All out of sorts

Hello again,

I hope your Christmas preparations are well underway, that the tree is up, and that you have – or are about to – deck your halls! I’m all done on that front, with the kids away this year, last weekend we had our (fake) Christmas Eve friends and family get together, and our family Christmas Day, and although it was odd for me to go to work on what would be Boxing Day, it definitely feels like Christmas has been and gone – so all this frantic activity around me, with people buying gifts, making arrangements, and bracing themselves for the festivities to come is definitely throwing me out of kilter. I feel as though I’m in limbo waiting for something to happen and I’ve not been fully informed as to what, and yes, we still have parties to go to, and what I know will be a lovely Christmas Day with my sister, but it still feels like the rest of you have gone mad and there should be a limit to how long Christmas lasts!

My daughter is now on a farm in Durban, South Africa for three months visiting her boyfriend’s family. She arrived in darkness, and this is the view that greeted her the next morning. Lucky girl!  I’m hoping she’s going to send a few blog posts with photographs. My fingers are crossed.

The other thing that has caught me out when I least expected it, and has me wondering how to move forward, is my writing. Having readied myself to write the closing chapter(s) of the latest Meredith & Hodge novel, One Secret Too Many, I find myself stuck. Not because I don’t know what to write, but because I’m not sure I’ve chosen the correct ending.

Readers familiar with my work will know that I rarely know “who did it” myself until I’m well into the story. Of course I always know what and why things happened, even if it’s a little hazy, (I should confess that occasionally I surprise myself with a turn of events), but I always have at least three possible endings when I start writing. One reason for this is that it helps me ensure that enough clues and detail are included for the reader to believe they’ve worked out the ending, and another because the story sometimes takes a different course as it develops, and having lined up various possibilities it cuts down the need to rewrite whole sections.

This morning I sat at my desk, fingers poised on the keyboard, believing I knew what I was going to write, but with only three words typed I ground to a halt and questioned the route I had decided the characters would take. That’s never happened before, but I was about to wipe out a regular character in the Meredith & Hodge series. Was that a step to far? Was it believable? What effect would the removal of this character have on future storylines? The impact would be major – could Meredith & Hodge cope? These and many more questions have been spinning around in my mind for a few days, and this morning I thought I was brave enough to go with my decision, but I find I’m not. Does that mean I’ve made the wrong decision, or only that I’m a little scared? Add this to the fact that I hadn’t made the final decision as to which character will fall victim to the story, I have a choice of two, I had to stop writing, before things went too far. I’ve downloaded what I have so far to my kindle, and will not make the final decision until I have re-read what I have, and hopefully all will become clear… Yes, my fingers are crossed.

I’ll come back in a few days with an update, and hopefully celebrating the fact that I’ve gone with my original plan. I can’t tell you which of the characters may be despatched, but if you are a regular Meredith & Hodge reader who would you least like to see disappear from the usual cast of characters? Perhaps some outside influence will help me reach my decision.

Enjoy your (belated) Christmas preparations. I’ll leave you with my daughters favourite photo on our fake Christmas Day. She’s the one with a living pillow.