Blogging about Veronica's Room

Writing, as I've said often enough, is a tough game. But I've always believed that the pleasures and rewards far outweigh the downsides. And that's true of writing a blog. The rewards aren't financial, of course, because I don't take advertisements on this blog, and I don't intend to. The aim here is simply to share some of my enthusiasms. But the rewards are often unexpected, and are particularly gratifying when they take the form of unexpected contacts from readers.

I've had many happy experiences of such contacts, and the other day I received a comment from Tonya on a post dating back five and a half years, no less. It was a post about Ira Levin's play Veronica's Room  and it was a bittersweet moment when I realised that the first comment came from my friend and fellow blogger Maxine Clarke, aka Petrona, whose life was so sadly cut short by cancer.

Unlike Maxine, I'd never had the chance to watch a performance of the play, but Tonya kindly drew my attention to a Youtube video of a performance in which she took part, back in 1994. And I grabbed the first chance I had to watch it. Good old Youtube!

It's a very creepy play indeed (I see from the internet that a few years back, Harvey Weinstein was planning to film it...) and won't be to everyone's taste, for sure. It wasn't a big hit, unlike Levin's Deathtrap, which was more light-hearted, but I find the games that Levin plays with notions of identity truly fascinating. I like crime stories where people are not who they seem, and this is an extremely intriguing example. I'm so glad that Tonya got in touch.

Silloth and Ideas

Long-time readers of this blog will know that, when possible, I like to combine my work at crime fiction festivals and other events with some sight-seeing and research. At present, I'm in the midst of a flurry of festivals - three in nine days - but when en route for Carlisle last week, I thought I really must take advantage of the wonderful weather to have a look at the Lake District and also at a part of Cumbria that I hadn't seen before

I've wanted to take a look at Silloth for a long time. It's a proposed trip I discussed some years ago with Maxine Clarke- many blog readers will remember Maxine fondly for her Petrona blog. Maxine was a lovely person, who knew Silloth very well, and recommended me to go there. It's a little resort on the Solway coast, and it appealed to me in the way that old resorts usually do. As a bonus, you can look across the water and see the Scottish coast, not that far away. Whilst I was there, I thought back to my all too infrequent get togethers with Maxine, who died far too young. She is much missed.

Something unexpected happened whilst I was at Silloth. I'd been playing around with an idea for a historical story, and that was in my mind when I set off up the motorway. But whilst I was wandering along the promenade, an idea came to me - unbidden - about a new mystery involving Daniel Kind. This particular puzzle strikes me as a very suitable sub-plot for the next Lake District Mystery.

All authors struggle to answer the question "where do you find your ideas?" but my experience is that ideas often come when you don't try to force them. Holidays, when the brain relaxes, are an ideal opportunity for ideas to come drifting into one's head. And the same is true of trips like my visit to Cumbria. I certainly enjoyed my first sight of Silloth, and there's every chance that the place will feature in the next Lakes book as a result..And the same is true of another place I'll talk about tomorrow....

In a Word: Murder

Margot Kinberg, whose admirable blog will I'm sure be known to everyone who reads Do You Write Under Your Own Name? has done a great job in putting together In a Word: Murder, an anthology which is designed as a tribute to another fine blogger,the much-missed Maxine Clarke, alias Petrona. Proceeds go to the Princess Alice Hospice, which cared for Maxine during her illness. This seems to me to be a great idea and very fitting. I have a long-standing connection with the hospice movement in the north west of England, and coincidentally I'm discussing a literary project with one of the hospices local to me at the moment. To my mind, there are few worthier causes.

Margot suggested that contributions to the anthology might touch on subjects close to Maxine's heart, and this gave me the idea for a storyline connected with....blogging. At about the same time, I had a very enjoyable trip to Whitby, and that provided me with a highly suitable setting for the tale that was buzzing round in my mind. The result was a brand new short story called "The Killing of Captain Hastings." It's a more light-hearted piece than many of my stories, and I had fun writing it. This is the great joy of having the opportunity to write a short story for an anthology or magazine - part of the pleasure lies in the chance to do something a bit different.

There are some very interesting contributors to the book, including, I was delighted to see, Sarah Ward, whose blog Crime Pieces is another must-read, and Elizabeth S. Craig, whose blog probably contains more helpful tips and suggestions for writers than almost any I've ever read. The other contributors include Paula K.Randall, Pamela Griffiths, and Jane Risdon.

The book is now available from Amazon, and I gather that a print version will be available in 2014. Margot's hard work (and believe me, putting an anthology together is not as easy as it may look!) deserves the highest praise. I count it a real privilege to have had a story of mine included in a tribute to Maxine. Her kindness and astute critiques of the crime fiction scene will long be remembered by those of us who knew her.

Twittering

Ages ago (years!) I set up a Twitter account, under the name 'medwardsbooks'. Or to be strictly accurate, my son did it for me. I was encouraged to tweet by Maxine Clarke, but at the time, I quickly became overwhelmed with work and domestic issues, and decided to focus on writing novels and blog posts instead. So I abandoned Twitter.

At Crimefest last week-end, a number of conversations prompted me to give Twitter another try. Karen Meek of Eurocrime (who, incidentally, gave her surname to a character in The Frozen Shroud) asked me to write a blog post in memory of Maxine for the Petrona Remembered blog. And this reminded me of the way Maxine used to encourage me to overcome my technofear.

Nev Fountain told me of how he'd written a story in tweets, and this idea of playing a game with the form did appeal to me a lot. He was enthusiastic about Twitter, as were several other people, notably Ann Cleeves, who often gives me, along with other writers, generous and helpful advice based on her own successful experience.

Of course there are lots of reasons not to spend too much time with Twitter. I'm still rather busy as a partner in a law firm, though becoming part of a firm as large as Weightmans has helped to ease the burdens that existed in the past. I've got to find time to write books, short stories and blog posts. And have a life outside writing. But I've decided that I won't continue to use these as excuses for not tweeting. Instead they will become excuses for getting confused about Twitter etiquette, and general incompetence. Given that my initial attempts to include the cover of The Frozen Shroud on my Twitter home page have been greeted with the message that "something is technically wrong" (any clues as to what I'm doing wrong would be welcome), it may be a bumpy ride...

Of course, as anyone who knows lawyers is aware, we tend to be verbose. So 140 characters is sure to prove a challenge. All the same, I look forward to trying to rise to it..

Maxine Clarke

In common with many people, I was shocked and saddened earlier today to learn the news of the death of Maxine Clarke, whose blog Petrona has long been an outstanding resource for crime fans. There are already several wonderful and heartfelt tributes by fellow bloggers, such as Margot Kinberg and Rhian Davies, and I can only echo the sentiments they express so very well.

I had the pleasure of meeting Maxine at Bristol and Harrogate, and found her a delightful person.  We also corresponded often by email, and her comments on this blog were invariably well thought-out and perceptive. Over time, we discovered that we had a number of things in common. Unlike me, though, Maxine was very knowledgeable about scientific and technological matters, and her advice on I.T. and more effective use of the internet and social media was given generously (though probably with a touch of frustration at my inability to translate into practice some of her eminently sensible suggestions.)

My favourite memory of Maxine is probably of an evening when we were in the same quiz team, along with Karen Meek of Eurocrime and others, at Bristol. It was really good fun, a very convivial group. The photo of Maxine and me was taken that evening, and I'm grateful to Karen, on whose blog the shot originally appeared for permission to reproduce it here. Incidentally, the fact that our team, the Euromonkeys, triumphed that night was due in large measure to Maxine's knowledge of the genre, which was very wide. She knew more about Scandinavian crime fiction, for instance, than almost anyone I've ever met..

Maxine showed me a good many kindnesses over the past few years, which I much valued. She is a great loss, above all to her family, to whom she was clearly so devoted.

Death in a Cold Climate -review

Death in a Cold Climate is a new guide to Scandinavian crime fiction published by Barry Forshaw, a highly experienced journalist who is one of our most prolific commentators on contemporary crime fiction. Barry’s various publications include a massive two volume encyclopaedia about British crime fiction, to which I contributed several essays, and he was kind enough to write a foreword to the recent Murder Squad anthology Best Eaten Cold. He also produced The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction.

Barry has been an enthusiast for crime fiction in translation for years, and when I heard that he was publishing a book on this subject, I was keen to get my hands on it. It is published by Palgrave Macmillan, who have produced a number of learned tomes about the genre over the years, and Barry’s style of writing here is, therefore, a little more academic than in, say, The Rough Guide. But it’s still perfectly accessible.

He makes a number of interesting points – for instance that “the rendering of Scandinavian literature into English offers problems to their translators that are subtly different to those encountered in other languages”. This is something I hadn’t thought about previously, and there are fascinating comments about the nature of translation from the wonderfully named Sarah Death, a senior literary figure in Sweden as well as a translator, that I’d like to explore further one of these days.

The emphasis is very much on books written in the last twenty years or so, and as a result there’s no mention of writers such as Jan Ekstrom, Ella Griffiths and Poul Orum, who may be in danger of being overlooked by present day fans (though this is where bloggers can come in: I recall, for instance, that Maxine, aka Petrona, has highlighted Griffiths’ work on her terrific blog.) But any writer of a book such as this needs to be selective - there is really no alternative. Barry Forshaw has produced a valuable guide to a branch of the genre that has become deservedly popular andI wish him every success with it.

Blogs and Inspiration

One of the blogs I study most closely is Kerrie’s Mysteries in Paradise, and I was flattered a few days ago when Kerrie mentioned this blog as one of seven that she’s found inspiring. She asked that I name seven blogs which I regarded as inspirational. Since then, I’ve kept on deliberating (once a lawyer, always a lawyer?)

A tricky aspect of these memes is that selectivity is challenging. How can I confine myself to picking just seven blogs? Amnesia afflicts me regularly, and I’m bound to forget to highlight at least one that I really enjoy, probably half a dozen or more. (When I wrote up my 16 allegedly interesting things about myself, I clean forgot that I’d once been involved with a feature film – a story for another day, perhaps.)

Yet I didn’t want this post simply to be a list. I’m sure that readers will find plenty of interest in all the blogs listed in the blogroll - please don't overlook the ones I haven't mentioned specifically in this post. I thought that, as well as mentioning some blogs by name, I’d also make one or two brief general observations.

There are different types of inspiration, as well as different sources. For instance, Kerrie’s blog contains a number of adventurous technical features that one day I’d like to emulate (lack of time, as well as a massive techy expertise, is the snag here.) Then there are blogs which contain a good deal of useful info – examples include Karen Meek’s Eurocrime blog, It’s a Crime, Detectives Beyond Borders, Petrona (Maxine Clarke is an advocate of Friendfeed, something else I regret not having got round to investigating in sufficient detail yet), Murderati, Criminal Brief (Steve Steinbock’s Friday column is a definite must-read), Gerald So’s blog, and The Rap Sheet.

Several American writers have terrific blogs – Ed Gorman and the witty Bill Crider are among the names that spring instantly to mind. Patti Abbott’s series of Friday’s Forgotten Books is fascinating, and I am really pleased to be involved with it.

Then there are the blogs of readers and fans, sometimes focusing heavily on crime, like Ali Karim’ The Existentialist Man (with an emphasis on the contemporary), and Xavier Lechard’s At the Villa Rose (with an emphasis on the traditional detective sotry), sometimes ranging:far and wide (beyond books, let alone mysteries) for example, Letters from a Hill Farm, Books Please, Confessions of a Book and Opera Lover, Harriet Devine's blog, and the blogs of Roberta Rood and Lourdes Fernandes, two Americans I met when they were visiting England, and before I started blogging. In fact, I’ve met a number of fellow bloggers for the first time in the past twelve months, although often all too briefly, and this too has been a tremendous plus.


And then there are blogs which, at least at first sight, don’t have much to do with my fields of interest. One is Juliet Doyle’s Musings from a Muddy Island; yet her interest in letterpress has influenced me in developing one of the characters in my current work in progress. Another is a blog which links to Jane Gallagher’s writing blog – also by Jane, it’s called Work that Wardrobe. Now, nobody who has ever met me would ever confuse me with a dedicated follower of fashion. Yet as a novelist, I’m bound to be interested in most things – including what my female characters wear. But it’s a subject on which I’m pretty ignorant. And it occurred to me not long ago that I could pick up some good ideas for their appearance from Jane’s blog.

All this means that blogs can inspire me in a whole variety of ways. To guide me to interesting books I haven’t read before (old as well as new), to introduce me to delightful people and to help me, in one way or another, with my own writing. One thing is for sure. When I started off on this blogging lark, I had absolutely no idea how much fun it would give me. It’s been a revelation - and it’s become an addiction, but a very pleasurable one.