I realised, waking up last night in a panic, that November is now advancing on us very quickly. Unlike some people this doesn't remind me that Christmas is just round the corner, because I prefer not to acknowledge the existence of Christmas until a couple of weeks before it takes place. In my case the …
Research and me – a love-hate relationship
I usually enjoy spending time on research. These days, with the internet, it's so much easier than it used to be and yet somehow a bit more tricky, with lots of unattributed information out there and annoying gaps too. Then there is the constant fear that you'll overload your novel with information just because you've …
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A sort of experiment
Every time I leave a novel I'm working on to marinate for a while and then re-read it, I feel as if it's a bit like a philosophical experiment along the lines of Schrödinger's Cat. The novel could either be dead or alive until you actually open the file to see for yourself. Because of …
Round Britain
When I was young we used to play a card game called 'Round Britain'. I can't remember much about it now, but the novel I'm currently working on reminds me of it in the sense that the characters have spent a lot of time travelling, almost to the extremities of mainland Britain and back. This …
Lost month or, how can it be August already?
I was bemoaning my lost weekend on another of my blogs* when I suddenly found I had 'lost' a whole month on this one! I'm not sure what happened in July to make it go so fast. We were preparing for an Edinburgh Fringe show, and my full-time job was very busy, and I wrote …
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The dandelion and its sinister implications
In case anyone wonders why I've chosen to put a dandelion on the front cover of my latest Pitkirtly mystery, here is the story. I recently discovered while assisting with our production of the play ‘Mary, Queen of Scots got her head chopped off’ (Liz Lochhead) that there is a macabre children’s game associated with …
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The next thing
There are several schools of thought about how to get things done. One is to carry on with one project until you've finished, another is to start doing lots of things at once so that you don't get bored. I suppose my approach falls somewhere in between these two extremes. I don't like to find …
Motivation and the weather
This weekend I've observed a direct link between the weather and my motivation. It only serves to confirm a vague feeling I got a few years ago when we went to Barcelona on holiday, that I would quite like to retire to Spain if it wasn't for the food and the language barrier, which oddly …
Mistreating characters
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the people of Pitkirtly decided to form a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Characters before long. I really haven't been very nice to some of my long-running mystery novel characters in the latest one of the series, and this tendency has got even worse as the …
A Tantalising Glimpse
Inspired by someone's recent post on a writer's forum where they asked for quotes from characters, I've put together some quick extracts from 'The Queen of Scots Mystery'. They may not make much sense out of context, and in fact I'm hoping they don't! But maybe they will convey a flavour of the novel, although …
Cecilia Peartree - woman of mystery 