Cecilia Peartree – woman of mystery
setting the scene in Pitkirtly
Thanks to NaNoWriMo, in which the target is set to 50,000 for everyone, getting to 50,000 words in a novel always feels like almost the end. Actually 50,000 words or even 60,000, which most of my mystery novels conclude at, is fairly short for a novel these days. My writing session this morning has just …
I include this classic picture of Venice, taken by me on a visit there with my mother in about 1972, just as a random example of the kind of place I won't be going to this year, or for the foreseeable future. I still have a plan in my head for a trip down the …
My first piece of news and maybe the most important to some readers, is that I'm making very good progress with my latest Pitkirtly novel ('As Yet Untitled' - I doubt if that will be the final title by the way, although I suppose it's an option but maybe a bit too literary!). I've reached …
As well as being even busier than usual, my life has taken on a surreal tinge, and if I believed in a supernatural power then he would take the shape of Salvador Dali rather than the bearded deity people usually picture. While waiting for a family member to get ready for his custard pie, made …
The title of this blog post may be slightly misleading. I am physically in my usual writing spot, the conservatory, looking out somewhat apprehensively to see if snow has started to fall yet, which I'm very much hoping it doesn't, although there was suspicious-looking low white cloud over the Pentland Hills, which I can more …
As I write the closing scenes of the novel I really meant to finish by the end of April, my mind has already moved on into June, when (in my imagination anyway) I will have published it, which means I will then have time to go back to the historical novel on my computer and …
I like to use this limbo between Christmas and New Year to get organised for the year ahead, although the time tends to be taken up instead by a mad rush to fill in my tax return, an excess of sleep and biscuits, and more often than not by some sort of family emergency. This …
Alex Perry ('son of Cecilia') has just published his first novel, 'The War of Undoing'*. Although this is a massive fantasy novel and completely different from anything of mine and so in some ways it doesn't fit into my blog very well, I thought I would write something about what it's like to have two writers …
I would quite like to spend all my time in Pitkirtly. It seems a pleasant enough place, apart from all the suspicious deaths and the weather, and once you get used to the people they are fairly friendly. I've always wanted to live by the sea as well, at least when I haven't wanted to …
No, that isn't a novel title, although having said that it looks a bit as if it could either have a cold war spy theme, or be some sort of bio-thriller. I just thought I would say something about why I always have to leave my writing to lie around doing nothing for a while once …
