whodunit

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Writers block … #iamwriting

As a general rule I think writers block isn’t a bad thing. It does dam up a steady trickle of tripe and when the tripe is from others, well, hallelujah, there’s absolutely no downside.  When I’m the one blocked, the world isn’t missing much. Those readers chewing their nails for the next EJ Lamprey, well, my last two novels sold a bit but enthusiasm was unexpressed. I’m as grateful because reviews would have been, at the least, puzzled.

(I wrapped up the ten book Lawns series at long and complicated length in 19 20, and Do-Over . . . well, Do-Over was written in one spectacular joyous evening when the dam, for once, broke. It then took TEN MONTHS to tease into a book and sank like a stone on publication which is a shame because it hung on to that lunatic rollercoaster feeling and I like it very much)

Do-Over was the exception that proved the rule in a long block and I do blame my new life. Three years ago on a week’s holiday in Spain, practically to the day, (tomorrow is the day) I saw this uniquely odd house. BAM.  It had stood empty for a couple of years, was so run down  the few viewers before me had stopped dead in the doorway – the sort of house agents start with, you know the pitch, the next one is a little above your budget but remember you do get what you pay for. 

Not me. I saw four more houses but beetled back to see this one again, walking around dazed with delight. I patched plaster-crumbling walls without even seeing them, completely overlooked sagging ceilings, furnished one particular room with my desk and bookshelves (a STUDY of my OWN for the first time EVER) and peopled it with ink-stained scribbling guests having a wonderful time. I flew back to Scotland still dazed and thanking Providence that I had just been made redundant and was free to sell up and dash out to start this new and dazzling life in my new and wonderful guesthouse.

Six months later I’d given up:  nothing had gone smoothly, my house simply wouldn’t sell, I was living on capital when every penny of it would have been needed in Spain, the dream wasn’t going to happen. Time to give up, take my house in Scotland off the market, look for another job where I was, behave like a normal not-far-off-retirement rational human being.

As a sign of acceptance, a last nod to the dream and what might have been, I wrote a story about what I was calling the Elefante Blanco, a book for children with a 9 year old protagonist.  I knew my fading memories of the house weren’t entirely accurate, so I wrote it as it should be. Why not? I’d never live there. I peopled it with the writer guests I wanted, and gave it an owner who could have lived such a life since it wouldn’t, sniff, be me. There were a few all-nationalities neighbours and very little about the Spanish town and the lifestyle because I knew very little about the Spanish town and the lifestyle. The Kidnap Caper got as far as a few beta readers  (finding 9 year old readers isn’t as easy as you’d think, by the way) and then suddenly everything started happening and my house was sold and it was all go go GO and the Elefante Blanco story belonged to an alternative world.

It was to be the last story in a long long time to flow effortlessly. For years writing had come as naturally as breathing, something that fizzed and jiggled and bubbled endlessly, and I told myself it was because the refurbishment was so very much bigger than anticipated (it always is) and my new teaching job was draining my creativity and I was soaking up impressions and life was so very different.

I’m one of those writers who has to write, if not from life, from the life I know, and I knew very little. Not that I ever knew everything, all those whodunits, I’ve never really seen a murdered body, certainly never tripped over a fresh one. I’d more than once phoned Police Scotland direct on some procedural stuff and they’d been endlessly patient and helpful.  My Spanish was and is exceedingly pidgin. Phoning any branch of the policia here was never going to be an option. Writers block may be a boon to the writing world generally but it is a personal anguish, a mental constipation which becomes very painful. A year ticked by, and another, and 2020 dawned and I’d started and discarded at least nine book ideas, every one of them stilted and laboured and going nowhere.

When a story did finally start scrabbling for a foothold it was an Elefante Blanco one, picking up all the adult characters from the Kidnap Caper. Harriet Gant, who owns and runs the Elefante Blanco, which is not quite this house, has a life which is not my life, friends who do not exist in real life but are taken from life, and a murder or two to solve  in a country where she is still finding her feet.  Total fiction drawing on actual fact, familiar stuff, and writing is once again and at last, FUN. Whoop whoop!

Brace yourself, dear reader, because if this one gets past beta readers it may eventually be published, but right now I’m happy for me and oh wow it feels GREAT to have that dratted block gone.

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Emptied plate

From the time I started this series of whodunits based on the nursery rhyme One Two Buckle My Shoe I’ve had an uneasy eye on the tenth book – Nineteen Twenty My Plate Is Empty. The titles always had to fit the story – in some cases they’ve suggested the story – and I’ve only had to cheat twice, (Seven Eight Play It Straight and Seventeen Eighteen Past Lies Waiting), but that empty plate has been lurking in the shadows for a long time.

Nailed it.  (Phew!)

My main protagonist, Edge Cameron, has always had life handed to her on a plate. Her first husband left her a wealthy widow, her second husband fortunately had a massive life insurance policy, and she earned a reasonable income as a scriptwriter.  She has a TV series going into production which could, if it takes, make her a very tidy bundle.

Disaster when her production house, along with others, is cleaned out by person or persons unknown and her plate is abruptly emptied . . .

When the first likely suspect turned up dead, the trail seemed to have gone cold, until Donald, who has been financing productions for a while, notices one of his fellow investors seems to have come out of the disaster with more, not less, cash, taken himself off to Paris, then vanished off the grid.

Then a friend travelling through France by campervan with her dog and cat spots the missing investor near Boulogne in a fancy motorhome and the hunt is on.

Well, that’s the gist. Some of the research was provided by my recent life, no surprise there. The checking into moving illegal money around, in these days of intensive money laundering controls, is doing my head in a bit, and may yet get the police at the door if I ask too many questions. Any international financiers, especially operating on the shady side of the law, who could offer some suggestions? Completely confidential, of course. No need to bump me off after we’ve talked. That only happens in books.

In the meantime I’ll just crack on with writing the rest of it.

 

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Happy endings (no, not that sort. Although mentioned.)

“If you want a happy ending you have to decide where to stop your story – Orson Welles”

I am slightly addicted to twists whether I’m writing a whodunit, a microstory, or any of the other ways in which I kowtow before my muse. The one on the drawing board has several twists. There’s one, though, which turns the whole story from a slightly OTT love story (the alert reader is already saying hang on just a minute) to a slightly creepy stalker story, to abrupt terror. In two paragraphs it goes from mildly steamy (and wildly romantic) to chilling, and I didn’t even plan it that way. I love it, though.

Hence the Orson Welles quote. I could literally stop the story at its happy point and leave most of its readers contented.

Not going to, though. The book in question (and I only say this because I am personally annoyed by dangling hints and coy half-references) is still in process,  The Money Honey, and it’s odd in many ways.

Only once before have I had a young protagonist*, because I find mature characters much more intricate and interesting, but Miranda’s story starts when she’s around twenty, in 1996, and the reader follows her for the next twenty years.

She only came into existence because she’s a large part of the backstory for Seventeen Eighteen Past Lies Waiting, which is being published soon. I wrote her story separately, to get it clear in my head, and then I got engrossed in the challenges it presented. I hadn’t a clue who my target reader was, but sometimes books take on a life of their own and this is one.

There was tons of rewriting for Seventeen Eighteen, as it happened, but the beta readers who have now read both books were pretty positive in their feedback. However, the beta readers who only read Money Honey weren’t. They found the ending, with its sudden introduction of a bunch of amateur sleuths from the Lawns, thoroughly confusing.

By the time that feedback was trickling in, I quite liked my Money Honey but I could see their point, as a stand-alone book she would need an ending of her own. So I borrowed from a few other authors faced with similar situations, and Money Honey has three endings.

Miranda’s whole story is about the unorthodox choices she makes (the working title was Step By Step) so it felt right to let those readers who have engaged with her make the final choice for her.  They will choose whether she calls an old friend for help, which is where Seventeen Eighteen came into the picture – or whether she tackles the situation herself, the way she’s always done – or whether the original storyline from Seventeen Eighteen holds true, but this time she and her son take on the challenge together.

No confusion there, then.  grin

It really has been a very challenging book, I’ve put it aside at least five times and every time it has come yammering after me demanding attention. She’s so unlike any of my other characters, and so very in need of a happy ending.

And yes I know the other meaning of that phrase. In fact that’s why Money Honey is going out under the Clarissa name, not EJ Lamprey. Lots of happy endings, and never, it seems, one for her.

Seventeen Eighteen has finished its rewrites, gone off for editing, started its countdown, and will be out shortly. Oh, and one other oddity – they share the same cover photograph. Slightly different cropping, a lighting difference, but the same photograph. I’m not being cheap, I’m not even being Scottish and practical, I simply couldn’t decide which cover to use it on. It feels right to have it on both.

 

 

*Lucy, in Time Before Time, by Joanna Lamprey

 

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Question to writers – when your guest character’s iceberg is getting invasive, how do you solve it? #amwriting

I’m assuming it’s the same for every writer, that each character is an iceberg, only 10% of them showing in the story but the writer has to know the other 90%, see it clearly, to give that 10% credibility –  not only what they look like, you have to know the main events shaping their lives, how those brought them to the point of your story and made them into the person they are.

Oh, I know in some books that is the story but in whodunits, murder and the solving of the murder is the priority. There simply isn’t the time, and the reader certainly doesn’t have the patience, to delve off into hugely detailed backstory for every character. That’s the huge advantage of a series, of course, but although my main characters can drift amiably through the shipping lanes of the series, each book is stand-alone and has one-off characters.

Those destined to die are easy. Pick out the traits which made them ideal cannon fodder. grin

Those who are to live, but will not become series characters, not so easy. I’ve got an iceberg of note on my hands now, because I’m throwing words at the first draft of Seventeen Eighteen (Past Lies Waiting). My guest character accidentally killed a man when she was in her early twenties, which is the direct cause of her deliberately killing a man in her early forties, and she’s on the run. Her eighteen-year-old son is in direct danger and she ropes in his biological father, who is Donald. So that’s where 17 18 starts (and gets its title) but I’ve never before wrestled with a twenty-years-and-counting backstory.  Tell you what, I never will again.

laugh

To keep her history straight in my head, I kept jotting separate notes, and writing out little scenarios, and populating the twenty years with the people who shaped her into a woman I could identify with,  yet who would kill a man. Eventually I had written nearly more about Miranda’s backstory than I had put into 17 18 itself, and all I needed of it was enough to explain her to the 17 18 reader.

Here’s the thing, though. There’s ten thousand words in my jotted outline and I’ve barely scratched the surface. She fascinates me, she’s taken on a life of her own and that twenty years just keeps growing in my head. Hence the title of this blog.  How do you solve a problem like Miranda, stop her sinking your crisp and tidy whodunit with the massive iceberg she has become?

TV has long since given us solutions – a spin-off – and I’m trying it. As if it isn’t hard enough to write one book, I’m now writing two. At the same time.  Bouncing from one to the other as details need to be clarified and tidied, and trying not to think ahead to the time when they come out of their resting period and need editing . . .  EJ Lamprey only writes whodunits, so Step By Step (working title) will be a Clarissa book, and Clarissa books are a little more, er, worldly. They do have a strong storyline, that’s important to me, so right now the focus is on Miranda’s story, I’ll flesh in the sexier bits on the second draft.

I’ve spent my whole life reading voraciously but I’ve not knowingly come across this solution to the character iceberg before, and I’m wondering how common it is? Anyone?

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COUNTDOWN to corpse – that’s it, 15 16 has launched. Try the PDF – https://elegsabiff.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/excerpt-15-16.pdf

The thumbnail – It’s the eighth in the series and the first in the classic format, a country house, a houseful of guests, even a body in the library, and it all happens because William inherits a slightly decrepit shooting lodge from his decidedly eccentric uncle. Uncle was an illusionist, something of a genius in creating optical and mechanical illusions, and the attempts of William, Vivian, Donald and Edge to solve the case are definitely hampered by Robertson Manor’s peculiarities.

This blog was created to provide a preview which you can now see on Amazon itself, but there’s an excerpt from nearer the action, HERE

 

If you’re new to the Lawns, by the way, the first book (One Two Buckle My Shoe) is on a permanent promo price (cover in the margin, or click on the title) or the first three books are bundled for US$ 3.00  (One To Six, Buckle to Sticks)

OR – because it is the Edinburgh Festival – I have Seven Eight Play It Straight on a giveaway from Thursday for the weekend.
Fifteen Sixteen_high Res

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Nine Ten Begin Again

nine ten kindleYup, Nine Ten has joined the family and just as soon as I have worked out again how to add it to my sidebar (I add things to my sidebar 3 or 4 times a year. I’m sure I will master the skill one of these days) will start selling like hot cakes.  In the meantime clicking on the cover in this blog should, at least in theory, connect you to the Amazon that enjoys your custom.  Oh, and if you’re quick about it, you’ll get it on promotion price. The first few days of each book are promotion days, glitches are part of the deal. If you missed this blog until after the promotion price, you should be on the mailing list.

I’ve always said Five Six was my personal favourite but Nine Ten may have overtaken it. I’ve read it through about a gazillion times over the last few months but still find myself smiling at certain times, and the beta readers commented that they smiled a lot too*. It was certainly an odd book to write, in that it started as a short story about Donald (I write microstories about the characters, call them hops and move them to their own tab on this website) and the characters took matters into their own hands and romped away with me panting after them and trying to call them back to heel. (My dog doesn’t listen to me either.)

So there I was with a very long short story which was refusing to quit, and a plot (after a contract job at a bank) which was trying to turn itself into a book, so I shrugged and put them together and asked my two all-time favourite beta readers to have an alpha look at the resulting draft. Yes, they said. Make it so.

Blame them.

 

*okay, apart from the one who was so shocked by the Donald bit of the story that she didn’t want to read on. But the others, and there were twelve of them, male, female, 30 something to 60 something, new and regulars, Scottish, English, American and South African, smiled a lot.

 

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Christmas Kindle – the gift of a portable library

kindle bookmark

 

I loved this tweet when I saw it and hope Rossetti Rogers will forgive me for borrowing it here, but it is oh so relevant to this post.

A very successful blogger with a huge readership invited independently-published authors to toot their books on his blog today for the Christmas market. His website may yet collapse, I think I darted in at number 285.

If you want to know who and where, ask. I find it very odd that I have more readers all the time, yet you drift silently in, read (often more than one entry) and then drift away. Yes, you. What for you do that, you doan wanna talk, eh? Eh? Am I scary?  

The older I get the more prone I am to these little conversational detours.

Anyway, I pitched quite the persuasive spiel, all the while knowing the chances of anyone making it down to #285 without having spent their entire Christmas budget were slim to non-existent. Maybe, I thought, I should be pitching my spiel, not on a passenger liner, but in my own tiny canoe. And maybe you, the silent passers-by, will be struck by the logic and force of my argument and I’ll rack up a sale or two. Well, I might have, if I hadn’t already aggressively italicized you away.

But here’s the pitch. (If WordPress font permits, in big loopy letters.) (nope, WordPress preferred to stay understated. Bold and italics yes, Algerian 24 no.)

This entry is for those of you buying a Kindle for a slightly older relative who has never had one before. You KNOW you’ll have to download the first book for them, because they’ll never do it themselves and there’s a real chance your lovely gift will end up being a coaster otherwise. But what to download?

What you need is a cozy whodunit, clean as a whistle, perfect for the armchair detective, novella length (making it easy-read AND affordable) and the first in a series so they’ll be motivated to go looking for the next. One reader, converted. Oddly enough many of my readers are in their forties, even thirties, but the books work all the way up to ninety plus, have a look, you’ll see why. You’ll thank me.

One Two Buckle My Shoe

Of course if they’ve ever done any website dating for senior singles, you’ll want to download the newest one in the series instead, because that’s all about our heroine diving into the deep end of the dating pool, the end where the predators lurk, and it’s proving the best seller so far: Seems we’ve all done some website dating.

I even quoted one of my 5 star reviews, trying to make it sound as though there were hundreds and I had picked one at random. That’s salesmanship. I hope that’s how it comes across, anyway.

Five Six Pick Up Sticks

 

5 star review on Amazon.com from Scottiedog “I enjoyed both the earlier books, they’re fun to read and neatly solved. I like the characters and the retirement village setting, and there’s always a twist I miss, even though by this book I was watching closely for clues because they’re so obvious in retrospect! This book is slightly different in that Edge is put squarely and deliberately in the firing line and even though she’s a main character and I know she won’t be killed off (right?) I was reading faster and faster as the end approached. I think it’s the best so far- fun and exciting”

We may never know. But I’d kick myself for not even trying. And the point remains, getting a Kindle is lovely but, er, what next? You’re a lovely generous person for giving it, but you have to follow through.

Happy to help.

 

 

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Five Six Pick up Sticks, a murder mystery by E J Lamprey

Yay, the third book has been accepted. This is a great way to read sample chapters 🙂

First Chapters

five six final

 

Buy from Amazon

 

Website dating for the over-fifties is definitely a boom industry, but for some it has been a dead end, and the Scottish police want to know why. Sergeant Kirsty Cameron’s aunt Edge is the right age to become the bait in their investigation, and even has some recent murder-solving experience on her CV, making her the perfect candidate. 

The third whodunit in the Grasshopper Lawns series dives gleefully into the murkiest end of the senior singles dating pool (where the predators lurk) with Edge secretly hoping to meet someone special. It’s spring, and it seems the rest of the world is in love, is there someone out there for her? Preferably not the murderer, of course. 

The murders of the recent past were solved with her friends Vivian, Donald and William, but this investigation is so covert, not even they can know why she is suddenly so keen…

View original post 8,282 more words

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A-Z Challenge – Rules of the Detection Club (circa 1929)

There is the thinnest of autobiographical links here and I won’t labour it.  (Who knew R would turn out to be the second hardest to do?)  I have started writing whodunits and it seems there is some modern confusion as to what, exactly, constitutes a traditional whodunit. Or even whodunnit.  What are the rules? Yes, it has to be true to the era in which it is written, and the reader has to have a sporting chance of solving the mystery, but is there a set standard?

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, and more than a dozen of the crème de la crème detective story writers who were active in 1929, created a Detection Club which still meets annually for a dinner : membership, although now extended to a few more related fields, is still by invitation only : and to the best of my knowledge the initiation ceremony still includes this wonderful oath, circa 1930.

The Ruler shall say to the Candidate: Is it your firm desire to become a Member of the Detection Club?

The Candidate shall answer in a loud voice: That is my desire.

Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on, nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or the Act of God?

I do.

Do you solemnly swear never to conceal a vital clue from the reader?

I do.

Do you promise to observe a seemly moderation in the use of Gangs, Conspiracies, Death-Rays, Ghosts, Hypnotism, Trap-Doors, Chinamen, Super-Criminals and Lunatics; and utterly and forever to forswear Mysterious Poisons unknown to Science?

I do.

Will you honour the King’s English?

I will.

Is there anything you hold sacred?

Then the Candidate, having named a Thing which he holds of peculiar sanctity, the Ruler shall ask: Do you swear by (Here the Ruler shall name the Thing)

to observe faithfully all these promises which you have made so long as you are a Member of the Club?

(But if the Candidate is not able to name a Thing which he holds sacred, then the Ruler shall propose the Oath in this manner following: Do you as you hope to increase your Sales, swear to observe faithfully all these promises which you have made, so long as you are a Member of the Club?)

Then the Candidate shall solemnly swear: All this I solemnly do swear. And I do furthermore promise and undertake to be loyal to the Club, neither purloining nor disclosing any plot or secret communicated to me before publication by any Member, whether under the influence of drink or otherwise.

If there is any Member present who objects to the Proposal let him or her so declare.  If there be no objector, then shall the Ruler say to the Members: Do you then acclaim A N Other as a Member of our Club?

Then the Company’s Crier, or the Member appointed thereto by the Secretary, shall lead the Company in such cries of approval as are within his compass or capacity. When the cries cease, whether from lack of breath or any other cause, the Ruler shall make this declaration: 

A N Other, you are duly elected a Member of the Detection Club, and if you fail to keep your promises may other writers anticipate your plots, may your publishers do you down in your contracts, may total strangers sue you for libel, may your pages swarm with misprints and may your sales continually diminish. Amen.”

My source for this was Peter Lovesey’s website (he is a member) and should I ever be invited, which is writ large near the top of the list of the things I still want from life, I promise I will let you know if the ceremony has changed any.  And whether Eric The Skull is still part of the oath.   And if anyone reading this is a member (ha!) please may I have your autograph?