Travel was no easy matter

 Friday Night Murder came out in July 2024. My first venture into the crime scene. I think it fits under the label of police procedural since it features Jess Carter leaving the Met and moving north to Hexham as Detective Inspector. On her very first day it snows, she's late for work and hears someone make a disparaging remark about a new Inspector who leaves the top force in the country  - what is wrong with her? Oh, and a dead body of a young girl is found in the snow....

Writing it was fun and the change of scene interesting. Research involved all sorts of investigations into signs of death, post mortems, weapons, all of which should puzzle anyone who ever checks the files on my computer. Also quite different to my usual research into fabrics and styles of the Regency, not to mention hair styles, types of carriages and distances between towns and cities and travelling between them. Travel was no easy matter in 1811 and I can see why most folk stayed at home all their lives.

I am now in the throes of final editing of Saturday Morning Murder which also features Jess Carter and Rory Harrison. Maybe it will be published on KDP by the end of February 25. I certainly hope so. I'm ready to move onto something else. Will there be a Sunday Night Murder? Possibly. It seems a shame to leave all that research unused! 

Time to take note

 Do workshops help writers write?

The one given by Mari Hannah helped me.

She writes Police procedurals/crime fiction, and since that is the genre I have recently decided to attempt, I just had to attend. It would have been criminal not to! There was much good information and I saved her talk, and think this is worth taking about: she mentioned four things that she advises everyone to do: 

Keep a timeline. It is so easy to lose track of things and exactly when they happened. I came home and starting reading my own work from the start. Glad I did, for I found several instances where I'd got things a) repeated or b) out of sequence.  So now I follow Mari's advice and keep a timeline on a separate document.

I n my read through I also looked for what she calls "a raised action." Evidently police keep a log of every order/question and someone is in charge of that sheet.  When I went through my story - you can guess I found orders I had directed someone to do and then forgotten about them.

A Setup/Payoff sheet. This sits next to the Raised Action sheet, possible on the same document. in my pc. Things discovered in the investigation go in here so they are not forgotten or worse - ignored!

The fourth list she recommended I already do, and I suppose most writers have a character list. How detailed you wish to make it is up to you. I like to note hair and eye-colour so I don't have to sit and try to remember what I said about the character the first time I mentioned them.

So thank you to Mari for an excellent talk. Much appreciated.