JOURNEY'S END - well not quite

JOURNEY'S END

well not quite

A few days ago I finished writing the fourth book in the DI Sonny Russell series of crime novels, BLOOD ON THE CARDS. It came as something of a surprise.

I started writing it back in December 2018 with only the germ of an idea  - that the body of a fortune teller would be found in a WW2 pillbox near Appledore in Kent. Besides that, I hadn't a clue where the story was going to take me. 

I remember listening to Anne Cleeves, the author of the Shetland and Vera novels that have been so successfully transferred to the small screen. She was choosing her eight records on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and said there were two types of writers - plotters and pantsters. 

Plotters know exactly where they are going, even to the extent of creating a graph or wall chart, showing the characters, the locations and the plots and just how they are going to react with each other. Pantsters, on the other hand, literally fly by the seat of the pants, following every twist and turn of the story they are creating. Writing like a reader, they are never sure where the narrative is going to take them. I'm one of those. 

I do enjoy the writing, above everything else - editing and promotion for instance - and feel quite bereft when I come to the end of a story that I have been wrapped up in for nearly a year. I would quite like to get on with the next instalment, but first the hard work really starts.

I will have to go through this first draft, carefully checking for inaccuracies, to make sure the chronology is correct and that the narrative floes. I will then hand my baby over to my better half, Greer, who after a lifetime in journalism is more than qualified to check for errors I've missed. I then like to pass it on to a beta reader* to get his opinion of the story. (Very sadly, a good friend who fulfilled that function on the last manuscript, passed away recently so I will have to find another trusted friend to take his place. Not an easy task.)

Then, when all are satisfied, it's off to the printer. So, although the writing is done, there's still a long way to go. However, if you haven't already met DI Sonny Russell, Aggie, his faithful Jack Russell terrier and DC Johnny Weeks, the first three books are available in paperback or kindle.

*A beta reader is usually an unpaid test reader of an unreleased work of literature, who gives feedback from the point of view of an average reader to the author.

TAKE COURAGE - or a better beer!

TAKE COURAGE

or a better beer!

As my crime stories are set in the 1950s, much of the action takes place in pubs. In those day, drink-driving was hardly frowned upon and even policemen were known to imbibe on or off-duty.

Some beers were just about acceptable - Courage bitter for instance, but others, despite being widely drunk, were frowned upon by beer connoisseurs. Watney's Red Barrel, introduced in 1931, was an export keg beer that could travel long distances as it was filtered and pasteurised, probably represented the nadir of bitter drinking. 

Style and Winch was one of the older breweries. It was registered in March 1899 as merger between A F Style & Co with Edward Winch & Sons Ltd and had a total of 356 public houses. Another thing which helps to establish the period is to describe the vessels that were used for drinking the beer and these were often pewter tankards.

Here is an extract from BLOOD ON THE TIDE, describing the Shipwrights Arms the pub at Compass Point (Rye Harbour).

The Shipwrights Arms was a modest building, with stone walls, tiny recessed windows and a pantiled roof. It sat right at the end of the quay, next to the station, hunkered down against the weather. It had withstood any number of gales and powerful storms and had survived, battered but unbowed. Inside was a small, low-ceilinged room, the once white paintwork now the colour of nicotine, stained dark from years of coal fires and the smoke of a lifetime of tobacco pipes. The woodwork was an even deeper colour, with a tar-like quality. Indeed, tar may well have been used as a ready substitute for paint. The room served as the solitary bar and a door marked PRIVATE led to Alf’s compact accommodation. The landlord was far from being the archetypal mine host. Rangy and thin, he barely spoke more than a sentence at a time, always wore a suit and tie and had bookshelves crammed with classics in his living room. He stood, impassive, in front of a brace of barrels of ale sitting on a rack behind the wooden counter. There was a foxed mirror on the wall above a shelf, reflecting a line of brown bottles. Below the barrels, shelves held clean, upturned glasses; pints and halves. The floor was bare floorboards, with a dusting of sawdust and sand and apart from a couple of stools, the only other seating was comprised of three chairs that had seen better days, arranged around a battered tin-topped table, next to the unlit fire.

The morning sun slanted through the small windows, dust motes dancing in the rays. An old clock ticked on the wall, and apart from the occasional squeak as Alf polished glasses, all was tranquil.