As befits a mystery writer, I live in a quiet suburb and have three cats. I like to write in the conservatory with soft piano music playing in the background. I have a season ticket for one of the theatres in town, where my friend and I attend matinees throughout the season, and when I retire I will very probably become a Friend of a local art gallery and meet people for tea in a long-established department store.
I never use bad language, not even when my Fiat Panda gets cut up at Holy Corner by one of these fiendish bicycle taxi contraptions. The characters in my mystery novels, therefore, don’t use bad language either. And there is very little blood, or at least very little that is visible in my writing. Sometimes bad things happen to the characters, but they suffer in silent dignity, without needing to have their suffering described in minute and sickening detail. Readers do need to use their imaginations sometimes, you know. This isn’t television or a film.
And speaking of television,why are there hardly any programmes worth watching? And so few films worth going to see? On television it’s a choice between so-called reality shows (depicting realities which Icertainly wouldn’t want to inhabit) and inferior drama, while at the cinema it’s either a meagre diet of cartoons or a feast of bad language and violence.
Well, you won’t find any of the above in my writing, that’s for sure!
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 