With only a week to go until the end of November – the end of National Novel Writing Month – I’ve progressed a good way through the novel previously known as ‘Pitkirtly VII’ and currently entitled ‘A Tasteful Crime’. Oddly enough the writing of this novel has coincided with the creation of a new Amazon UK category ‘Mystery – Cozy – Culinary’. They must be watching me even more closely than I imagined!
The really nice thing about writing a series set in one small town is the opportunity that this presents to re-introduce characters who appeared in earlier novels in the series. So when I wanted a character to run a coffee kiosk on the road near the harbour, where quite a lot of the action has taken place over the series, I recruited Giancarlo Petrelli from ‘A Reformed Character’. He has grown up a little since we last saw him but has returned to Pitkirtly apparently at a loose end, for his mother has given him the task of opening the kiosk which is, I admit, in quite an unpromising location. I think this may be a temporary job for him, and I can’t imagine the coffee kiosk being a huge success, especially over the winter.
Another character has made a sort of re-appearance in this novel. I say ‘sort of’ because she has never actually been seen before. In fact we only know about her from a throw-away mention in ‘Crime in the Community’ and even I wasn’t sure I had actually mentioned her by name before, so when I wanted to bring her into the story I had to go back and re-read the first one in the series to make sure. In fact this made me think I should be keeping better track of characters, so last month I started a spreadsheet to do this. Needless to say, I have only got as far as listing the main characters, which meant that when I had to bring in a police officer to do something or other at one point, I had to write myself a little note in brackets to go and look for a name from one of the other novels instead of making up yet another one.
I don’t really like to say too much about novels that are still in progress, at least until I’ve finished the first draft, but I can exclusively divulge here that there is cake involved in this one.
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 