Listed Dead – Jan Edwards visits the Guest Blog to talk about her latest Bunch Courtney novel
Sarah recently asked me about the highs and lows of writing Listed Dead. Was it hard to write that tricky third book in my Bunch Courtney Investigations series? How did the experience differ from writing the previous books?
The first draft of Listed Dead was started in early 2019 so it’s quite hard to evaluate what prompted the storyline, but when I think back the writing process was a little different from all of my previous novels.
My writing process has always been a little haphazard, to tell the truth. I really wish it wasn’t, but there it is. I had always been a real seat-of-the-pants writer. I have always started a story with a small seed of an idea. A line of conversation or some snippet from a newspaper, perhaps. From that I would lay down a rough synopsis; write a few chapters; stop and look at the story; plan it out in a little more detail; write a few more chapters; get a lightbulb moment and change the synopsis; add a few more chapters; start to change it again; give myself a slap and race to the end before I got off on another tangent.
With a series, such as my Bunch Courtney novels, which has a number of main characters and an entire world already mapped out, the temptation to go off at a tangent has to be jumped on. Stopped in its tracks. Readers who follow a series invest their time in the characters and want to know all about them. It’s not just getting physical characteristics right but also their character and history. If I get those things wrong people will write and tell me!
The family’s background in Listed Dead carries on from the previous book, In Her Defence, with sister Dodo (Daphne) now a mother, and the health of Bunch and Dodo’s mother, Theadora, an increasingly worrying theme. The lives of the Land Girls also feature, as do Bunch’s beloved horses. As the cover suggests, cars also have a part to play in book three as Bunch finds herself straying further from the village of Wyncombe in pursuit of her suspects.
Having set parameters for my characters is not at all bad because their histories can be plundered for themes and subplots, which makes it easier to add layers to the overall story. When you know how characters will react in difficult situations helps to keep the novel on course. I have lost count of the times that I have shouted at the TV when the main protagonist act completely out of character just to suit the plot. It is something I try very hard not to do with Courtney and Wright. I know how Rose ‘Bunch’ Courtney will react in any given situation. Occasionally events will force her into a certain course of action but always because they have to do so, not because I want them to do such-and-such a thing.
William Wright is a little more of a mystery to me and quite deliberately so. The narrative is told in third person but always through Bunch’s eyes and I don’t want her to second guess him. I don’t want to second guess him either but I have a good idea what his views will be. Really, I don’t want to know him too well.
In Listed Dead Henry Marsham is re-introduced and has been mentioned as a ‘suitable young man’ for Bunch by her grandmother – in both Winter Downs and In Her Defence, but he was never actually featured. When we finally meet him in the flesh in Listed Dead Bunch is taken aback by his part in Admiralty Intelligence but instinctively understands who and what he is. Not just because she has known him for a long time but because he is a part of her world – as Wright is not.
Listed Dead is set in the autumn of 1940. Britain is under siege and the London Blitz is at its height. Utilising real places and events helps in creating a credible backdrop. For example, Bunch and Wright visit London’s Café de Paris during a raid in order to question suspects who have been evading them. I researched the café’s layout, the music and musicians and even the menus. The incident has been used in several novels over the years and history buffs will know that just a few months after Listed Dead is set the Café was gutted in a raid. By sheer fluke a bomb dropped down the air conditioning shaft. Tragically thirty-four people died, including the house-band’s leader, Snake-Hips Johnson, and some eighty more were injured.
Writing Listed Dead was a lot of fun. Even the editing had its moments. I don’t know how many volumes the series will eventually run to but right now I am working on book four, provisionally titled A Case of Murder. And I have ideas jotted down for books five and six. So I shall be living with Bunch and Wright for a few more years yet.
Jan Edwards is a Sussex-born writer now living in the West Midlands with her husband and obligatory cats. She was a Master Locksmith for 20 years but also tried her hand at bookselling, microfiche photography, livery stable work, motorcycle sales and market gardening. She is a practising Reiki Master. She won a Winchester Slim Volume prize and her short fiction can be found in crime, horror and fantasy anthologies in UK, US and Europe; including The Mammoth Book of Dracula and The Mammoth Book of Moriarty. Jan edits anthologies for The Alchemy Press and Fox Spirit Press, and has written for Dr Who spinoffs with Reel Time Pictures.
For further information please contact Penkhull Press.
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