I am very pleased to announce that No Justice, the third in the Donna Morris mysteries series is out in paperback now. Here’s a taster to whet your appetite!
The paperback of No Justice, my third novel in the DC Donna Morris crime series (published by Constable), is to be released in the next few months. This will be the last of my novels coming from this publisher. Predictably, Constable’s marketing and publicity departments have not been in touch and have not organised any fanfare. It is a tad disheartening. However, I do feel I can say I have done my best in terms of promotion.
I have a couple of local outings coming up, for which I am very grateful. I have a workshop in Bridlington this Friday (fully recruited, so I understand) and a crime panel this Saturday (the 16th March) at the East Riding Festival of Words SpringFest: Home (festivalofwords.co.uk)
I will be at the Filey Literature Festival on the 9th of May: Filey Literature Festival 2024 – Filey Events Guide My event will be on the list after Easter, but the details I have are that it will be at the Coffee Shed on Murray St at 7.00pm (free entry).
I do now have an agent who has a draft of a potential new crime series and is doing the rounds at the London Book Fair possibly as I type this.
Meanwhile, I write. Of course, I write. I don’t know how to do anything else I think. DC Donna Morris has stepped out into another crime novel, which is coming along slowly. Plus I am very focused on Thrutopia – creating a story of a more hopeful future. I am reading around the subject, following a ‘masterclass’ (The Thrutopia Masterclass – Thrutopia) and meeting (mostly over zoom) some very interesting folk – activists and writers – from different continents.
I find it all fascinating and, for the moment, keeps me bouncing along.
However, creating new narratives means I have to come up with new character names, something which causes me more stress than it really should. For me, characters very rarely come with a name. Or, if they do, I quickly realise the one they have is not appropriate for some reason.
I am a bit obsessive about not having too many names in one story which start with the same letter. Having said that, in the DC Donna Morris mysteries I’ve ended up with a Harrie and a Hari. When I realised this (only on embarking on this fourth potential novel) it was a complete agh moment!
Then I want the names to fit the character in terms of age and background. Plus I do love a name which somehow fits. One friend was telling me about someone (a real person) who is looking into ways for people to become compost after they die (rather than be buried, cremated or preserved). The individual’s name? Katrina Spade. How brilliant. Of course, I’m having that.
At the end of last year I decided to have a go at producing my own podcast. I was lucky enough to have fellow author, Philippa East, to agree to come in with me for the first episode.
Philippa is the author of four psychological thrillers – ‘Little White Lies’; ‘Safe and Sound’; ‘I’ll Never Tell’; & ‘The Guilty Secret’ (b.link/philippa_east) – and we decided to discuss how to bring pace into crime novels and psychological thrillers. Through an entertaining discussion (well it entertained us, anyway) we compared and contrasted our genres and styles and got deep into the nitty gritty.
I then employed the skills of my nephew Tom Whittaker (https://www.whittakeraudio.co.uk/) to turn it into a podcast. I am very pleased with the result and I hope you will find it a good listen:
I normally keep my blog posts to writing and other creative pursuits. This one is going to be a bit different.
The ITV series Mr Bates vs the Post Office has been enthralling watching. The writing has been excellent, as has the acting. Many have said it is extraordinary a TV drama has brought about action in government and (hopefully) un-mired a twenty-year scandal.
But this is the purpose of story telling. As Dame Mary Beard said on Broadcasting House (Radio 4, 14th January 2024): ‘The arts and culture sector should be telling us a new story which opens our eyes to things we didn’t want to look at, that changes our minds, that is part of democratic debate.’
So here is a story.
Back in August 2023, my husband went to a pop concert at the Spa in Scarborough. The sound levels were so high, he had to leave. Unfortunately, even the short time he was there has caused permanent tinnitus – a distressing and incurable condition. Following this, he researched the issue of noise levels, contacting (among other people): the Spa management; Scarborough Borough Council (which owns the Spa); the event company which brought the concert to the Spa; the Health and Safety Executive (HSE); local councillors; the local MP; local prospective MPs; local and national media; the Health Minister….
He discovered he following: ~There are no legal requirements on sound levels for audiences in entertainment venues, only HSE guidelines. ~The Spa said it wasn’t their responsibility as it was an outside company bringing in the concert. That company said they were acting within HSE guidelines, but refused to show measurements for that night. The Scarborough Borough Council did not routinely measure levels and had not done so for that concert. ~Even HSE guidelines are much higher than the figure audiologists say is safe for hearing. ~No-one seems remotely interested that (if HSE guidelines are followed) people’s hearing is routinely put at risk by entertainment venues and that people are not warned of this (so that they can make up their own mind what they want to do).
When I put something about this on Facebook, I was accused of supporting a ‘nanny state’ and curtailing people’s freedom (presumably to harm themselves). Firstly, new technology means that the capacity for loud concerts has increased incrementally, whereas the physical make-up of the human ear has not changed. Secondly, concert attendees are not being given the information to allow them to make informed decisions. Thirdly, we allow our governments to make laws to keep people safe from themselves, eg on seat belts, on drunk driving, on smoking. Finally, hearing loss costs the NHS over £400 million a year.
As with ‘Mr Bates’, my husband has been told he is ‘the only one’ to have suffered. Is this true? The TV series showed how making change came through creating a groundswell of opinion from gathering and telling stories. This is what we’re now trying to do in connection with how sound intensity is regulated at gigs. If you have a story about noise levels at an entertainment venue and hearing loss/tinnitus, please go to:
The creaking wheel of the year has shifted once again, the winter solstice has passed, as has the madness of the far too commercialised Christmas festive season. In many ways, the new year is much like the old one – conflicts throughout the world, economic and social injustice, climate crises – and yet I sustain myself with friendships, creativity, swimming, yoga, walking, being out in nature and those precious moments of joy.
Relaxing after sunrise Winter solstice sea swim (photo by Rachel Welford)
I am waiting to hear from my agent about the new crime series I have been working on: The Ruby Tuesday Mysteries (potential title), based in Durham. Whatever her feedback, it’s still a long journey towards publication and an even less well travelled one towards getting my novels reviewed and into readers’ hands.
So I feel the need to take more control over at least a portion of the writing I am doing. This year I will be celebrating my 60th birthday, and initially I thought about creating 60 pieces. Then I realised there are only 52 weeks in a year and I don’t want this kind of pressure. What I crave is to be doing more explorative writing again without worrying too much about what the ‘finished’ product might look like and what I will do with it, if anything. This would also include forays into visual arts – painting, collage, knitting (possibly), photos.
I expect that whatever results will take a circuitous route through the personal to discursive incursions into the state of the world in 2024. I also have a starting point for another Donna Morris mystery and will allow that to develop at its own pace.
An area I’ve been meaning to delve into more for a while is the ‘Thrutopia’. This is not a new ‘genre’, though perhaps a new way of labelling it. A Thrutopia endeavours to imagine a future where humans still exist and live more sustainably. Not a utopia, nor a dystopia, but a prospective (and realistic) route through the tangled thicket we find ourselves in. I’ve recently read A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys which attempts to do just this. And I have signed up for an online, self-taught course (unhappily called a ‘mastercalss’): The Thrutopia Masterclass – Thrutopia
From the first session comes this quote from the late great Ursula Le Guinn (who wrote Thrutopias before they had this appendage):
‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change begin in art, very often in our art – the art of words.’
Acceptance speech of National Foundation Medal, 2014.
All this is giving me fresh energy and motivation to be writing. I wish all you out there may find some renewed vigour for your life and your creative endeavours whatever they may be.
At the beginning of 2023, I decided to stop moaning about the lack of publicity/marketing support from my publisher and get on with doing something myself. I set some SMART objectives. Then six months later had to re-write them!
Version 1 – SMART objectives:
By the end of the year, I will have two reviews in national media, I will have appeared in one podcast (in addition to Novel Finds) and I will have done one event.
In order to accomplish this, I will target book reviewers, podcasters & event/festival organisers.
Re-assessment of SMART objectives:
By the end of 2023, I will have two reviews (include on-line), I will have appeared in one podcast and I will have done five events.
The reassessment came because I realised that whatever I did, those in charge of newspaper reviews and podcasts were just not interested in me nor my books.
I have had more success at getting in-person events. This year, I’ve done six and enjoyed them thoroughly. They’ve all come through my own efforts. It has been particularly pleasing when I’ve been recommended by one event organiser to another. It shows I am trusted to provide a worthwhile experience which is engaging for audiences. I am enormously grateful to those who invited me along and to the audiences who turned out.
The downside, is, of course, that the reach is not as great as a national review nor a podcast, and they tend to take more energy.
However, publicity/marketing has not dominated me life. I can’t let it, it would be too depressing. Despite not having my contract with Constable renewed, I have continued to write and have nourished my creativity in other ways. I have read as voraciously as ever. I continue to volunteer with Scarborough Friends of Refugees and for ATD Fourth World UK – All Together in Dignity to Overcome Poverty (atd-uk.org). I swim, I walk, I do a yoga class. I am supported by an abundance of friendship. I am lucky in so many ways.
Seven years ago, my husband and I (though it was mainly him, I have to admit) started planting trees. Some have now got taller than we are, which we trust will be a sustainable legacy.
Wishing you all a pleasurable festive season. Thank you so much for sticking with this blog and all my ramblings. And hoping for more peace, love and climate and social justice for the world in 2024.
I didn’t want to write this piece for my blog. I have put off writing any post for a week, hoping another subject would present itself. However, it hasn’t, and so here I go.
Artificial Intelligence was once the domain of fantasy novels, but reality is apparently catching up on the fiction. And whether or not writers like me are going to be ‘needed’ (are we ever essential?) in the future is part of the debate.
A talented writer who is a friend of mine and whose ‘day job’ includes copywriting for various organisations, said she was already losing work because of ChatGPT. I was reminded of a conversation I had once with a blacksmith-artist. He said a lot of customers wouldn’t come to him because they thought they could get the same from B&Q, imported from China at a cheaper price. But, of course, it wasn’t the same, it lacked the finesse, the crafting, the unique approach. Plus it had been transported half way round the world!
On the other hand, I know others are finding ChatGPT is valuable, for getting the bare bones of something down which can then be worked on. Some writers say it is useful for when they hit a tricky bit in their plotting. Personally I find taking a walk and using pen and paper works fine. I suspect I am a dinosaur and don’t know what I’m missing.
It seems, as ever, those who would defraud and cause distress are ahead of the AI game. I feel sure a plot along these lines will eventually end up in one of my novels.
I have to admit that I struggle with the term AI, I want to put the intelligence part in inverted commas. Google tells me an algorithm is not strictly AI – it is a dumber cousin. Well, the one Amazon uses to attribute books to authors is, anyway. It can’t get my books on my author page rather than on someone else’s. However, Google also tells me a chatbot is AI. Yet every chatbot interaction I’ve ever had has resulted in me seeking a human to talk to because my ‘issue’ has not been ‘resolved’.
I worry this focus on AI is another distraction from the real existential peril facing us humans: climate change and biodiversity degradation. Ah, say AI fans, it can help us with these threats (seemingly forgetting that computers/the internet/technology has its own frightening carbon footprint). But AI is only as intelligent as the people who are programming it. And right now, looking out in the world, I wonder just how smart we really are. And don’t most environmental scientists say we already know what we should be doing? We’re just not doing it.
You can tell this blog post was not written by ChatGPT as it has no resolution. It just slithers off into a morass of uncertainty. I have a feeling AI wouldn’t be good at not knowing.
When I can’t work out how to end a blog post, I throw in a poem. Here’s two of my Haikus:
Storms brew, the sun bakes, we kick nature off its tilt then stand back amazed.
The Gale at Sea Snow capped lead mountains seismic movements of water support a rainbow.
Unless you are trying to get appreciation for your writing or break into the publishing world, there’s nothing better than being a writer. First of all it’s enjoyable – if you don’t find it so, what are you doing it for? There are plenty of other ways to spend your time. Secondly, it allows me to have a useful dialogue with myself. Thirdly, I can, if I choose, escape my present reality into worlds which I (just about) control, with characters I create.
As the wonderful poet Mary Oliver said, ‘You don’t have to be good.’ And as long as I remember this, my writing brings me many hours of distraction and pleasure.
As a writer, I can also call anything research. Reading a book, watching TV, cooking a meal, eating a meal, going on a walk, taking a swim, having a conversation. We are continually inspired by our selves, by others, by life.
In my book Pathways Through Writing Blocks in the Academic Environment, I talk about getting used to the tides and rhythms in our creativity and accepting the ‘fertile void’. The moment, often after a spurt of writing and/or busy-ness, when I need to let go of timetables and allow myself to refuel. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way writes about the artist’s date: going somewhere on your own with the intention of nourishing your creativity. It’s a great antidote to those inevitable slumps and set backs which invade a writer’s life.
Our climate change powered weather – disastrous for some, disconcerting to many – has plunged Scarborough into Autumn with biblical rain and winds to rattle the bones. This is a sonnet I wrote some years back, riffing off ‘Ode on Melancholy’ by John Keats.
Aspects of Autumn Season of mellow mists and after damp, joint between fecundity and decay, you’re the rusted hinge, the balanced moment before summer green becomes winter grey. Your turned leaves are brazen in their dying, firelit, their brassy tones trumpet their end, they only fall to nest the ripening kernels, torn from their cradles by the wind. Your clods of decomposing foliage remind us of our oozing hours, your fruitfulness recalls our barren endeavours to do, to strive — vanquish the final toll. So then, only let your splendour us fill— allow it to give us pause. Let us be still.
Why not share in the comments your favourite artist date or aspect of Autumn.
Ten years ago, my sister and I walked St Cuthbert’s Way, Melrose to Lindisfarne. This was me overlooking the pilgrim’s path to the island.
Last week I was in the lovely town of Knaresborough taking part in their FEVA (Festival of Entertainment and Visual Arts) a marvellous programme of events run totally by volunteers.
I was at an event at the library organised by Deborah Thornton. About thirty-five people came to hear our conversation and ask insightful questions. The feedback was brilliant. Here are just two of the comments cards:
‘This event was very enjoyable, interesting and informative. Now I need to start writing. Thank you’
‘Really interesting & insightful. It’s great to find someone writing intelligent and thoughtful crime fiction’
An engaged audience which was enthusiastic about my books had a slightly bittersweet edge to it, as I had just heard Constable would not be contracting for anymore Donna Morris mysteries. No Justice is the third in the series and has just come out in ebook and hardback. The paperback will be out next June. After that there are unlikely to be any more, unless I self-publish. Another publisher would not be interested in a series where Constable owns the rights to the first three books.
Economics was blamed for this decision, especially the rising cost of printing and paper. In fact, my agent had warned me that the Constable model of hardback then paperback doesn’t stack up anymore, except for the real bestsellers.
Love a hardback of my own novels!
This makes sense. Much as I love the hardbacks of my own books, I cannot remember when I last bought anything but a paperback or ebook. Plus I know cash-strapped libraries (which used to shore up the hardback market) can no longer buy in the quantities they used to.
So what next? I hear you cry. Well I do have an agent, Anne Williams from the Kate Hordern Literary Agency. Before I went travelling the other month, I left Anne with a beginning and an ending to the first book for another potential crime series which she hopes to sell. She has responded positively with some useful comments to aid re-writing and moulding the story. I am on with these. In fact I stand on what I call the ‘abyss’ of the middle – the part which will connect my start to my finish.
Will I make it to the other side? Only time will tell I guess. Sometimes I do make the mistake of ‘looking down’ instead of ahead and lose my balance. My thinking tells me I can’t do this, I can’t make the plot add up. Yet, if I ignore this thinking, I find I have written another sentence, another paragraph, another chapter and the abyss is getting narrower.
Somebody brighter than me named it the ‘muddling middle’ and the only way across is to keep my chin up and my fingers typing. I find it best not to edit (in my head or on the page) as I go. I put the words on the page and worry about the quality of them later. Even if an idea appears silly, I write it, and sometimes it ends up being the seed which blossoms into a piece of excellent writing.
Having a beginning and an end at this point is unusual for me. Previously, I have been less certain of the final denouement. But before going away, I decided to just write what I fancied writing, even if it wasn’t chronological, and that’s where I got to. Sometimes it’s good to shake up our writing process
As many of you will know, having a novel published by a traditional publisher has been a dream of mine since I was 19 (forty years ago). And now I have three! The Donna Morris crime series based in Scarborough: A Wake of Crows; Drowning Not Waving; No Justice. I think I have also intimated at times that the process has not all been plain sailing and I have had my emotional ups and downs.
I was very interested, therefore, (and in a way heartened) to read an article by clinical psychologist and fellow writer, Philippa East. It covers the contradictory feelings of being published and also suggests ways to handle the more distressing internal reactions. It’s really worth a read, not just for writers, but for anyone who is doing creative work and putting it out there, or just putting themselves out there in any forum. You can find it here:
Philippa is a fab writer and so once you read her article, please check out her books: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/philippa_east Plus she has A Guilty Secret coming out next year.
I like all Philippa’s advice. I have a few more thoughts to add: # seek out praise. You can actually ask people what they liked about your writing. Then note it down and remember it. # celebrate the little wins. OK maybe your sales aren’t what they could be or your marketing efforts are sinking without trace, but you have written a book (or poem, or story or whatever it is). Celebrate it. # make sure you take yourself out into nature and notice your environment. It’s good for your mental health and your writing. # do other stuff in your life where you are not being judged and you don’t have to get any better. For me, it’s things like yoga and bits of visual art which I do for my own entertainment.
Scarborough Mysteries 