Writing a crime series

  I first noticed it when I went back to check on a character’s name in ‘The Memory of Blood’, Book 9 in what looks like becoming a 20-volume series. One of the characters was using a Blackberry. As far as I know they’re long gone; nothing dates faster than technology. Then a Fax machine […]

People don’t care where quotes come from. Does a book exist if nobody reads it? To the author, certainly. The profoundly innovative, ill-fated Ronald Firbank, who hid entire literary worlds in half-sentences, self-published in ever-shrinking quantities to no acclaim whatsoever. And that was in a time when the writer word was the sole media, so […]

(Continued from yesterday) If I’d felt the series was going to run out of steam (the publisher’s nightmare, that an author invested in fails to deliver with consistency) I needn’t have worried. By pegging the characters to a more recognisable world I could lightly reflect current events and always have something new to write about. […]

I’m up to Book 18, if you must know. Seriously, it crossed my mind the other day, what am I up to with these characters? Writers are meant to have a plan, but I started out with a crime novel set in World War II, inside a venerable theatre. I had already created (I say […]

7:00am This is the 19th century building in which I live, a great stone dungeon that’s ice-cold even in summer (modern architects take note; if you build it properly nobody needs air conditioning). I’m clearly being tested, as today is hot and sunny, skylarks soaring about in the blue. My flat is so dark you […]