Keeping Track with Guest Joyce Woollcott

Edith/Maddie north of Boston, eating all the sweet corn and tomatoes I can.

I’m delighted to bring Joyce Woollcott back to the blog today, with Blood Relations, her new and second Belfast Murder mystery! Joyce and I met at the now infamous COVID super-spreader party at Malice Domestic 2022, and we’re both members of the Sisters in Crime Guppies chapter. I loved A Nice Place to Die, the first Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride story, and can’t wait to sink my teeth into the new one. I know you’ll love it, too.

Here’s the blurb: Belfast, Northern Ireland: early spring 2017. Retired Chief Inspector Patrick Mullan is found brutally murdered in his bed. Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride and his partner Detective Sergeant Billy Lamont are called to his desolate country home to investigate. In their inquiry, they discover a man whose career with the Police Service of Northern Ireland was overshadowed by violence and corruption.

Is the killer someone from Mullan’s past, or his present? And who hated the man enough to kill him twice? Is it one of Patrick Mullan’s own family, all of them hiding a history of abuse and lies? Or a vengeful crime boss and his psychopathic new employee? Or could it be a recently released prisoner desperate to protect his family and flee the country? Ryan and Billy once again face a complex investigation with wit and intelligence, all set in Belfast and the richly atmospheric countryside around it.  

Keeping Track

It’s hard to believe I’m introducing the second book in my Belfast Murder Series, yet here it is. And even if the prevailing thought is that it’s easier the second time around –– well, that’s not true in my case. In a series, especially one with quite a few characters, there’s this thing called a Character Bible. Clever writers keep one, others, like me, scramble when writing number two. I suppose when I started, I didn’t think I’d be doing another book, but frankly––and more truthfully, I’m not that organized.

And it’s not just about keeping names straight, it’s keeping ages right, color of hair and eyes, even personality traits. Friends of mine, other authors, speak of flow charts and other means of keeping track. Excel and PowerPoint, charts and Pages. I have about ten wire-bound notebooks from the dollar store, mostly half-full of scribbled information and ideas.

Sprinkled in those pages are notes on my main characters, ages and critical details. The only thing is I’m constantly asking myself––when was Ryan’s birthday again? What age is he now? And, where the heck did I put that information? The pink notebook with the cats on the cover? So you see, not the best way to write a series.

Being organized is also very helpful in keeping the story straight and as you might guess, that’s another wee problem I have. Again, clever authors keep detailed calendars populated with characters doing various important things in carefully choreographed synchronicity!

Not me my friends. I write the books in my own timeline, asking only of my hero… what’s the next step in the investigation? And somehow, it works out, with the help of the aforementioned notebooks and stickies and index cards all over the carpet, rearranged occasionally by the dog, (bad idea, btw) yes, it does all come together in the end.

Oh, how I wish it could be more streamlined, but I suppose that would be a different book and a different writer. So for now, unless I get struck by lightening and suddenly become organized, my books will form like magic out of post-its, hastily scribbled indecipherable notes, and odd annotations on my computer calendar. I am working on it though. Now, where did I put that notebook?  

Readers: What about you? Are you organised? Do you make perfect lists of things to accomplish in the day or the week, or do you scrawl notes to yourself when the fancy takes you? Do you have
friends and family birthdays and special occasions carefully listed in a special notebook, or have
you illegible messages to yourself scribbled on the fridge?

J. Woollcott is a Canadian writer born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and BCAD, University of Ulster. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers and Crime Writers of Canada. In 2019 her first novel, A Nice Place to Die,  won the Romance Writers of America Daphne du Maurier Award for Unpublished Mystery and Suspense, in 2021 it was short-listed in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence and is now a finalist in Killer Nashville’s 2023 Silver Falchion Awards. Find her at her web site and on Twitter:  @JoyceWoollcott