Since I started blogging I’ve been really neglectful of the books for my U3A Reading Group, but when Elly Griffiths cropped up this month I knew I had to set aside all my ARCs and review copies and read the first in the Ruth Galloway novels, as I’ve read many of the others but not The Crossing Places. The Crossing Places is published by Quercus and is available in e-book and paperback from Amazon UK, Waterstones, WH Smith and all good bookshops. At the time of writing this review the e-book is free on Amazon.

The Crossing Places

Dr Ruth Galloway is called in when a child’s bones are discovered near the site of a pre-historic henge on the north Norfolk salt marshes. Are they the remains of a local girl who disappeared ten years earlier – or are the bones much older?

DCI Harry Nelson refuses to give up the hunt for the missing girl. Since she vanished, someone has been sending him bizarre anonymous notes about ritual sacrifice, quoting Shakespeare and the Bible. He knows that Ruth’s expertise and experience could help him finally to put this case to rest.

But when a second child goes missing, Ruth finds herself in danger from a killer who knows she’s getting ever closer to the truth…

My Review of The Crossing Places

When archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway is called in to look at some buried bones, little does she realise what a profound effect this will have on her life.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Crossing Places. I’m not sure whether having read later novels in the series enhanced my reading but it was certainly very interesting to read some of the back story that is alluded to later.

The story reminded me a little of a piece of music. It built and built, refrain upon refrain until the final crescendo which is dramatic and heart stopping as Ruth finds herself in considerable peril. Elly Griffiths certainly knows how to construct a plot that entertains and thrills her readers without being sensationalist and unrealistic.

The quality of the prose is so good. It has depth and substance but in a measured and sophisticated way, making it all the more attractive. Elly Griffiths paints such a vivid picture of Norfolk for her setting so that those who know the county accept it as totally authentic and those who don’t can picture it perfectly. Indeed, the Saltmarsh becomes as much a presence in the narrative as any of the characters. The archaeological detail is brilliantly researched and made me want to sign up to another dig myself. I was educated as well as entertained by this read.

I loved the characters. I appreciated that Dr Ruth Galloway isn’t the stereotypical wonder woman heroine of so many stories, but is somewhat socially inept, overweight and lives alone with her cats. I found it very easy to identify with her. Harry Nelson, too, is completely believable even though he is less well defined in this first book. Reading The Crossing Places has made me want to return to the whole series in order to see how the characters develop chronologically.

I envy those coming of the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. They are in for a total treat and The Crossing Places exemplifies the best of those novels.

I’d like to add too that all 12 members of the U3A reading group to which I belong universally loved The Crossing Places too.

You’ll find much more about Elly Griffiths on her website, by following her on Twitter and finding her on Facebook. Elly Griffiths also writes under her real name Domenica De Rosa and you can find out more here.

I so loved Carys Bray’s debut novel A Song for Issy Bradley that I am thrilled and delighted to be part of the launch celebrations for Carys’s latest book The Museum of You. The Museum of You is published in hardback and e-book by Hutchinson, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on 16th June 2016 and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and all good bookshops.

Today I have a super guest post from Carys Bray and an extract from the book, after which you can read my review of The Museum of You.

The Museum of You

Clover Quinn was a surprise. She used to imagine she was the good kind, but now she’s not sure. She’d like to ask Dad about it, but growing up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story is difficult. She tries not to skate on the thin ice of his memories.

Darren has studied his daughter like a seismologist on the lookout for waves and surrounded her with everything she might want – everything he can think of, at least – to be happy.

What Clover wants is answers. This summer, she thinks she can find them in the second bedroom, which is still full of her mother’s belongings. Volume isn’t important, what she is looking for is essence; the undiluted bits: a collection of things that will tell her the full story of her mother, her father and who she is going to be.

But what you find depends on what you’re searching for.

A moving and surprisingly funny novel – The Independent

My Favourite Museums

A Guest Post by Carys Bray

In my new novel The Museum of You, twelve year old Clover Quinn sorts through her mother’s belongings and curates an exhibition in the second bedroom of the house she shares with her Dad, Darren.

As part of The Museum of You blog tour, I’m writing about some of my favourite museums. In recent months it has been frustrating to read of the museum closures which appear to be disproportionately affecting the north of England. Museums are a great place to learn about our heritage; they’re often a testament to the efforts and dedication of working people, the men and women who built and made many of the things we take for granted today.

The Merseyside Maritime Museum.

This museum is right on the iconic Liverpool waterfront. Standing in the foyer is a bit like standing in an enormous, old tunnel. The lights hang from steel wires and the floor is cobbled in places. When the glass doors open and people step in and out of the building, you can hear seagulls squawking. Outside, tall ships and tugs float in the Albert and Canning Docks, on either side of the museum. You’re right in the middle of the story from the moment you arrive.

I visited the museum several times when I was writing The Museum of You. On one occasion I met with a curator who talked to me about her job. I learned that curators used to be called keepers, an apposite description for Clover’s Dad, Darren, who has kept all sorts of things in the second bedroom of their house.

My favourite objects are the models of ships. There used to be more but 60 of them were destroyed in the Blitz in 1941. The ships remind me of doll’s houses; I wish they could be opened up, allowing visitors to see their insides.

A particularly interesting and sad part of the exhibition deals with the fate of the Titanic. Below is a collection of things that were retrieved from the bottom of the sea. I stood and looked at these objects for a while. It’s amazing to think of their history: the optimism with which they were placed aboard the ship and their long, silent wait under water before they ended up in a display case in Liverpool.

The Albert dock area was revitalised when the Maritime Museum opened. The Tate Liverpool and the International Slavery Museum are right there, too. These repositories of history and art catalogue human achievements and abuses. They give us a sense of our place in the world, and help us to understand our human story. And that’s what Clover Quinn is looking for as she curates her museum; a way of learning more about her place in the world and the story of her birth.

The Museum of You – Excerpt

When she got home from the museum Dad was kneeling in the hall. He’d unscrewed the radiator and his thumb was pressed over an unfastened pipe as water gushed around it. The books and clothes and newspapers that used to line the hall had been arranged in small piles on the stairs. Beside him, on the damp carpet, was a metal scraper he’d been using to scuff the paper off the wall.

‘Just in time!’ he said. ‘Fetch a bowl. A small one, so it’ll fit.’

She fetched two and spent the next fifteen minutes running back and forth to the kitchen emptying one bowl as the other filled, Dad calling, ‘Faster! Faster! Keep it up, Speedy Gonzalez!’ His trousers were soaked and his knuckles grazed, but he wasn’t bothered. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, as if it wasn’t his day off and plumbing and stripping walls was his actual job.

Once the pipe had emptied he stood up and hopped about for a bit while the feeling came back into his feet. ‘I helped Colin out with something this morning,’ he said. ‘The people whose house we were at had this dado rail thing – it sounds posh, but it’s just a bit of wood, really – right about here.’ He brushed his hand against the wall beside his hip. ‘Underneath it they had stripy wallpaper, but above it they had a different, plain kind. It was dead nice and I thought, we could do that.’

Dad found a scraper for her. The paint came off in flakes, followed by tufts of the thick, textured wallpaper. Underneath, was a layer of soft, brown, backing-paper which Dad sprayed with water from a squirty bottle. When the water had soaked in, they made long scrapes down the wall, top to bottom, leaving the backing paper flopped over the skirting boards like ribbons of skin. It felt like they were undressing the house.

The bare walls weren’t smooth. They were gritty, crumbly in places. As they worked, a dusty smell wafted out of them. It took more than an hour to get from the front door to the wall beside the bottom stair. That’s where Dad uncovered the heart. It was about as big as Clover’s hand, etched on the wall in black, permanent marker, in Dad’s handwriting: Darren + Becky 4ever.

‘I’d forgotten,’ he murmured. And then he pulled his everything face. The face he pulls when Uncle Jim is drunk. The face he pulls when they go shopping in March and the person at the till tries to be helpful by reminding them about Mother’s Day. The face which reminds her that a lot of the time his expression is like a plate of leftovers.

She didn’t say anything, and although she wanted to, she didn’t trace the heart with her fingertips. Instead, she went up to the bathroom and sat on the boxed, pre-lit Christmas tree dad bought in the January sales. When you grow up in the saddest chapter of someone else’s story you’re forever skating on the thin ice of their memories. That’s not to say it’s always sad – there are happy things, too. When she was a baby Dad had a tattoo of her name drawn on his arm in curly, blue writing, and underneath he had a green, four-leaf clover. She has such a brilliant name, chosen by her mother because it has the word LOVE in the middle. That’s not the sort of thing you go around telling people, but it is something you can remember if you need a little boost; an instant access, happiness top-up card – it even works when Luke Barton calls her Margey-rine. Clover thought of her name and counted to 300.

When she went downstairs Dad had recovered his empty face and she couldn’t help asking a question, just a small one.

‘Is there any more writing under the paper?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘She didn’t do a heart as well?’

‘Help me with this, will you?’

They pulled the soggy ribbons of paper away from the skirting and put them in a bin bag. The house smelled different afterwards. As if some old sadness had leaked out of the walls.

My Review of The Museum of You

Clover is on the cusp between childhood and adulthood. Her father Darren does his best to make her happy as he balances life without Clover’s dead mother Becky, supporting his depressive brother in law Jim, working as a bus driver and visiting his father. When Clover decides to stage a museum exhibition in honour of her mother in the unused and junk ridden spare room, the results uncover a world of emotion and revelations she hasn’t bargained for.

I was apprehensive that second novel syndrome might affect Carys Bray after I so enjoyed her debut A Song for Issy Bradley, my review of which you can read here. However, The Museum of You is equally beautiful and compelling. Against a totally recognizable background of popular culture through music and television, Carys Bray weaves a tapestry of love, life and memory that would make any reader question the validity of their own memories and identity. I frequently found my throat tightening with tears and emotion as I read.

The juxtaposition of Darren’s story next to Clover’s gradually uncovers the truth of the past so that the reader experiences their lives deeply and affectingly. I was moved so often as Carys Bray has the ability to suggest a nuance that resonates on many, many levels with so many readers. There is a simplicity and a beauty to the writing that is just wonderful to read.

The characterisation is perfect. Mrs. Mackerel acts as light relief with her humorous malapropisms and Kelly seems realistic and warm, but the true stars are Darren and Clover. Their relationship reminded me of a kind of kaleidoscope, colourful and shifting and occasionally settling into perfection before life intervened and unsettled the patterns again.

I loved the metaphor for Clover’s childhood in the allotment as the summer moves into autumn and Clover grows up. I also adored the exploration of grief, of love and of the very essence of what makes us human that Carys Bray seems to convey so effortlessly.

I think readers who are looking for a contemporary writer with flair, talent and the ability to touch the soul will love Carys Bray. She is fast becoming one of my favourite writers. I cannot recommend The Museum of You highly enough.

Carys Bray

You can follow Carys on Twitter and visit her website. You’ll also find her on Facebook. There’s lots more about and from Carys with these other bloggers too:

 

I’m utterly thrilled to announce that Linda’s Book Bag was voted as the Best Review Blog in the 2nd Annual Bloggers Bash Awards yesterday.

The Annual Bloggers Bash Awards were created by Sacha Black last year. Sacha is an inspirational blogger and you can sign up to her newsletter here.

I would have loved to be at the award event but at the time it was on I was sitting in a field awaiting Bryan Ferry in concert. There are so many fantastic bloggers out there that I couldn’t believe it when I heard I had been given the Best Review Blog Award.

I’d like to thank all those who voted for me and say that this really does mean a lot to me and I appreciate every single one of those votes. When I write a review I really try to make it personal, honest and genuine and this award has really touched me.

The full list of nominees and winners can be found on Sacha’s blog here, but the other award winners were:

Funniest blogger: Lucy at Blonde Write More

Best Dressed Blogger: Becca at Becca’s Books 

Best Newcomer: Noelle at Crime Book Junkie

Most Inspirational Blogger: Shelley at Shelley Wilson Author

Hidden Gem: Alix at Delightful Book Reviews

Services to Bloggers: Sarah at By The Letter Book Reviews

Most Informative Original Content: Aquileana at La Audacia de Aquiles

Best Pal: Anne at Being Anne (I may just have nominated Anne in this category!)

Best Overall Blog: Suzie at Suzie Speaks

Why not check out their blogs too?

And THANK YOU again if you voted for me.

My grateful thanks to Alainna Hadjigeorgiou at Quercus Books for a copy of Love, or Nearest Offer by Adele Geras in return for an honest review. Love, or Nearest Offer was published by Quercus in hardback on 2nd June 2016 and is available for purchase on Amazon, from W H Smith, Waterstones, the publisher and all good bookshops.

Love, or Nearest Offer

On paper, Iris Atkins is an estate agent, but she’s not just good at finding suitable houses for her clients. In fact, she has a gift: Iris is able to see into their lives and understand exactly what is missing and what they need – and not just in bricks-and-mortar terms either.

Of course, concentrating so much on fixing other people’s problems doesn’t leave much time for examining your own. Over the course of one whirlwind year Iris discovers that while she may know what’s best for everyone else, she doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for herself – and what she finds out could make her happier than she’d ever dreamed of.

My Review of Love, or Nearest Offer

Iris is leaving her cheating boyfriend to concentrate on finding the right house for the right client through her estate agent job. However, looking after other people’s interests doesn’t mean she can best look after her own.

I haven’t read anything by Adele Geras before even though she is a prolific author but reading Love, or Nearest Offer felt as if I’d been reading her all my life. Her style felt familiar and comforting. Frequently I found myself nodding in agreement as she described family dynamics and characters. I wondered if we might be related!

There’s quite a few characters and initially I found this quite disjointed until the glue that is Iris began to pull all the threads together and they had all been introduced fully. Once they had I found I cared about them and wanted their outcomes to be successful. It is Iris who is most vividly depicted and successful for me.

The plot has been carefully constructed so that there is a satisfying conclusion to all the stories presented and those who’ve been through the death of a partner or have moved house will find so many echoes of their own lives.

Love, or Nearest Offer is an easy summer read that will have you wanting to look through people’s windows and go house hunting. Adele Geras uses description so effectively that it is easy to picture her settings in in the mind’s eye. I especially liked the portrayal of Aiden’s house.

I found Love, or Nearest Offer a well written and entertaining story that would be smashing to read on holiday.

About Adele Geras

Adèle Geras is the author of many acclaimed stories for children as well as five adult novels, including: Facing the Light, Hester’s Story, Made in Heaven and A Hidden Life (all available in ebook from Quercus), Cover Your Eyes (available in print from Quercus) and Out of the Dark, a special short story for the literary charity Quick Reads. Adèle lives near Cambridge and is the mother of the thriller writer Sophie Hannah.

You can follow Adele Geras on Twitter or visit her website.

I’m delighted to be part of the launch celebrations of Annabel Abbs’ historical novel, The Joyce Girl which is published by Impress Books on June 16th 2016. The first year of profits from The Joyce Girl go to Young Minds in memory of Luccia Joyce who spent most of her life interred in an asylum. The Joyce Girl is available for order here.

Today I have a wonderful guest post from Annabel Abbs followed by my review of this remarkable book.

The Joyce Girl

The Joyce Girl by Annabel Abbs, is a novel based on the life of James Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, at the time of her affair with Samuel Beckett and her psychological decline.

The Joyce Girl won the Impress Prize for New Writers in September 2015. The shortlist was judged by a panel of experts in the publishing industry. The novel was also longlisted for the Bath Novel Award and the Caledonia Novel Award.

1928

Avant-garde Paris is buzzing with the latest ideas in art, music, literature and dance. Lucia, the talented and ambitious daughter of James Joyce, is making her name as a dancer, training with some of the world’s most gifted performers. When a young Samuel Beckett comes to work for her father, she’s captivated by his quiet intensity and falls passionately in love. Persuaded she has clairvoyant powers, Lucia believes her destiny is to marry Beckett. But when her beloved brother is enticed away, the hidden threads of the Joyce’s lives begin to unravel, destroying Lucia’s dreams and foiling her attempts to escape the shadow of her genius father.

1934

Her life in tatters, Lucia is sent by her father to pioneering psychoanalyst, Doctor Jung. For years she has kept quiet. But now she decides to speak.

Based on the true story of Lucia, The Joyce Girl is a beautiful story of thwarted ambition and the nurturing but ultimately destructive love of a father.

 

WHY I SPONSOR A CREATIVE WRITING MA EVEN THOUGH I DON’T HAVE ONE…

 A Guest Post by Annabel Abbs

The Joyce Girl tells the mostly-true story of James Joyce’s only daughter, Lucia, a dancer in 1920s Paris. When I began writing it, I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing.  I hadn’t set out to be a writer.  I’d never been on a course or read a how-to-write book. All I knew was that this extraordinary woman had been wiped from history and she deserved better.  Sadly, the only biography of her (To Dance in the Wake by Carol Schloss, Bloomsbury 2004), was full of black holes:  all Lucia Joyce’s letters, her medical records, anything she’d ever written, had been destroyed, leaving very little for her biographer to work with. I realised that if I wanted to find out what really happened to Lucia, I would have to do vast amounts of research and then fill in the gaps with fiction.  I had always read heavily, my first degree was in English Literature and my father’s a poet, so I wasn’t daunted by the task ahead of me. But I had no idea how much blood, sweat and tears would be required to actually structure and write a novel.

As I wrestled with my embryonic novel I thought about doing a writing course. In my darkest hours I googled MAs, Curtis Brown, Faber and Arvon courses (amongst others) but I knew that, with elderly parents and in-laws and four demanding children, it would be hard to find the time.  If I’d chosen a less research-intensive novel, perhaps I could have squeezed it in.  But I hadn’t. And I was not prepared to ditch Lucia.  If I’m honest, there was another reason too.  I was terrified of being surrounded by bright young things with portfolios of award-winning stories and plenty of time to do writing exercises.  I had neither. Half the time I was working out my plot as I simultaneously grappled with a hoover or else I was practising Irish dialect on my seven-year old while on the school run!  I decided to go it entirely alone.

But it was hard.  And it was often lonely.  Oh how I yearned for a supportive group of writing buddies and a helpful tutor full of top tips.  And later, as I struggled to approach agents (without a contact to my name and no idea how the industry worked), I wished I’d been to something that explained it all.  The more debuts I read, the more I noticed that nearly all of them had an MA in creative writing.  And this made me angry.  My novel involved researching the lives of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, thought to be two of the greatest writers of the last century – neither had MAs in creative writing.  Neither had been on any writing courses whatsoever.  As I read around my subject, I re-read Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield and other writers of the period – none of whom had attended a writing course.  Surely it could still be done?

Just as I finished my novel – exhausted after almost three years of researching, endless night-time re-writes and the juggling that goes with being a mother – my old university (UEA) approached me and invited me to have dinner with John Boyne.  Who could refuse that? I’d been wondering how anyone with a job and kids could ever write a novel (at least I didn’t have a full-time job to fit in) and when I arrived at the dinner the UEA Creative Writing course leader gave me a quick lesson in the economics (pitiful) of being an author and the challenges (many) faced by his MA students.  I decided that, although I’d taken the lonely road, perhaps I could help one person avoid it.  I knew, from my own experience, that if I’d also had to hold down a job I could never have written my novel.  I previously worked in business and so was lucky enough not to have money worries or financial constraints. If I had, would I have been able to resurrect Lucia Joyce?  No.  Of course not.

UEA’s aim is to have every place fully funded.  But for now, there are sponsorships for Irish writers and overseas writers and young writers. My bursary, however, is for budding writers of 40+ who couldn’t otherwise afford to do an MA.  I urge you to apply at http://bit.ly/1rUsNs2.

My Review of The Joyce Girl

I have a confession. Initially the novel didn’t appeal to me terribly and I only really accepted The Joyce Girl for review because I wanted to support mental health issues. With the first year’s profits from royalties going to Young Minds I thought it might be a ‘worthy’ read. That just goes to show what an idiot I am! The Joyce Girl is an utterly amazing book.

Firstly I have to acknowledge the outstanding and meticulous research that has gone in to making The Joyce Girl a completely fascinating read. I have learnt so much – not just about Luccia Joyce whom I have to admit I was mostly unaware of, but also about James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Carl Jung. This quality of research means the characters are vibrant and convincing, leaping from the page in 3D magnificence. But it’s not just the main characters that are so life-like. The wide supporting cast has equally engaging personalities who are presented in all their human frailties. This is such skilful writing. I kept hastening back to the reading in case the characters got up to something I might miss whilst I was away.

The next aspect that I was bowled over by was the sense of time and place that Annabel Abbs conveys so brilliantly. I found the prose mesmerising and evocative so that I was transported to Paris especially. There’s a real sense of an era. It’s so difficult to define the way The Joyce Girl is written but I found it hypnotic and beautiful.

As well as the narrative, all elements of the book are fascinating, even the Afterword, where some of the aspects mentioned in passing are elucidated, and returning to the quotations at the beginning after reading the story gave them a harrowing significance they didn’t have when I started. I thought the title too was inspired. Luccia is completely manipulated by her family as if she is some kind of possession and the use of the definite article exemplifies that. She is THE Joyce girl, not Luccia in her own right, but an item owned and used by others – even those supposedly trying to help her.

But what touched me the most was the presentation of those with mental health problems and their treatment by others. I felt an intense sadness several times during the reading and I wonder whether we have moved on as far as we should have done since Luccia was incarcerated. I also felt Luccia’s rage and fury with her through the first person storytelling. The she-beast of madness is also such a well-created metaphor, conveying the rage and impotence felt.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re interested in history. It doesn’t matter whether you’re interested in literature. The Joyce Girl is a story that invades your soul and stays there. In the time since I read The Joyce Girl I have found it impossible to forget. It haunts my thoughts and I think it isn’t too dramatic to say I think it has had a profound effect on my life. The Joyce Girl is, quite simply, stunning.

About Annabel Abbs

Annabel Abbs grew up in Bristol, Wales and Sussex, before stud­ying English Literature at the University of East Anglia. Her debut novel, The Joyce Girl, won the 2015 Impress Prize and was longlisted for the 2015 Bath Novel Award and the 2015 Caledonia Novel Award. Her short stories have been long and shortlisted for various awards. She is now completing her second novel, based on the life of Frieda von Richthofen, wife and muse to D.H. Lawrence.

Before she began writing she spent 15 years running a marketing consultancy where her clients included Reuters, Sony and the FT. She lives in London and Sussex with her husband and four chil­dren.

You can follow Annabel on Twitter or follow The Joyce Girl account. You’ll find Annabel on her website too.

For more on The Joyce Girl and Annabel Abbs see these other bloggers:

I absolutely adore Botswana and couldn’t believe it when I was asked to be part of the launch celebrations for Deadly Harvest by Michael Stanley which is set there. Deadly Harvest, Book 4 in the Detective Kubu Series, is published by Orenda books and is available in e-book and paperback by following the links here.

I have a wonderful guest post from Michael Stanley all about collaborative writing.

Deadly Harvest

‘A wonderful, original voice – McCall Smith with a dark edge and even darker underbelly’ Peter James

‘Richly atmospheric … a gritty depiction of corruption and deception’ Publishers Weekly

A young girl goes missing after getting into a car with a mysterious man. Soon after, a second girl disappears, and her devastated father, Witness, sets out to seek revenge. As the trail goes cold, Samantha Khama – new recruit to the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department – suspects the girl was killed for muti, the traditional African medicine usually derived from plants, sometimes animals and, recently and most chillingly, human parts. When the investigation gets personal, Samantha enlists opera-loving wine connoisseur Assistant Superintendent David ‘Kubu’ Bengu to help her dig into the past. As they begin to discover a pattern to the disappearances, there is another victim, and Kubu and Samantha are thrust into a harrowing race to stop a serial killer who has only one thing in mind…

‘Under the African sun, Michael Stanley’s Detective Kubu investigates crimes as dark as the darkest of Nordic Noir. Call it Sunshine Noir, if you will – a must read’ Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

‘This book took me to a world I didn’t want to leave. It kept me reading, it kept me guessing, and it kept me gasping at its many twists and surprises’ R.L. Kline

‘Compelling and deceptively written…’ New York Journal of Books

Collaborative Fiction Writing

A Guest Post by Michael Stanley

Our first book, A CARRION DEATH, which was first published in 2008, took us three years to complete.  Of course, since this was our first foray into writing fiction, it wasn’t surprising that we had an enormous amount to learn.  One of the things we learnt was that it’s unusual for two people to write fiction together.  But as we learnt more, we discovered that there are several highly successful writing teams in the genre – Nicki French (husband and wife), PJ Tracy (mother and daughter), Charles Todd (mother and son), Karen Perry (two friends), just to name a few.  Indeed, it’s becoming sufficiently common that some teams even use both their names rather than hiding behind a pseudonym; for example, the Swedish partnership of Roslund and Hellstrom.

Both of us have been university professors and both of us have enjoyed collaborating in our academic lives.  Stanley has co-authored non-fiction books; Michael has written many academic papers with other researchers.  So it seemed natural to us to work together on a project writing fiction.  And we enjoyed finding out how to do that.

Sometimes writers (and readers) ask us how we can share this very private creative art with another person.  We think this is the wrong question.  For us, a better question is how can someone write alone?  We have the benefit of having an involved person to brainstorm with, to bounce ideas off, and to give truly critical feedback.  We also have the benefit of having someone to share a glass of wine with while discussing the intricacies of plot or character – a solo writer can’t do that, because no one else will be totally involved.

We both do everything.  We brainstorm together, follow up on research, travel to little known parts of Botswana, and write.  Our process is that one of us does the first draft of a piece, sends it by email to the other, and receives a response which is often a highly commented and edited version.  The originator responds, then back and forth in that way, perhaps more than twenty times.  Eventually the piece is not written by Michael or by Stanley, but rather by some gestalt, named Michael Stanley, who sits somewhere between Minneapolis and Johannesburg in cyberspace.  Readers tell us the product is seamless; our friends tell us they can identify who wrote what, but they are wrong about half the time!

We believe there are many benefits to collaboration.  We can brainstorm plot and character, and we think we get a more cohesive final product as a result.  When one of us flags, the other is there to nag and take up the slack.  Best of all we get immediate and interested feedback on anything we write.

However there are some caveats.  You must be willing to take harsh criticism, knowing that it’s directed at the product rather than you, and that the only goal is to improve the work.  There must be trust and an ability to see the other person’s point of view.  It helps if you have similar writing styles.  And it probably takes longer than writing alone.  But all that is outweighed by the biggest advantage: it’s great fun!  And, after all, most people who write do it for the enjoyment.

DEADLY HARVEST is the fourth in the Detective Kubu series, and these books would never have seen the light of day without the collaborative style we’ve developed.  We’ve remained good friends, and we’re still having fun.  For us, collaboration definitely is the way to write mystery fiction.

About Michael Stanley

Michael Stanley is the writing team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Both were born in South Africa and have worked in academia and business. Stanley was an educational psychologist, specialising in the application of computers to teaching and learning, and is a pilot. Michael specialises in image processing and remote sensing, and teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand. On a flying trip to Botswana, they watched a pack of hyenas hunt, kill, and devour a wildebeest, eating both flesh and bones. That gave them the premise for their first mystery, A Carrion Death, which introduced Detective ‘Kubu’ Bengu of the Botswana Criminal Investigation Department. It was a finalist for five awards, including the CWA Debut Dagger. The series has been critically acclaimed, and their third book, Death of the Mantis, won the Barry Award and was a finalist for an Edgar award. Deadly Harvest was a finalist for an International Thriller Writers’ award.

For more information about DEADLY HARVEST or to book an interview with Michael Stanley, please contact Karen Sullivan: Karen@orendabooks.co.uk

You can also follow the launch celebrations with these other bloggers:

I’m delighted to be featuring Jack Jordan again on Linda’s Book Bag. I first encountered Jack’s writing when he launched his debut, Anything For Her, last year and was so impressed by what a talented thriller writer he is. You can read my review of Anything For Her here and buy a copy here.

Today I’m reviewing Jack’s latest novel My Girl which is another cracking thriller.

My Girl

Paige Dawson: the mother of a murdered child and wife to a dead man.

She has nothing left to live for… until she finds her husband’s handgun hidden in their house.

Why did Ryan need a gun? What did he know about their daughter’s death?

Desperate for the truth, Paige dedicates her life to unearthing her husband’s secrets.

But she has no idea who she is up against, or that her life isn’t hers to gamble – she belongs to me. 

My Review of My Girl

Having so enjoyed Jack Jordan’s debut Anything For Her, it was with some trepidation that I began My Girl as I was prepared to be disappointed by second novel syndrome. Not a bit of it. Jack Jordan’s incredible story telling ability shines through again in a thrilling new book.

Paige is in free fall in a spiral of drink and drugs following the disappearance of her daughter several years before and her husband’s suicide. Just when she hits rock bottom, her life implodes further.

My Girl is a thrilling narrative. I had to keep reading to find out what would happen next in this roller coaster story. Carefully constructed, brilliantly potted and satisfyingly concluded, I’d defy any crime or psychological thriller reader not to enjoy this book. It isn’t possible to say too much about the plot as this would spoil the read but suffice it to say that it is compelling and exciting, with quite a few gasp out loud moments.

The character of Paige is so well drawn, especially as the author is a young man and she is a middle aged woman. Jack Jordan understands what makes us human and he knows exactly how to exploit the frailties we all suffer. Paige’s behaviour is frustrating but totally understandable given the traumas she has been through.

What I find so skilful about Jack Jordan’s writing is his ability to provide the little details that really bring a scene alive without overwhelming his audience. He enables the reader to visualise completely what is happening with consummate ease so that there is a cinematic feel to the reading experience. Indeed, I think both My Girl and Anything For Her would make fabulous films.

I thought My Girl was brilliant. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and I am so delighted that I have discovered this fantastically talented writer. I can’t wait for the next Jack Jordan book.

About Jack Jordan

Jack Jordan – ‘an introvert disguised as an extrovert, an intelligent person who can say very unintelligent things, and a self-confessed bibliomaniac with more books than sense.’

You can find out more about Jack by following him on Twitter and visiting his website. You’ll also find him on Facebook.

I’m indebted to Hayley Steed at EDPR for an e-copy of Last Light by C J Lyons in return for an honest review. Last Light is the seventh Lucy Guardino novel although it can be read, as I did, as an entirely standalone book, and was published on 3rd May by Edgy Reads. Last Light is available for purchase on Amazon UK, Amazon US, from Waterstones, iTunes and Fantastic Fiction.

Last Light

After leaving the FBI, life should be easy, right? Wrong—not if you’re Lucy Guardino.

Lucy has always seen herself as a normal Pittsburgh soccer mom who happened to have a job chasing the worst of the worst. But after a violent predator targets her family and she’s injured, Lucy sacrifices her career with the FBI in order to keep her family safe.

What is she now that she’s no longer a FBI Special Agent? she wonders as she begins her new job with the Beacon Group, a private consulting firm that specializes in cold cases and bringing justice to forgotten victims. Lucy fears she’s traded being a kick-ass law enforcement officer for being a civilian mother hen shepherding a team of amateurs.

Her fears appear justified when she’s partnered with TK O’Connor, a former Marine MP struggling with her transition to life back home, and sent to rural Texas to investigate a case that’s more than cold, it’s already been closed with the killers behind bars for the past twenty-nine years.

But…who really killed Lily Martin, her infant daughter, and husband? Why was an entire family targeted for annihilation?

What price will Lucy pay when she fights to expose a truth people will kill to keep buried?

My Review of Last Light

Retired through injury from the FBI, Lucy Guardino joins the Beacon Group to solve cold cases. Her first, leading back to 1987, is not going to be as straightforward as she hopes.

I haven’t read any of the other Lucy Guardino books but reading Last Light I can see how they have built an enormous following. Fast paced and gritty with seedy corruption, shady and varied characters and just the right level of violence to give an authentic appeal, especially to those who love late night American police dramas, this is a series well worth exploring. Initially I didn’t think I was going to like the style as it felt too American for my taste, and I wasn’t sure about the level of county police corruption presented in the early stages of the book. However, having suspended my disbelief, I was drawn into the narrative and the characterisation almost against my will as the strands of the story developed and I found I wanted to know what happened next.

The main characters, particularly TK, all have their flaws and frailties which make them all the more believable and I liked the strong female portrayal of Lucy. Indeed, there is enough revealed with just enough still hidden to draw the reader into the next book, wanting to know just how the relationships develop as the Beacon team works together.

The themes presented are very thought-provoking. The treatment of those who’ve been mentally damaged by active service, how we define and behave within families, the levels of corruption that exist around us that we complicitly ignore are all explored within the pages of Last Light, giving it an interest beyond simply being a good crime thriller.

I thought the switches between 1987 and the present day were really skilfully handled so that the tension was built up the more the truth was uncovered. The denouement is dramatic and thrilling to read and I found myself quite tense and reading more quickly in tune with the writing.  C J Lyons certainly knows the elements that make for an exciting read. I could easily see Last Light as a big screen feature film.

Last Light is perfect for those who like American crime thrillers.

You can find out more about C J Lyons by following her on Twitter, finding her on Facebook or visiting her web site.

Those who visit Linda’s Book Bag regularly know how I love to meet authors and fellow bloggers. On Saturday 4th June 2016 I was fortunate to attend an author and blogger meet up in Edinburgh organised by the lovely Joanne Baird. You can see more about that day on Joanne’s blog here. Whilst having lunch I chatted to Catherine Simpson whose novel Truestory was published by Sandstone Press on 17th September 2015 and is available for purchase here. Catherine agreed to come along to Linda’s Book Bag and today she is telling us all about the ups and downs of moving from being a journalist to becoming a novelist in a great writing guest blog.

Truestory

Alice’s life is dictated by her autistic son, Sam, who refuses to leave their remote Lancashire farm. Her only time ‘off’ is two hours in Lancaster on a Tuesday afternoon – and even that doesn’t always pan out to be the break she needs.

Husband Duncan brings Larry, a rootless wanderer, to the farm to embark on a money making scheme they’ve dreamed up. Alice is hostile but Larry beguiles Sam with tales of travel in the outside world and, soon, Alice begins to fall for him, too.

By turns blackly comic, heart-breaking and heart-warming, Truestory looks at what happens when sacrifice slithers towards martyrdom. Both happy and sad, ultimately Truestory is a tale of hope.

From Journalist to Novelist: The Ups and Downs

A Guest Post from Catherine Simpson

I wanted to be a fiction writer – so I became a journalist. This is not uncommon. Journalism seemed do-able, as opposed to novel writing which appeared as accessible to someone from a 1970s comprehensive as becoming a professional ballet dancer or a portrait painter. There seemed to be a recognised route into journalism, you could do a degree in it (I started mine in 1989); it didn’t seem embarrassing to admit ‘I want to be a journalist,’ unlike ‘I want to be a novelist.’ Even so it took a couple of false starts as a bank clerk and a civil servant until I did a one-year National Council for Training of Journalists (NCTJ) course and then on to do my degree.

I earned my living writing ‘real-life’ stories for women’s magazines – Woman and Woman’s Own, at first, then Closer and Reveal, Bella, Best, Chat and the rest, with occasional features for national newspapers: the Daily Mail, The Herald, The Scotsman. I fitted the work around raising my two daughters. In those heady days (pre 2008), journalism paid well and you met interesting people. I wondered why everyone didn’t want to be a journalist.

Then when I was 45 I remembered I wanted to write a book. My elder daughter has autism and it was getting increasingly hard to get out on journalism jobs because there was always a crisis to deal with, so I began to study creative writing from home with the OU and then a Creative Writing MA at Edinburgh Napier University.

My first (unpublished) manuscript was shortlisted in the inaugural Mslexia women’s novel competition and then the opening chapters of my second manuscript won me a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. This manuscript became Truestory – my debut novel published last September by Sandstone Press. By then I was 51.

People often remark that journalism must be a good training ground for novelists and in some ways that is true. I work well with a deadline; in fact I love a deadline. Without a deadline my work slows right down.

I never feel I must wait for the muse to strike. If I’m writing a novel, or (as is now the case) a memoir, I write it; whether with a pen and paper or on my laptop. I start to write and the words come – sometimes reluctantly – well, usually reluctantly – but they come none the less.

Having been a journalist I am used to sending off work for someone else to read and edit. I’m used to feedback. I’m used to my articles going out of my hands and having headlines attached and photo captions added by sub-editors.

All of this is good and helpful. However, in other ways journalism is not a good preparation for writing fiction, as fiction feels very different to writing articles that tell other people’s stories.

Truestory is about a mother raising a child with autism; it is a work of fiction inspired by real events, but it is very much fiction; the events in it are made up. This did not stop me feeling hideously exposed when the novel was about to come out. Would people realise it was fiction? Would they think I’d done all the things Alice (the mother in Truestory) had done?  I got cold feet. When the first copies of the book arrived I could hardly bear to open it. What had I done?

But readers are more sophisticated than that and I’ve only been asked once or twice: ‘Did such-and-such really happen?

Having been a journalist people also remark that the people I interview must provide inspiration for endless fictional stories. In fact I have never found this to be the case. The people I interview for ‘real life’ stories are often victims of crime and abuse. Their stories rarely have satisfactory arcs – there is much injustice and unsatisfactory endings that would not suit the readers of fiction. Events in real life are sometimes so random that fiction readers would lose patience and not believe the plotline. It is usually true that real life is stranger than fiction.

Where being a journalist has helped me the most (and the fact that my husband has also been a journalist working in the national press for 25 years) is in the coverage I’ve had for my novel.  I was happy to talk about my personal story of raising an autistic child – in fact I, and my daughter, who is now 21, were both delighted to talk about it to raise autism awareness. This gave us an angle for newspaper features which helped a lot with the publicity.

I could offer to write my own features, as I did here for the Daily Mail and here for the Daily Telegraph. Or the paper could interview me and write their own feature, as happened here with the Daily Record.

It’s very hard to get book reviews so being able to get coverage on news and features pages was vital. Having the experience of dealing with news desks and having contacts in the industry is where my background as a journalist really was a godsend.

You can find out more about Catherine Simpson by visiting her website and following her on Twitter.

I am indebted to Alison Menzies Publicity for a copy of Summer – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons edited by Melissa Harrison in return for an honest review. Summer – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons was published by Elliott and Thompson in conjunction with the Wildlife Trusts on 19th May 2016.

Summer is the second of four titles known collectively as The Seasons and is available for purchase on Amazon and from Waterstones.

Summer – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons

Summer is a season of richness: gold against blue; sun dazzle on water; sweet fragrance, and the sound of insects, filling the air. We feel the sand between our toes, or the grass beneath our feet. In these long, warm days, languid and sensual, we reconnect with the natural world, revelling in light and scent and colour once more.

Capturing the high point of the year’s progress, Summer presents prose and poetry spanning eight hundred years. Featuring new contributions by Simon Barnes, Michael McCarthy and Esther Woolfson, classic extracts from the work of Charles Dickens, Mary Webb and Philip Larkin, and diverse new nature writing from across the UK, this vibrant and evocative collection will inspire you to go out and enjoy the pleasures of summer.

My Review of Summer – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons

I’ve been dipping in and out of this beautiful anthology for some time but didn’t want to post a review until I had read every entry. There are poems, extracts and essays spanning several centuries, so that there is something for every reader in this celebration of the season.

I might be biased as my favourite author, Thomas Hardy, is featured a couple of times as are other well known classical writers like George Elliott and Charles Dickens (with a piece I hadn’t previously read to my shame) as well as more modern writers like Benjamin Zephaniah, but I thought the eclectic mix of pieces was glorious.

However, I think the passages I enjoyed most were from writers I haven’t encountered before. I loved In An August Garden by Alison Brackenbury as she explores where those enormous spiders that appear at the end of summer actually come from. I found Jacqueline Bain’s piece on ‘the black, the drab and the furtive’ illustrated a side to summer we seldom consider. I hadn’t though about a stag farting either, but the 13th century anonymous piece means I’ll never look at deer in quite the same way again!

There’s a beauty to this book – from the glorious cover to the simple illustrations like that of the swallow that adorn the inside pages. The writings are all evocative, enlightening, entertaining or thought provoking. It was a relief to find Timothy, Reverend Gilbert White’s tortoise, had gained weight in the year since 1775 and I found Janet Willoner’s piece about the otter read like the most beautiful poetry even though it’s a prose piece.

Now I’ve read all the elements in this lovely book, I shall treasure it and return to it again and again in the future because, to steal from Jan Freedman’s quoting of David Attenborough, this book affords ‘an innate pleasure and delight and interest and curiosity in the natural world’.

Summer – An Anthology for the Changing Seasons would make a perfect gift for any lover of words or nature.

About the Editor Melissa Harrison

Melissa Harrison is a writer and nature lover whose first novel Clay (2013) won the Portsmouth First Fiction prize, was selected for Amazon’s ‘Rising Stars’ programme and  named by Ali Smith as a book of the year. Her second, At Hawthorn Time (2015), was shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award and chosen by the Telegraph as one of their Books of the Year; both books are as much about the natural world as they are about people. She writes the Nature Notebook in The Times and regularly speaks about conservation, literature, and the very fertile ground between the two.

You can follow Melissa Harrison on Twitter or visit her website.