Category: Articles

Researching The 'Golden Age' of Crime Fiction

23/5/2020

The Murder AT The Vicarage

Why Agatha Christie Was So Popular

As part of my research for my new series set in York in WW2, I’m currently reading dozens of novels and short stories written by British ‘Golden Age’ crime writers. Detective crime fiction is an inspiration for my two new lady sleuths, Gemma James and Roberta ‘Bobbie’ Baker. I needed to find out what books they might have enjoyed.

York in the 1940s

I've also trawled hundreds of old newspapers to gain some historical perspective and I was shocked to read about a bitter argument in York in 1940 between a women’s group and the local police. The latter had refused to recruit female officers even though a quarter of their men had signed up to fight and left.
Prejudice against women was rife in British society and the police force at this time. It doesn’t seem to have crossed anyone’s mind that women were as capable as men at solving crimes.
This attitude is reflected in the 'Golden Age' crime fiction. Most of these detective stories are narrated by very clever men, who tell other very clever men how they – or one of their very clever male friends – solved the murder. This style of narration - made famous by Arthur Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - was copied relentlessly in the first half of the 20th Century.

A brilliant fictional female detective had yet to be created. This huge gap in the market was eventually filled by Agatha Christie with the elderly spinster, Miss Jane Marple, a character whose crime-solving mind is sharper than her knitting needles. No wonder she was so popular.
I have just re-read Murder in the Vicarage and – when put into context against the output of Christie’s contemporaries – it was a breath of fresh air. No wonder she was so popular.
Christie’s plots are always a devilish brain-tease and this one is no exception. But to have a female character solving a crime that baffled the police was a radical and ground-breaking development.
Christie never commented on politics or involved herself in political campaigns and I’m sure she would have hated to be called a ‘feminist’. But the creation of Jane Marple was a subtle and brave contribution towards changing society’s attitude and lifting the ignorant prejudice against female sleuths and detectives.

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Research Article: 'The Body in the Well'

26/3/2020

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'Dreadful Murder'

'For a week past, the water in the well of the Duke of York public-house at Brompton, Kent, had been affected with so nauseous a taste and smell that it became unfit for use. The servant, when drawing, found something hindered the bucket from filling…and thought that she perceived something like a body, and on moving the rope backwards and forwards to fill the bucket, she found pieces of skin and animal substance adhering to it when it was drawn up. Within the last few days, the smell at the mouth of the well had become so exceedingly offensive that no one would go near it.’

The Morning Chronicle, 23rd October 1818

The murder of the heavily pregnant Bridget Donallen and the callous disposal of her naked body caused a public outcry in 1818. The wife of William Donallen, a soldier in the 98th regiment, Bridget had been murdered and ignominiously dumped down a tavern well in Westcourt Road, Old Brompton. Her water-logged and rotting corpse wasn’t discovered until a month later.

Map showing Brompton, Kent

The newspapers of the time reported every grisly detail surrounding the difficulty experienced by a group of volunteers when they tried to retrieve her remains. The Morning Chronicle, in particular, was in its element:

‘On Saturday morning, some soldiers who were drinking at the Duke of York, offered, for a trifling reward, to go down the well and clear it of its impurity. A young man was accordingly lowered down, but before he arrived at the bottom, he was almost overpowered by the fetid effluvia, and called out to the men who were lowering him to stop. Having waited a few seconds and recovered himself, he proceeded. He, with infinite horror and dismay, discovered a naked human body floating on its back. To be certain, he took hold of the hair, when the body rolled over, and the hair and scalp became detached from the skull and remained in his hand. Terrified in the extreme, and almost reduced to insensibility at the horrid sight, he called to the men on the brink of the well to draw him up…’

The Morning Chronicle, 23rd October 1818

The article went on to describe how one of the other soldiers later braved this hellhole and brought up the decomposing body wrapped in a sheet. But this chap was so affected by the foul air, he fainted when he reached the top and nearly fell down the well himself.

Old Brompton, Kent

An inquest was held, and Bridget’s husband was deemed to be the main suspect for the murder. A warrant was issued for Donallen’s arrest but during the weeks that had elapsed, he’d left the army and disappeared. Bow Street Police Office was contacted. Principal Officer Stephen Lavender was employed to find the suspect and solve the case. Lavender finally tracked Donallen down in County Mayo, Ireland and brought him back to Kent to face trial. Donallen was hanged for the murder of his wife in August 1823.

Bow Street Magistrates Court

I first came across this gruesome case, while browsing through the yellowing and musty pages of an 1818 edition of the Morning Chronicle during a visit to The National Archives in Kew. I needed a strong stomach as well as the standard-issue white gloves for my research that day.

The Morning Chronicle wasn’t alone in this period in its use of sickening and repugnant detail. The Times, that highly respected and most illustrious of newspapers, also pandered to the public’s taste for blood and gore. Describing another of Lavender’s cases, a particularly nasty attack on an eighty-six-year-old man in Northamptonshire, The Times took great pleasure in telling its readership about the ‘large quantity of clotted blood that had settled in his [the victims’] mouth.’

The second thing I noted in the Morning Chronicle’s report about the Donallen murder was the reporter’s indifference to the danger posed to the staff and customers of The Duke of York by the contaminated water. But when we put this in historical context, it’s not surprising really. It would be several more decades before doctors and scientists linked the drinking of poisonous water to lethal outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever.

In fact, if we are ever to really understand our Georgian ancestors, we also need to put their morbid and blood-thirsty curiosity into context. Like a lot of people, I formed a romantic impression of Regency Britain when I was a young woman. Thanks to Wordsworth and Coleridge, Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and Thackery’s Vanity Fair I thought it was a delightful period in history. But tea parties in a Hampshire vicarage and balls in the assembly rooms of Bath, with giggling ladies in high-waisted, white dresses escorted by dashing soldiers in scarlet uniforms, were only one small part of their complex world.

This was still an era when whole families took picnics to watch public hangings. The brutal treatment of male and female prisoners – and their children – in our over-crowded jails and prison hulks barely elicited a shrug of concern (although prison reformers like Elizabeth Fry were starting to make their voices heard). Sometimes crowds of ten thousand people lined the streets and encircled the gallows to watch the suffering and terror of the condemned. They cheered when the dying criminals twitched and defecated themselves at the end of the rope. And with over two hundred and twenty crimes on the statute books which were punishable by the death penalty, there were plenty of hangings to watch.

Further evidence of the blood-lust of this generation can be found when we examine the most popular culture of the time. Yes, the novels of Jane Austen were popular, but the Regency publishing industry made a fortune from cheap novels full of spine-chilling gothic horror laced with a generous splattering of blood. This genre dominated the industry for more than sixty years after the novel format was first invented by Samuel Richardson. In addition to this, most London theatres were kept afloat by producing a string of gory melodramas.

But don’t just take my word for it. Go online, read some old newspapers and discover for yourself the true extent of our ancestors’ revolting fascination with decomposing bodies and oozing body fluids.

The Times has its own online archives and a small monthly fee paid to The British Newspaper Archive will give you online access to another 35 million pages of other British and Irish newspapers dating back to early 1800s. These websites can be accessed for free at most libraries.

You might be surprised at what you learn – just don’t eat before you browse.

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Article: Murderous Underwear

4/3/2019

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Killer Corsets

I first came across the unusual effect corsets can have on stab victims while researching the assassination of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898. ‘Sisi’ as she was called by her family and friends was generally considered to be one of the most beautiful women in Europe and she had the world at her feet. That same world was devastated when she was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist while walking with her lady-in-waiting to catch a steam boat on Lake Geneva.

Part of Sisi’s tragedy is that her life may have been saved if her corset hadn’t been so tight.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Due to the pressure from her tight undergarment, the haemorrhage of blood was slowed to mere drops. This confused her attendants who didn’t realise she was fatally injured and were slow to seek medical help. She was helped to her feet, walked another one hundred yards and boarded the steamer which left port. It was part way across the lake before she lost consciousness. Only then did her servants and the crew realise that they needed to turn back for urgent medical help. It was too late.

When I read about Empress Elisabeth’s murder, I knew I’d discovered an unusual device I could use in my fifth Detective Lavender Mystery, Murder in Park Lane. And my victim didn’t have to be restricted to a woman either. Fat Regency gentlemen (including the Prince Regent) often used male corsets.

Further research revealed that the internal bleeding caused by a single stab wound to a tightly-corsetted victim would probably cause them to lose consciousness within half an hour. But a dying person can travel a significant distance from the scene of the crime in half an hour, even in the horse-drawn world of the early 19th century. In addition to that, stabbing is a silent crime and if the victim was alone, the absence of a blood trail would make it very difficult, even impossible, for an investigator like my Bow Street Principal Officer, Stephen Lavender, to identify where the attack actually took place.

But where would be the fun in an unresolved crime?

If you’d like to follow how Lavender rose to the challenge and solved the strange murder of David MacAdam in The Murder in Park Lane, you can purchase the novel here.

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ARTICLE: WRITERLY FRIENDS

29/4/2018

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"Birds of a feather Flock together"

We’re all familiar with the stereotypical image of the lonely and isolated author scribbling away in a cold garret – but after five years as a full-time author, I know that nothing is further from the truth. Writers rarely work successfully in a vacuum. They need other writers – and actively seek them out.

The scaffolding behind a literary work can appear baffling to the non-writer. Authors need each other for support, inspiration and sometimes for collaboration. Only our fellow scribblers truly understand our obsession with plot holes, narrative structure and character development. Writers need to be able to put aside their fear of competition and intellectual theft and reach out to their peers. They need to find the confidence to ask each other for help and find the time and energy to offer mutual support. It’s a foolhardy and ego-centric writer who believes they can create a masterpiece in complete isolation, negotiate the complex world of publishing alone – and retain their sanity.

Oliver Goldsmith with James Boswell and Samuel Johnson

From Shakespeare to the Bloomsbury group, the history of literature is full of strong and supportive friendships between writers. When Shakespeare's first folio was published, his friend and fellow playwright, Ben Jonson , wrote a glowing introduction to the manuscript. In the eighteenth century, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith were great friends and the first two toured Scotland together. A few years later, Lord Byron and the Shelleys were travelling through Europe together when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Meanwhile, Wordsworth and Coleridge were inspiring each other’s poetry and co-wrote The Lyrical Ballads.

In the mid 19th century, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell exchanged candid views on literature and publishing and shared artistic and professional concerns. Charlotte also acted as a sounding board for her friend’s literary ideas. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were friends for over twenty years and collaborated on short stories.

With friends and fellow- authors at The Theakstones' Crime Festival, Harrogate.

Modern writers flock to literary festivals and conferences like migrating birds. Happy to be released from the solitary confinement of their gilded writing cages, they chatter like starlings while they gather information about rogue publishers; audio-book narrators and the latest developments in successful self-publishing. They share their marketing concerns and their fears about the dreaded mid-list. Virtual friendships are consolidated and promises of future collaboration are made. It’s impossible to shut up an excited group of authors who’ve escaped from the office for a day or two. My jaw often aches when I return from the Harrogate Crime Festival.

At the moment, three of my best writing buddies are reading the manuscript of my seventh book. A fourth friend, who owns a horse, has already looked over every scene where my police officers are on horseback. The girls will come back to me with an honest evaluation of the novel’s strengths and weaknesses before I submit it to my publishers for official editing. I’ve sold over 350,000 copies of my books in the last five years but still feel I need their validation. These girls are all successful Historical and Crime Fiction writers in their own right and they are my rocks. I couldn’t have done any of it without their support. And this relationship works both ways; I’m always happy to take time out from my own writing to help them.

With two of my best writing buddies, Jane Harlond and Jean Gill at the Oxford Historical Novelists' Society conference

But how can an aspiring author build up a network of like-minded professional authors? Where do you start making writerly friends? After all, Ian Rankin, Lisa Hall and J.K. Rowling won’t become your best buddies just because you drop them an email and ask them to befriend you. That approach is more likely to get you arrested for stalking.

Most unpublished, aspiring authors start off with the local writing group for peer support. It can be a beneficial experience and many writers make life-long friends through these groups but it can also have drawbacks. It depends on the group. The other writers there might not understand or appreciate your genre – and you might not like theirs. My local group leader wrote erotica and another member wrote gruesome crime novels, full of horrific murder and graphic rape scenes. While I appreciated the constructive criticism they gave me, I squirmed with discomfort when it was time to listen to their latest chapters.

A far better approach is to join an online writing group and pick and choose what you want to do and whom you want to know. I met three of my best writing friends through the now-defunct online writers’ community, Authonomy. We exchanged many emails then arranged to meet up face-to-face and became good personal friends who holiday together. They’d just started out like me and our careers have grown together. Most online writing groups also offer a critique section, and although it’s time-consuming to read and critique other people’s work, the payback is huge if you get involved. I feel I learned more about the writers’ craft from the other members of Authonomy than I would ever have learned from a master’s degree in Creative Writing. Thanks to the advice I received, I adjusted the opening chapters of my debut novel and found my first publisher.

With friend and fellow author, Kristin Gleeson, on a 'working holiday' in Gran Canaria.

Most new authors join some of the associations set up to promote their genre. I’m a member of both the Historical Novel Society and the Crime Writers’ Association. There are also more generic societies out there who provide legal and business advice like The Society of Authors. Most of these organisations have a members’ area on their websites and related Facebook pages where you can chat about your work with like-minded souls.

The fellow authors in your first publishing house are another great source of writerly friends. Some publishers actively encourage their authors to get to know each other and set up a community forum where they can share news of promotions and ask each other for help. Unfortunately, my own first publisher was a paranoid crook who discouraged any form of communication between her authors in case we found out the truth about her operation. Desperately worried that I’d made a huge mistake, I contacted several of them anyway. They felt exactly the same as me and we formed a tight-knit group which helped us to deal with her and our disappointment. Eventually, we worked together to get her to release us from our contracts and return the publishing rights of our novels. We’ve remained good friends ever since – and she’s gone out of business.

My miserable first experience of the publishing world highlights another reason why writers can’t survive in isolation. Publishing is one of the most corrupt businesses on the planet. There’s plenty of sharks out there who prey on the naïvety and desperation of aspiring authors. There’s safety in numbers and genuine consolation available if your publisher folds and disappears into the ether with your royalties. Most authors have had at least one bad experience like this.

But, on a more positive note, when all your scribbling works out and your precious stories start to sell, writing for a living is still the best, most rewarding job in the world. Writers really do live the dream.

Provided, that is, you’ve got some mates by your side.

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Article: The Real Stephen Lavender

13/1/2017

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THE REAL STEPHEN LAVENDER

(TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION)

Thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, there is always a risk when you use real-life characters from history in your fiction that someone, or something, will pop up out of the ether and surprise you.
Real-life people, like my Detective Stephen Lavender, have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And I knew that if Lavender's descendants ever decided to research their ancestor on the Internet, the chances of them stumbling across my novels was high. This thought actually made me a little nervous because although I’ve used Lavender’s name and two of his real cases in my novels, I knew hardly anything at all about the man himself. I used a lot of artistic license and imagination to flesh out the details of his personality and family life.
I focused on information I gleaned from reference books and contemporary newspaper articles about his work as a Principal Officer with Bow Street Police Office and just made up the rest. I didn’t even know how old the real Stephen Lavender was when he went up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the stolen rent money from Kirkley Hall in Ponteland. And when I introduced this hired private detective to my readers in Catching the Eagle I made him a mature thirty-year-old man.

Kirkley Hall, Ponteland, Northumberland

I’d often wondered if any of Lavender’s descendants were still living and if so, what they would make of my fictional representation of their ancestor? Would they like him and approve of the bookish, educated and slightly-introverted character I’d created? Or would I be facing a court case for defamation of character? As a cheeky, writer friend once pointed out, “the phrase ‘loosely based-upon’ can be very useful in times like these, Karen.”
I finally got my answer in December 2016 when I was contacted by several of Stephen Lavender’s descendants. Thankfully, the first message that landed in my inbox from Australian, Richard Kinch, began with the words:
'Thank you for making my ancestor famous!’
Richard’s delight with novels about his ancestor clearly out-weighed any concerns he had about historical inaccuracies.
The contact from Richard was quickly followed by more messages from other Lavender relatives including Lesley Morgan, another Aussie descendant. In fact, it turns out that Australia is teeming with Stephen Lavender’s relatives. He had nine children. Two of his sons, and one daughter, emigrated to Australia in the 1850s. There are Facebook pages and online groups all over the southern hemisphere dedicated to connecting the Lavender relatives and exploring their genealogy.
Lesley, in particular, was incredibly helpful and informative. She told me about the real-life background to my character and explained the family history to me. She also put me in touch with a British relative, Alister Palmer, who lives in Bristol. We exchanged many emails and a fascinating picture of the real man began to emerge.
I already knew from my research, that several other members of Stephen Lavender’s family worked for Bow Street Police Office in the early nineteenth century but I didn't know that his father, Edward, was a clerk there. In my novels I've given him a father called John and a Church of England vicar for a maternal grandfather. Also in my fictional character's background is a Grammar School education and an unhappy year spent at Cambridge University studying law. From Lesley I learnt that after starting an apprenticeship in 1803 with the horse patrol, Stephen was created a Principal Officer in 1807.

Bow Street Magisgrates' Court & Police Office

But the biggest surprise was that the real Lavender wasn’t born until 1789. This means that he became a Principal Officer at the tender age of eighteen and was barely twenty when he was sent up to Northumberland to solve the mystery of the Kirkley Hall robbery. I know his investigation in this instance was meticulous and thorough – I’ve seen the court case documents at The National Archives in London – so he must have been a real child prodigy in the Regency world of policing. I wonder what thirty-seven-year-old Jamie Charlton, whom Lavender accused of the Kirkley Hall robbery, made of the situation when he was arrested and charged by a young man who was barely shaving?
I’ve always known that the London newspapers adored Stephen Lavender and zealously – and sometimes inaccurately – reported his cases and forays into the seedy underbelly of the crime-ridden capital. In 1818, Lavender solved the mystery of the vicious attack on an elderly man, William Sculthorpe in Northamptonshire (the basis for my novel, ‘The Sculthorpe Murder’) and this case was extensive reported by the London press. I wonder if his fresh-faced youth helped to make him so popular with the newspapers of the time?
Lavender, and his young family, left Bow Street in 1821 when he took up the position of Deputy Chief Constable in the industrial northern city of Manchester. Sadly, he died there in June 1833 at the relatively young age of forty-four. I’ve found his obituary written in over thirty British newspapers. He really was a celebrity in nineteenth century England.
So, what happens now? I hear my readers ask. Will you chop a decade off Lavender’s age, remove his fictional education and his gorgeous and exotic Spanish wife in order to bring the fictional character back into line with the real man?
No. I intend to carry on as before, ‘loosely basing’ my detective on the life of the real man and occasionally dipping into the archives to find more of Stephen Lavender’s cases to flesh out into an intricate plot. I hope to continue to share information with Lesley Morgan and Alister Palmer for the benefit of all of us who are interested in this fascinating man.
And anyway, I’m not sure that my mystery-reading public is ready for a detective barely out of his teens.

In this instance alone, the truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

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Article: Thoughts about book covers

23/10/2016

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'PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES':
BOOK COVER MUSINGS...

One of the most enjoyable things about writing a novel is playing with ideas for the book cover. Usually, by the time I'm half-way through a manuscript (which is where I am at the moment) I've some idea about what I would like on the front cover of the finished book. For me, it's always about the location of the story.
My publishers don't ask me for ideas until I've handed over the manuscript. The book cover design usually runs concurrently with the editing. APub use a very talented designer, called Lisa Horton, for my novels and I love everyone of them. Lisa rose to my challenge and created a fictional Northumbrian pele tower for 'Heiress' but I was more helpful with 'The Sans Pareil Mystery' and gave her pictures, pulled from the Internet, of the original Sans Pareil Theatre. Last year, I walked along the Market Harborough canal tow path and took photos of all the old bridges to help her with the design of the book cover for 'The Sculthorpe Murder.'

The River Thames was always going to feature on the front of 'Plague Pits & River Bones' because it's the river mentioned in the title. Originally, I toyed with the idea of using the stretch at Greenwich with the Royal Naval Hospital in the background. However, I've now changed my mind and decided that the old Westminster Bridge and the old Palace of Westminster will grace the cover of this new novel.
Both the bridge and the parliament buildings have been rebuilt since 1812, the year of this novel. Fortunately, there are plenty of paintings from the period to show us what it used to look like - many of them are painted by Canaletto. They're fascinating. I cannot get over how empty the banks of the Thames were two hundred years ago - and how wide the river seems to be without skyscrapers looming over it. Once upon a time, London was a city with a big sky.
Anyway, have a look at the inspirational paintings below and see what you think.

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Article & Book Review

29/3/2016

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Revisiting The Widowhood

I don’t often mention my late husband, Chris, or his untimely death from cancer. And I try very hard not to moan.

Three years ago, I mentioned it a lot. To anyone who would listen. In fact, I didn’t just mention it – I screamed my anguish from the rooftops. Many of my friends and family received late-night, alcohol-induced phone calls and emails in which I railed against the cruelty and injustice of his terminal diagnosis and my fear of a future without him. After he died, I sobbed on the shoulder of anyone who would hold me. In the street. In a café. Or in the pub.

So why the change? Why did I stop discussing Chris and showing my grief? Have I ‘got over it?’ Moved on? Or have I simply changed?

May 22nd, 1993

No, we don't get over the loss of our lovers and soul-mates – ever. We can move on, yes, but the loss changes us too and only those who have walked in our shoes can really empathise. Fortunately, very few people experience the untimely death of their relatively young spouse. This is great for the wider world in general but not so good for those young widows or widowers who are left rattling around in an empty and exclusive club that no-one wants to join and very few people really understand. As one of my closest friends pointed out, I was the first in our friendship group to bury their partner. Even my parents still have each other.

And the other devastating discovery made by youngish widows is that there is no handbook on the shelves of W.H. Smiths to tell you how to cope and survive your tragedy, the ensuing loneliness or the survivor’s guilt. Counsellors, family and friends do what they can to help, and are brilliant at dealing with practicalities, but ultimately you are on your own with your insomnia, the nightmares and the angst at 3 am in the morning. You have to work through it by yourself.

As the uniqueness of my isolated position dawned on me, I started to feel like a freak. A very damaged freak. I made a conscious effort to stop talking about Chris and my bereavement and to deal with my heartache in private. Whether this was a good or a psychologically damaging thing to do to myself, I have no idea. Only time will tell if the pressure will eventually erupt in some form of mental breakdown. But I also had my heart-broken, teenage children to consider and they didn’t need a wailing, sobbing mother parading her grief in public. They needed a calm role model to help them get through the loss of their amazing father.

With Chris, Beth and Ross on Beth's 18th Birthday

Besides which, I didn’t want to be defined by my widowhood even though I know I will always be one. There is far more to Karen Charlton than just a ‘grieving widow.’ With the love and help of close friends and family; a great counsellor; a bottle of pills and copious amounts of alcohol, I sought solace in writing my cosy mysteries and did the ‘moving on’ thing.

However, there have been many times when the isolation of my situation has led me to reach out to others in a similar situation. For a while I was a member of the ‘widdahud,’ an online forum for widows and I was a very needy member, too. I did get some support, for which I am eternally grateful, but I found myself unable to give it back. Chris’ death left me blank, numb and sometimes downright crass when faced with the misery and despair of strangers. Embarrassed by my own lack of empathy and uncomfortable with just being a ‘taker’ rather than a positive contributor to the discussion boards, I abandoned the forum.

In addition to this, the widows’ forum lacked humour. This seems a strange thing to write, I know, but occasional flashes of ghoulish humour and irony make an untenable situation slightly more bearable. Sometimes these tiny moments of light are the only things around to help drag ourselves through another miserable day; we would go mad without them. Death and grief are an ugly business and the very antithesis of romance. A flash of bizarre humour helps with the healing.

It was the humorous title that eventually attracted me to a self-help book for widows by the American author, Catherine Tidd. I had never read a true-life ‘misery memoir’ before and normally shunned the genre as depressing but I couldn’t resist The Confessions of a Mediocre Widow. It brilliantly summed up how I saw myself three years ago – and how I still see myself today. I am that Mediocre Widow. I enjoyed (is that the right word?) Catherine Tidd’s account of her husband’s sudden death and how she survived (again, is that the right word?) and stumbled through the aftermath. I especially appreciated the gentle humour that lifted the pages of this book and made the despair bearable.

And this week I discovered another gem in the same ilk: ‘Life After You’ by Lucie Brownlee. Lucie is a young widow from my own area of North East England. Her book was an Autumn Read for the Richard & Judy Book Club. And what a stunning book it is. It’s a must-read for anyone struggling to cope with the sudden or untimely death of someone they love. Her honesty, anger and humour took my breath away and kept me reading late into the night. It’s a warts-and-all account of the sudden death of her husband, Mark, yet somehow it ends with hope and never becomes ugly (as I fear my own memoir might become.) Her insight, bitterness and humour resonated strongly with me. I loved her powerful language and imagery. She doesn’t waste a word and portrays the full range of human emotion experienced by young widows in a way I can only envy.

Like me, Lucie is determined not to be defined by her widowhood and has branched out into mainstream fiction. I sincerely wish her the best and look forward to reading more from this very talented author.

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Article: 16 Things I would say to my younger self

19/3/2016

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'If I could turn back time...'

Aged 18, with my best friends, Lynn and Jackie

I have been musing today about what advice I would give to my younger self, should I ever have the opportunity to go back in time and meet me. Not that the teenage Karen James would ever have listened to any advice. But it was a fun exercise anyway.

Stay true to who you are. Don’t let anyone steal your sparkle. Recognise that there are those who will try to do this – and learn to avoid them.
Take that cigarette Joanne Parrish offers to you behind the bike shed when you are twelve. Yes, it will make you vomit but it is far better to be sick on your socks and put off from smoking when you are twelve than start the habit at sixteen and become a life-long nicotine addict.
Boys, lots of boys, will come and go. Stop obsessing over them; there’s far, far more to a happy life than men. You’ll be amazed.
Hesitate and think carefully before using the word ‘should.’ Steer clear of those who repeat it like a mantra.
Get on a bloody plane and do the travelling you always dreamed about.
Your may think your education will finish at twenty-one but you will never stop learning. Embrace the changes in technology as they arrive. This new-fangled thing called the Internet will make your fortune.
Please remember that you don’t lead a charmed life. Don’t use rope swings or climb onto the back of motorbikes when you are drunk.
Your love of reading is what makes you into you and is the foundation stone of your future career. Don’t let anyone stop you reading.
Put aside at least fifteen minutes every day to practise your writing – and don’t let rejection put you off. Scribble, scribble and scribble some more.
Never give up on your dreams. They can, and will, come true.
Enjoy being young, pretty and confident but remember that skinniness doesn’t last for long.
Your mistakes are good; you will learn from them. All 100,000 of them.
Parenthood is an exhausting slog – but it is the best, most rewarding thing you will ever do in your life. Seriously.
Friends will come and go, but that’s okay. You will still be making new friends in your fifties.
Money is good – not bad – and it should be horded. Save money instead of spending it. Avoid credit cards like the plague and remember that banks are NOT your friend.

Buy shares in a company called Google.

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Artical: Writing Habits

27/1/2016

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Spring Clean

The Inner Sanctum (after a good clean.)

Feeling very proud of myself today. I've just filed away all my 'Sculthorpe Murder' notebooks and tidied up my desk and office. It needed it. While I had my head immersed in the edits and rewrites of ‘The Sculthorpe Murder,’ my study started to resemble the bottom of a hamster cage (minus the poop droppings.)

I was surrounded by torn scraps of paper, a mountain of reference books, random piles of notes and the lingering smell of rotting food. Evidence of absent-minded snacking and my coffee addiction were everywhere. I found dirty crockery behind my thesaurus, an unwashed spoon in an empty yogurt pot and a mouldy pear festering at the bottom of my over-flowing waste paper bin. If I’d harvested all the white fluff on its surface, I would have had enough penicillin for the Fever Ward at the local hospital.

IMHO housework and the intense concentration needed for novel writing are not natural bedfellows. While deeply immersed in my fiction, I don’t see the rubbish mushrooming like a wild organism around my work space or the thick layer of dust settling on everything that doesn’t move. And as my cleaner is scared of damaging or moving something she shouldn’t in my inner sanctum, it rarely has a thorough clean. Fortunately, a bit of muck never did anyone any harm.

Anyway, today I’ve emptied the bin and wiped everything down with damp cloth. I've got 'Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits’ playing in the background and a Ylang Ylang candle burning on the window sill to mask the lingering smell of rotten pear.
I also made a brand new job list and itemised all those boring admin things I need to do at this time of the year. I wonder how far down this list I will get before I abandon it and start writing another book?

But for the moment, I’m clean and efficient. I’m ready for the rest of 2016 and whatever literary challenges this sparkling New Year may bring.

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Article: Musings About Writing

21/12/2015

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Heaven...on a canal towpath

Today has been one of the most satisfying writing days I have ever experienced.

Last August, a dramatic finale for ‘The Sculthorpe Murder’ started to form in my mind. The full scene was sketched out with the help of my Dad out on his garden patio one hot, memorable night. We’d both had a bit to drink and giggled and laughed our way the process.

A few days later in Leicestershire, on another glorious summer day, I took a long walk down the tow path of the canal in Market Harborough. I sat in the soft grass beside the still, green and opaque water watching the ducks and the narrow boats pass by and decided to commit the first tentative words of this scene to paper.

Saunt's Bridge, Market Harborough Canal Arm

Today, the shortest and darkest day of the year, was the culmination of this creative process and a day I’d been looking forward to for months. I ignored the gloom outside and surrounded by three notebooks, with numerous Internet webpages open on my computer for further reference, I sat down and wrote 2,500 words, the final version of this momentous scene.

It’s dramatic, action-packed and scary. It’s wonderful to finally release the tension, write something that has formed and reformed in my mind for so long and wind up the two sub-plots I’ve threaded like embroidery thread throughout this novel.

But it’s not quite ‘The End.’ Not yet. Lavender’s final words today were: “I think it’s about time we arrested the murderers of William Sculthorpe.”

And that, my friends, is what Detective Stephen Lavender and I will be doing tomorrow.

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Heaven...on a canal towpath

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