here. We’ve looked everywhere. You know, in cupboards and places like that.’

Up I stood anyway, glancing at the wall to the right of the fireplace which was a shrine to the boy: six photos of River in various toothless stages. I took a moment to take them in, to learn his face.

‘He’s changed loads since those were taken,’ said Zara.

On the Mexican pine mantel was a small gold carriage clock and an overloaded pot of amaryllis trumpets. The photo Zara had set out for us rested against the plant pot. I lifted it up.

‘We’ll get this image of River circulated as soon as possible, Mrs Reede,’ I told her.

I knew there was a lesson to be learned from the pied cheeks of mothers of missing children. It was on their top lips, shiny with the glassy liquid that streams from their nostrils and spreads all over their faces like a rash of fire.

‘And he was wearing his pyjamas?’ Linskey asked. ‘Isn’t that what you said on the phone?’

At this point Raymond came in: a stout man with a head of thick, black, curly hair. He wore a pair of grey cords and a bland pullover, and walked as though he was soaking wet. He wiped his hands on a rag, reached out and shook mine.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

‘Detective Inspector Harriet Sloane,’ I said, then gestured in Linskey’s direction. ‘This is Detective Inspector Diane Linskey. We’re going to get this photo and the description of River straight into circulation. It’s best to act fast, Mr Reede.’

‘Marsh. My surname’s Marsh,’ he said. ‘We’re not married.’

Zara turned to look at him, cloaked in the plush throw. It fell in pleats around her like a baptismal cloak. She gave us a feeble smile, showing her teeth, straight and white if not a bit big for her small face. She was attractive. Would be any normal day. Beautiful and repulsive.

‘I’ll have that look around now,’ I said.

‘Knock yourself out,’ said Raymond.

In the kitchen, dinner dishes from the night before were jammed in the sink and there was a strong scent of sesame oil, soy sauce and stale beer. Linskey was asking the same questions of Raymond we’d already put to Zara. He wasn’t answering but using all his concentration to lower himself onto the sofa with the rigidity of a person who had just undergone an operation. Eventually he sat, his left leg out straight. He took a deep breath from down in his belly.

‘Mr Marsh, would you say that River is wearing his pyjamas?’ Linskey tried the question again.

Raymond straightened himself up, then slouched backwards, his fleshy hand still pressing the rag on the arm of the chair.

‘Pyjamas,’ he finally said. ‘Yes, stripy pyjamas. Blue and green.’

The far end of the kitchen dissolved into something of a dining area containing all the paraphernalia typical of a couple for whom this home was not their first. The rooms were small but cushy, and the house seemed to fold in at the corners to better support all the furniture inside. A square table was pushed flush to the wall and there was an imposing book case shored up against the opposite side. In it was an array of cookbooks with names such as Healthy Eating for Children, and Eat Yourself Happy, Eat Yourself Smart – for Children, umpteen books about Omega oils, and organic, sugar-free, gluten-free and GM-free eating, and parenting self-helpers – Raising Boys, Breastfeeding Now and In the Future, The Good Mother’s Handbook and How to be a Good Mum.

Another thing I noticed about the house was a distinct lack of toys: not one truck or dinosaur, no puzzle pieces anywhere among the rubble of Raymond and Zara’s lives. I asked if there was a sibling we could speak to; I’d noticed that on the cream leather sofa was a cross-stitched cushion bearing the legend, Excuse the mess, my children are making happy memories. Children. Yet the house wasn’t messy, not with child-mess anyway.

‘No, no other children,’ said Zara. ‘Just Riv.’

She looked affronted and I found myself apologising for what, I wasn’t quite sure.

There were some things, however: a packet of extra-large nappies on the counter, and on the side of the bookcase, three charts pasted onto primary-coloured sheets of paper. The soothing cornflower blue chart was for sleep; the traffic-light red one was labelled ‘good/bad boy’, and a suitably urinal yellow chart was apparently for the potty. Each sheet was ruled out into lines, with red crayon Xs and little sticky gold stars summing up the success/fail rating of each day.

Zara’s pacing grew impatient in the living room. She asked Linskey when we would be going, and when we would be coming back, and when she should expect to hear from us again. Raymond told her these things take time.

‘Yes,’ Linskey murmured. ‘The moment we have any information.’

In the sink, among the plates and glasses, were numerous plastic spoons. Little Calpol measures. And on the mini island, its body constructed from wooden pallets, a steel toolbox was opened out, a hammer lying beside it, nose angled against the cold Formica surface. Zara came in, crouched to the bottom shelf of the bookcase, pulled out a huge hardback catalogue, eased it open with both hands onto the island: Next Catalogue, Autumn/Winter 2015 – last year’s.

‘I’ve no photo,’ she told me, ‘but what I noticed …’ 

She paused, flicked through silky photographs of pleasant-looking children posing in starchy school uniforms. 

‘His coat.’

She pressed her fingernail into a photo of a blond boy with a broad white smile, then tore the photo from the catalogue and handed it to me.

‘River has taken his coat?’ I asked, somewhat surprised.

Zara nodded. Her shoulders shuddered, then shrugged. ‘It wasn’t on his hook in the hall,’ she said.

‘So, you think …’

‘Yes, he must have. I can’t find it anywhere.’

‘We’ll ask all the neighbours to look for River too,’ I told her.

‘Raymond did that already … I’ve stayed here, in case.’

‘Children usually come back pretty quickly.’

‘When they get hungry?’

‘Zara,’ I said gently, ‘do you have any enemies?’

‘Do you?’ she replied.

When the floorboards chirred above us her eyes darted to the ceiling. She frowned, dashed into the living room, calling Raymond. He sat in stillness. Linskey, however, was gone. Zara strode to the hall, bare feet slapping the tiled floor.

‘Hello? Detective?’ she called. ‘Can I help you?’

‘She’s just checking the lad’s bedroom,’ Raymond told her, his hand reaching out for the TV remote control.

Zara’s feet banged their way up the stairs.

‘Doing some work?’ I asked Raymond. He gave me a distrustful look. ‘The toolbox …’ I added with a smile.

‘Yeah.’ He set the remote control down and levered himself up. ‘Come here till I show you, Harriet.’

He walked to the back door; bin lorries beeped in the distance. He pointed. ‘See the fence?’  

My eyes landed on the house behind, hidden behind the fence he was talking about. The slats of the fence were diagonal, all butted together, but there was a patch where a mismatching piece of darker wood overlapped.

‘The builders never gave us a fence,’ Raymond said. ‘That belongs to the woman out the back. It’s rightly rotted through. That’ll have to do until we get the money to put up our own. She has these dogs, you see. And there was this gap … River can get through. Has no fear, like.’ He blew out, his tumbling fringe breezing about his eyes.

He had bad skin, his nose misshapen by crystallised acne. I held the photo of River and the picture of the coat he may have had on when he left. I tried to envisage the boy at the fence. Willed him to appear over it.

‘He’s not over there, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Raymond said. ‘First place I looked. Anyway, River left through the front door.’

‘Any signs of forced entry?’

‘None.’

In the hall was a photo of Zara and River on the wall, and the coatrack, just like Zara said there was. I was aware I was being watched from the landing as I looked at Zara’s and Raymond’s winter coats, and the hook that held a little navy-blue gym bag that said strandtown preschool on it in white lettering.

‘Just his little gym gutties in there,’ Zara shouted, helium-lunged, pre-empting my question. 

‘So, River would’ve come down here?’ Linskey asked, walking down the stairs marginally in front of Zara who no longer had her throw; it swathed the bannister instead. A pair of baggy grey pyjama bottoms were wearing her.

‘River would’ve taken his coat from this rack,’ Linskey went on. ‘And … where would he have gotten the door key from, Mr Marsh?’

‘The keys are in here, Diane,’ Raymond answered. He stooped to open the drawer in a pine telephone table.

Zara pursed her lips, but Linskey couldn’t see it.

‘There’s a little canvas pouch,’ Zara announced. She edged past Linskey and lifted it into her palm – tilted it so we could see into it, as if she was offering us a boiled sweet each from a bag. Only, nothing.

She tossed the weightless pouch in her hand. ‘The key’s in the door,’ she said, ‘but it’s usually kept in here.’

Raymond gestured at the top of the door. ‘Got a bolt put up there too,’ he explained.

‘And did either of you put the latch on last night?’ Linskey asked.

Raymond’s jaw hung open slightly, his eyes flickering softly to the side giving the impression he was trying to remember. He leaned against the door jamb in the axis of the hall and the living room, his face grey apart from the white spikes of October morning light that flickered over him through the trees out front, like he was being seen through fluttering eyelashes. He scratched his head.

‘I can’t be certain,’ Zara interjected. ‘Maybe … But was it last night that I double-locked? Frig it, the days are rolling into one!’

‘River would’ve let himself out easy enough anyway, Zee,’ said Raymond. ‘He was a wee climber, sure.’

Was? My interest piqued at his use of the past tense.

Zara explained. ‘River used to climb something dreadful, especially when he was two and three. Desperate for it!’ She looked out their front door at the woman standing at the end of the gate that twinned theirs. ‘Raymond, she’s still out there,’ she said. ‘Flip sake, get a life, love!’

‘Who is that woman?’ I asked.

‘Ness.’ Raymond smiled. ‘She’s a neighbour. Ness’d be able to tell you about River’s climbing. He climbed into her tree before – remember, Zee? Couldn’t get him down, wee monkey man.’

Linskey told them that boys were more likely to hide outside while girls were more likely to stay indoors. Zara ran her hands through her hair; she reached for her throw and slung it over her shoulders.

‘I don’t need to hear about what girls do,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not a girl I have.’

*

The neighbour backed off as Diane and I proceeded down the short path. Vanessa ‘Ness’ Bermingham, a woman in her sixties, petite with a titanium globe of hair like she was growing out a shorter style, went into her house, easing the front door of her end terrace shut.

‘Well done, Harry,’ said Linskey, ‘you didn’t yawn once.’

I started up the Skoda and looked side-on at the house. Through the window I could make out Raymond who had nestled himself back into the sofa, finally able to turn on the TV to wash away the awful silence. And there were two women, Zara and Ness, who stood looking out of their own living room windows, neither of them pulling away.

*

Buy the book here.

The Writing Dream(s)

Soon it will be eight years since I started to write seriously. In that time I have published a book of poems, 2 novels and a collection of stories. What I thought was important about writing has taken a full u-turn in the last two years. I’m starting my fourth decade with some clarity about this writing lark.

At the start, I entered competitions and submitted to lit mags. I even started one and worked on that for five years. I learned a lot about the lit business, but now I am trying to unlearn it all.

I learned that being on a shortlist is some kind of torture. (Constant email checking, anyone?) That is not to say that I won’t flip the odd story in the direction of a free contest. Though I have very few to offer, as I tend to write longer stories and guidelines are usually tiny. I’m leaning away … It’s hard to unlearn.

I write firstly for myself and having a readership is great. I once said at a reading that I want to produce a body of work I’m proud of. There were some looks of disbelief. Honestly, I’m not in it for the (no) money. My goal hasn’t changed. In fact, I need to just get back to it with fewer distractions and doubts.

I write because I have something to say – usually about violence, power, gender or disability. Can you stick a rosette on that?

Before my first novel got published I knew I would publish it myself if I didn’t get a taker. Going indie suits my personality. I love every creative aspect of it, especially cover design; I started as a visual artist.

That book, in the end, was picked up by a publisher. Long story short it went out of print and so I did reissue the book myself and loved doing it.

After everything I had learned about how much we need the nod of approval from others, what was I doing going solo?

This is what: I was not letting my book die. People wanted copies of it. I was not going to let disappointment win.

Yet people still frown on self-belief.

I don’t see books in terms of success vs failure. Even though it is how we are being programmed. We all know that some bestsellers are made by geniuses, others are made by the hype machine. They are still someone’s creative project.

Lately, and for a while now, I have had some horrible confidence-denting emails that would stop a less assured writer in her tracks. Writers need to be able to take rejection, etc. Maybe. Do they need to take unkindness? No, they don’t. Or at least, I won’t. It’s unnecessary.

I love when people talk about their ‘rejections’ online and not just the successes. Writing has been fantastic. Getting published has had nice highs and crushing lows. I hope it’s helpful to know that, for anyone just starting off. It’s helpful for me on the cusp of doing it again.

I keep on writing. That won’t stop anytime soon and if it did I’d still have a few manuscripts almost ready to go, or getting there, and I will get them there. I might take all sorts of routes. I haven’t decided. But they certainly aren’t going to stay in my drawer because someone hasn’t given them the green light. I’m green lighting them.

One I made earlier will be released soon. You can pre-order it here. But only if you really want to

Ten True Crime Documentaries You Should Watch

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with true crime. Obviously I am not alone when there are so many documentaries on this subject being made. When researching details for this list I found it hard, especially finding ones I watched a long time ago; now most internet searches show Best True Crime on Netflix. I love Netflix as much as the next person but it does not have the monopoly on good crime docs, as you’ll see. 

True Crime programmes are big business these days, but more and more I find myself post-watch wondering, what was the point? These are real people’s lives. Nothing reminded me of that fact more than reading Sue Klebold’s account of her son Dylan’s part, and death, during the Columbine massacre. In her book, A Mother’s Reckoning, Sue reasons that her story is already out there and she has no control over it, then proceeds to give her side. 

Sometimes it feels that true crime programmes, especially if the family is involved, only serve to reopen old wounds. 

There are ethics that documentary makers should follow that we fiction writers don’t have to. Like, is there a point? Are they hoping to right a wrong? To show another side other than what the media has given us? Or, to just regurgitate a case that has been told before for viewing figures? To be salacious, even? 

In the past I blogged about the problem of victim’s becoming footnotes in their own murders in such documentaries. Even Louis Theroux admits that victims interest him less than perpetrators. Yet, there can be fascinating insights into the criminal mind through these explorations. They teach us something about the world, society, or the human condition. 

Like reading crime fiction, we can learn about the dark side of humanity from a safe distance. 

This list will be a countdown of my ten favourites. I am not claiming that they are the best ever ever ever, but they have stood out the most to me in a sea of the hundreds I’ve watched, albeit with compelling cases and characters, there is something a bit more special about the ones on my list. 

So here goes…

Ten True Crime Documentaries I urge you to check out

10

Unmasking a Killer: The Golden State Killer

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After reading Michelle McNamara’s book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, I was intrigued. But I’m a chronic researcher -spoiler? – and although I’d read who was eventually caught for these crimes, the lines get blurred when you watch as many crime docs as I do. So I invested time in this documentary, a seven parter. 

The first five episodes show the extent of the horrendous crimes, the final two show the criminal, unmasked. 

There are bloodcurdling details, law enforcement officials give their accounts, there are wider issues in society exposed, and also how, in the long run, laws were changed to help protect women, and then all victims. Something positive. 

This documentary has more than ‘a point’. It is compelling on many levels. 

When the killer is at last unmasked it dissolves all his power, and it’s interesting to see how frail he suddenly becomes – no doubt an inspiration to Harvey Weinstein tottering into court every day about now with his zimmer frame. 

There is quite a bit of recapping and repetition. This doc could definitely be shorter but is still well worth the investment.

9

The Disappearance of Susan Cox Powell

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This is a more recent doc, aired lately on Sky’s new channel: Crime, a channel that has shown a few others that have not impacted me quite the way this one did. 

Susan is a young wife and mother of two boys when one night she disappears – like the title says. Her husband is suspected. The case goes on in a truly shocking turn of events – a creepy father in law, to put it mildly, with an obsession for Susan – and much more tragedy. This documentary will break your heart.

I often doubt the balance in these films but I was glad that Susan was given a voice and who knows, maybe if someone watches and sees their story in it, and escapes their current situation, then that too is a good thing.  

8

The Wolfpack

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Okay. Lots of people will think this is not a true crime documentary but I think that locking your seven growing children in an apartment for fourteen years is definitely a crime. 

Homeschooled, due to paranoia about their safety in the outside world – New York after 911 – these kids have little else to do but watch movies. They start to make movies too, of themselves reenacting flicks by the likes of Tarantino, dressing up and replaying the dialogue, until one day, one of them has had enough of being kept captive. 

This is fas-cin-ating! And like most on the list, it is a story about control, though with a much happier ending.  

The young people in this movie are amazing, full of imagination and empathy for their mentally unwell father.

7

Written in Blood (CBS Reality)

[image error]Toynes with Sophie Hannah

Right up my street, this series marries crime fiction novels and true crime. 

Simon Toynes, author of The Boy Who Saw, takes crime writers to the location of a crime that inspired one of their books. As they travel around the area, the writer tells Toynes, and us, a bit more and a bit more, until we have all the details about the case.

I woke late one night and found this one by chance. Clare Mackintosh was talking about the Howell case in Castlerock, where I holiday every year, so I was hooked. 

Then there was Tess Gerritsen talking about a case in America of a killer family. And many more.

Crime readers, check it out.

6

Mommy Dead and Dearest

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A young girl, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, has been told that she is ill all her life. Her mother Dee Dee becomes a local figure off the back of her daughter’s condition; people are incredibly kind to her. Only she is the one who is unwell, with, you probably guessed it… this is a prime example of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. 

Gypsy Rose is growing up despite her mother’s best attempts to keep her young and defenceless. Gypsy gets a boyfriend and the two plot something awful. You can probably guess what too. 

The stand out moment for me is when the girl’s father comes to visit her, and she is so sweet and childlike, you realise how damaged, stunted, or good at acting she has had to become because of her mother. Chilling stuff.

If the purpose of the film makers was to show that nobody is what they seem, they succeeded.

I’ll check in soon with my top 5 favourite true crime documentaries.

What are yours?

2020

At the start of December I panicked. It seemed everyone had a list except me. Hadn’t even thought about it.

So, I decided to make an advent calendar on Instagram of the best books I’d read in ’19 but I soon lost interest. How could I write any Best Of when I had not read every book published that year? And plus, I don’t read just new books. I don’t read just one genre and think I would be missing out if I did. It’s apples and oranges.

Anyway, Goodreads put together a lovely visual of all the books I’d read over the year (71 – I topped my goal of 65). That would make do. I’d also learned a lesson about following the crowd.

I have plans for this blog, in between getting The Sleeping Season ready to run, I want to write about a few topics, but first, Happy New Year to you!

I was about to publish a new blog post a week ago when I started to feel unwell and so I left the blog for a few days and by the time I got back it was out of date. Life moves fast!

I don’t have any major goals for 2020. I would like to get a publisher for my literary thriller set in South Dakota. I’m really proud of that book.

And I’m excited to introduce DI Harriet Sloane to readers, as she has been hiding in my PC for years now. I’m looking forward to the reaction towards a feminist crime series set in Belfast. It deals with important subjects, like disability, violence against women, and stalking. It’s very close to my heart.

At the moment, book 4 of the Sloane series is static in my mind, I’m tuning in and trying to hear where Harry wants to go next.

I have no problem getting ideas, although the ideas folder is noticeably dwindling, but inspiration is everywhere. 

I need to finish some projects too: edit my Boston thriller, and redraft a couple of manuscripts that I started last year. The Boston book has a deadline, the rest do not.

I’ve finished work on a poetry collection about my parallel world as a carer. It is, of course, completely different to my novels, but I believe it’s important not to limit yourself creatively.

There are exciting projects are in the pipeline, too. More news soon.

I am going to blog soon with my type of Best Of list, and it will be about my favourite subject: crime documentaries. In case you didn’t know, I’m a true crime buff.

Have a guess what will be on my Top 10 and let me know over on Twitter.

Have a great 2020! 

Catch Up

I’ve had a very literary couple of months. Real writing-life highlight stuff, but then my laptop had to go away and get fixed for weeks (it wasn’t fixed!) and when I eventually got it back it gave up the ghost for good.

What is a writer without her letters?

I haven’t blogged in ages. So lots to catch up on!

I got a new Chromebook. Yes, I did not do my homework and it is really fiddly working in Word. If you know an easier way, please let me know. I beg you.

[image error]Chromebook frustration realness

But good news, and there’s lots of it, so I have to count my lucky stars! I managed to finish Nanowrimo 2019 with a week to go, even though 3/4 of The New One (working title) was written in Notes on my iPhone. Ahhh!

I’ve finished my school workshops, and loved every minute! I gave a workshop on Prose Poetry at Community Arts Partnership a couple of weeks ago, which helped me refresh my knowledge and got me writing a few new poems.

For the last year or so I’ve been working on a collection that is close to home, about my experience being a carer.

[image error]Autism Mum and Proud!

Oh, and among the shed-load of rejections – yes, let’s recognise them too – I got an acceptance from Eavan Boland at Poetry Ireland Review. Happy moment indeed!

It is great to be able to move from one form of creative writing to another. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Then, a few days ago I read my children’s story Feeding Time at Zoo School at the CS Lewis Festival with the wonderful folk from Women Aloud NI. So that’s a wrap for my readings for the year. Back to the bread and butter.

But there is still so much to tell you… Let’s rewind.

[image error]She has a face!

I can now reveal the cover for my next book which will be published by Friday Press.

Do you like it? I am delighted with it.

The Sleeping Season also has a date for publication now. Drum roll, please…

27 March 2020. Save that date

A Busy Bookish Time

Last time I blogged I was about to head to the River Mill Retreat for a few days to work on my new book. It was bliss – as always. Paul Maddern is a great host and I can’t wait to go back. Until I do, it will be a busy bookish time…

Tomorrow I will be meeting a book group at the Giants Causeway, which is chaired by Claire Savage (author of children’s books Magical Masquerade and Phantom Phantasia), to discuss The Bones of It. I’m very much looking forward to it. A real highlight of writing is when the world in your head becomes a world that other people can enter too.

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At the moment I am delivering poetry workshops in schools for Community Arts Partnership. It is always a lot of fun and has inspired me to set aside the novel and finish my own poetry collection, which is highly personal to me in a way my fiction is not usually. I hope one day soon to be able to share it with you.

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On Saturday 5 October, I will be delivering a workshop for adults in Seamus Heaney Homeplace, Bellaghy. It is on the theme of Truth, in keeping with this year’s National Poetry Day theme, (NPD is on Thursday 3 October).

Also, that week – Wednesday 2 October – I am delighted to be chatting about Female Crime in an event for Aspects Festival, Bangor, alongside Catriona King and Sharon Dempsey.

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Then Sharon and I will be flying over to Boston to take part in Boston Book Festival on Saturday 19 October in an Emerald Noir event. I’ll be looking for lots of inspo for the next project while I’m there.

I can’t wait! I will be reading from Bank Holiday Hurricane, my collection of short stories.

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Hopefully this will all keep my mind busy so I’m not thinking too much about The Sleeping Season. We’ll be working on the cover soon…

I’ll do a cover reveal.

Stay tuned for that!

The Sleeping Season – Book News!

Where do you get your ideas?

This is the question writers get asked the most. At least, I do.

Everywhere, is my answer. Anywhere.

My new book The Sleeping Season (coming spring 2020) developed from a story, into a book, into a detective series.

My protagonist is DI Harriet Sloane.

Harry, to her friends, works in East Belfast.

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She is the character I know the best out of all my imaginary friends. I’ve known Harry for years now. Almost 6, in fact!

Where did I get the idea to tell her story?

It was a mixture of a few things, it usually is: going to crime fiction panels at Trinity College and Aspects, attending a creative writing class with Caroline Healy in Arts Arts (which feels like a lifetime ago).

Caroline set us an exercise about ethics in writing, being accountable for what you write. She may have been talking about non-fiction, but I started to envisage this fictional family of five grownup children all with their own individual set of ethics: one is a carer, one a minister, one battling drug addiction, one a social worker, and the other (who developed into Harriet) is a detective with a lot going on.

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In November 2013 during Nanowrimo (yes, I’m talking about that again) I wrote the first draft of The Bones of It in three weeks. With a week left, a friend joked: Start something else. So I wrote a short story about the Sloanes, or the Knights, as they were then called. But some stories refuse to let go and Harriet got her own spin-off.

The first book will be released in 6 months. I imagine it will be nice to be able to give a bit of notice with this one. I’ve been told it’s strong and poetic. You can make up your own mind.

Book 3 in the Harriet Sloane series is underway, along with a few other projects (more crime, lit fic, stories, poems…ideas are stirring for book 4).

Hopefully the following instalments will be released one a year – that’s the plan at the mo.

I might write fast (and edit ridiculously slow) but the business of publishing is far from fast-paced.

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Writers, tell me, where do you get your ideas?

 

(All lovely images are royalty-free from Unsplash btw – thank you!)

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Bank Holiday Hurricane – stories

So, I have some fantastic news I’ve been sitting on for months now…

Doire Press will be publishing my debut short story collection next month. It’s all happening very quickly since we got the backing from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Of course it means an awful lot to have that support, and the support of Lisa Frank and John Walsh from Doire too!

Handing your stories over to editors and publishers is like sending your babies off to school, where other people will get to know them as well as you already do. It’s been a great experience and I’m excited for you all to read the stories when they come out into the world.

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(I’m totally in love with the cover, designed by Lisa.)

We are launching at Aspects Festival in Bangor on Sunday 24 September, 6pm (with an introduction from the talented and hugely inspirational Bernie McGill, who has just published her second novel The Watch House). Plus, it’s extra special to launch my collection in North Down Museum; I grew up in the area and studied just across the road for many years.

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(Image: Patricia Hamilton (Arts Officer), Moyra Donaldson (Poet), Joshua Burnside (Musician), et moi at the Aspects photo shoot.) See the full 2017 programme here.

I will also be reading in the multi-genre event at the inaugural Bray Literary Festival on Saturday 23 September, 8pm-10pm, Royal Hotel. Bray Lit Fest is the brainchild of short story writer and novelist Tanya Farrelly. Check it out, and if you are in the area, please do come along and say hello!

And a little bit about what to expect from Bank Holiday Hurricane?

A woman picks up what is left of her life after her release from prison; lifelong friends keep deep secrets that could fracture each other’s lives; in Manchester, paths cross for two people who have not seen each other since the genocide in Rwanda. Bank Holiday Hurricane is a collection about dislocation, disenchantment and second chances, told through linked stories set in and around a Northern Irish town, and further afield.

I just love this quote from Bernie McGill about the stories:

‘Distinctive, powerful and strung, at times, with an electric high-wire tension, they contain a lyricism that comes at you sideways and will knock the wind right out of you. If you like your prose with a bloodied lip, here it is, in all its gunmetal, late-night, bleary-eyed finery.’

Delighted with that!

K x

 

The Buoys that Keep Us Up

When I first decided to start blogging, I thought I’d write about things that tick me off (and they are numerous). I also thought that blogging would allow me say what I wanted to say in more characters than twitter, but I can’t be arsed, in truth. The world is already a grey place at the moment so I’ve been concentrating on family and losing myself in fiction. And anyway, as an impulsive person, social media has been great for teaching me how and when to bite my tongue, so far.

The last time I blogged I was about to head to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre (thanks Ards and North Down Borough Council!) where I met some amazing artists and plotted a police procedural novel. I don’t care what anyone, including Stephen King, says about not plotting, this beast needed it! I’ll let it stew and come back to it later.

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(Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Newbliss.)

There have been library visits, which are always great for feedback on The Bones of It, and yes, it’s still proving to be literary Marmite – as a book of its kind should be. (Proud mamma!)

I was asked to interview Winnie M Li about her novel Dark Chapter for Belfast Book Festival. The novel mirrors the author’s experience of a brutal sexual assault in Belfast, 2008. Dark Chapter is not an easy book to read and nor should it be, but it is an important read and I urge everyone to buy a copy.

Belfast Book Festival was incredible this year. My good friend Claire Savage launched her wonderful debut novel Magical Masquerade in the Crescent Arts Centre with an interview chaired by Jane Talbot, founder of Women Aloud NI. It was a fab morning, and that afternoon forty of us shared our work in a readathon; I came home even more excited by local women writers, and about 8 books heavier! I’m thrilled to see the Women Aloud team go from strength to strength, and delighted (most over-used author word ever?) to be the group’s secretary. I feel like I need to get a sexier pair of glasses however…

The world of a writer is peppered so strongly with rejection, but of course you would never know this when you just see the good news. I go through stages when I feel dismayed with the whole scene, we probably all do if we’re being honest, and maybe it makes the good all the more sweeter.

Thank god for Women Aloud and for lovely friends (both in and out of the writing scene), and can I just say that I heart the Square Circle Writers! I’m very lucky to have this group of smart, warm, funny ladies to be able to sound off to and share ideas with. Isn’t community what it’s all about? I think so! We are working on an exciting group project and I am dying to tell you more, but at this stage it’s hush-hush!

Thank you to Brian McGilloway for including The Bones of It in his top 10 Northern Irish Crime Novels article that was published by Strand Magazine. Another lovely thing in ‘the sea of indifference’, as our cherished poet Michael Longley put it when talking about launching a new collection.

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(A paper boat sailing on the sea of indifference?)

And what else…the cherry on the cake maybe, that I’ve been selected to be one of the seven writers in residence at Cill Rialaig in November, alongside Anna Heussaff, Sue Leonard, Fiona O’Rourke, Breda Wall Ryan, Moyra Donaldson and Aiden O’Reilly.

Huge thanks to Irish Writers Centre and Arts Council NI for all their support!!

Ten days on a cliff in Co. Kerry come November, where I’ll be working on my second short story collection; I won’t tell you the title yet but I think it’s a good one. I’m loving writing these stories, they are mostly about women who do things that aren’t all that well thought out, which is so much nicer on the page than IRL.

On Saturday, I’m giving a workshop in Ards Arts on crafting the short story. Looking forward to meeting more writerly folk. Should be fun! We all need more of that.

K x

 

 

 

It’s Been a While…

It’s been a busy couple of months for me and a while since I’ve blogged!

(Promise I haven’t been ignoring you