Name Dropping

Isn’t it nice when someone gives you a mention?

I’ve known Lorraine Mace for about eight or nine years now. She’s a tutor for the Writer’s Bureau, and she writes the humour column at the back of Writing Magazine, one of the first pages I read every month. As if that’s not enough, working as Frances di Plino, she is also the author of the Paolo Storey novels Bad Moon Rising and Someday Never Comes, both of which are published by Crooked Cat Books.

I read early versions of Bad Moon Rising, and I was impressed. I’m reading Someday Never Comes right now and the standard has been maintained, even, dare I say, exceeded, and in an effort to get the message out there, Franny is giving away two copies on Goodreads. It runs for the whole of October, and all you do to enter is cut over there and fill in the forms.

The Paolo Storey novels are as dark as my own creations, The Handshaker and it’s forthcoming sequel, The Deep Secret. Serious competition, and of course, it’s every author’s duty to deal with the competition. After learning that Lorraine/Frances was signing up with Crooked Cat, I set out plans for dealing with her. These ranged from a simple sniper’s shot to burning at the stake and/or boiling in oil.

Naturally, nothing ever came of it. The missus wanted the lawn mowing.

I digress. The November issue of Writing Magazine landed on my doormat the other day, and as usual I ignored it, until Nik Morton, another fine Crooked Cat author, pointed out that I got a mention in Lorraine’s column.

My first thoughts, in order, were, “I really must thank Lorraine” and “I’d better read it”. So I read it.

Lorraine is talking about productivity and the fact that while she was faffing about with one Paolo tale, I knocked out another five STACs (soon to be six, Lo) and a couple of other tomes.

She heaps praise upon my work (who wouldn’t? Well, my missus for one) but she then goes on to say that if she ever takes up murder as a profession, I’m top of the hit list.

Charming. Here I am slaving over a hot keyboard, struggling with the pain of arthritis, a bad chest and United’s worst start to the season for over 20 years, and now I’m getting thinly veiled getting death threats. And it’s not as if I don’t get enough of those already. If I had a tenner for every time Her Indoors has said, “I’ll kill you, you miserable old bastard,” I’m sure I’d have enough money to get my knees mended.

Naturally, it’s easy enough for me to get my own back. The next time I send Joe and Co to the Costa del Sol, you see if they aren’t investigating the death of a well-known, expat, British columnist, strangled with her own laptop mains lead.

Could I be that petty? It wouldn’t be the first time.

But I’m not worried. The simple fact is, Lorraine would never get away with it. I know some of the best detectives in town, and I don’t just mean Joe Murray. Having read Bad Moon Rising and working through Someday Never Comes, I know that Paolo Storey is Bradchester’s finest.

So if Lorraine, disguised as Franny, does turn up with a Walther PPK, she’ll likely end up nicked by her own creation.

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Lorraine/Frances was recently interviewed on Talk Radio Europe. Click the link below and you can listen to what she has to say about crime writing and in particular, Paolo Storey and his adventures.

Listen to this interview