Authors Electric

  Murder in the Highlands: a Sophie Sayers Cozy Mystery by Debbie Young. p/b Boldwood 9.99 / Kindle 2023   A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale p/b 4th Estate 2012 It’s said that writers should read widely. Over Easter, I’ve been reading in two very different genres, but both stories are set in a village and take advantage of the resulting restricted cast of characters. Cosy mystery, often, if not always, takes place in a lovely quiet village, and is solved by a female protagonist, who is an amateur sleuth. For a writer who has lived in a beautiful Cotswold village for at least half her life, it’s the obvious choice. Author Debbie Young has created a wonderfully wide-eyed young female sleuth, Sophie, a new arrival in her cottage home, and a complete contrast to Miss Marple. And this village boasts something rare – a real bookshop! Quite how Hector, the young man who owns and runs it, made ends meet before Sophie arrived is unclear, but nowadays, she’s not only his shop assis...

I was recently having a conversation with a writing friend and I mentioned I'd like to try something new. The response I received was "write about something you know." So I asked myself, "what do I know?" After a while I realised I may know a little about cozy crime, I've watch enough of them, including: Jonathan Creek Rosemary and Thyme Agatha Raisin Miss Marple Poirot Father Brown I know typically the lead is supposed to be an amateur sleuth but I think it's fair to say the following are also fairly 'cosy.'   Midsomer Murders Death in Paradise Granchester Murdoch Mysteries  Lewis And I think with most of the above I may have watched every episode. I've also found myself reading a fair few cosy mysteries including the Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries by Debbie Young  and a couple of the original Midsummer Murders stories written by Caroline Graham. I also just started to read my first Agatha Raisin book.      ...

Debbie Young is refreshed by Scottish mountain air   After a fortnight's holiday near Glencoe in a minimalist cottage and abundant fresh mountain air, I returned to my own cluttered cottage ten days ago determined to ditch surplus possessions. Even (whisper it) a few of my large collection of books... Fate sent me a helping hand in the form of a request from the landlady of Dinneywick's pub in Kingswood, the next-but-one village from where I live in the Cotswolds. She asked me whether I could donate any secondhand books for the pub's new free library scheme. I've had a Little Free Library on my front garden wall for a couple of years, and there are more like this popping up all over the country. My own Little Free Library A Bookish Pedigree for a Pub Aggie's interest in doing something similar came as no surprise. When she and her partner Guiseppe ran The Fox in Hawkesbury Upton , they gained a reputation as an innovative, energetic couple full of...

If you want to get ahead, get a hat - I mean, a blog We're all so used to reading and writing blogs now that it's easy to forget that they are a relatively recent phenomenon.  Jane Perrone, writing on The Guardian's blog just 14 years ago , felt the need to explain what they were for the sake of the uninitiated: A weblog is, literally, a "log" of the web - a diary-style site, in which the author (a "blogger") links to other web pages he or she finds interesting using entries posted in reverse chronological order. We Sing, We Dance, We Blog... I'd almost forgotten that blogs used to be called weblogs . When I see that word now, my instinct is to read it as "we blog" rather than "web log", as if it's part of the declension of the verb "to blog". (Iblog, youblog, heblogs, weblog ...) Interesting, too, that Perrone defines the main purpose of a weblog as being to link to other web pages rather than...

Debbie Young Evokes Her Dream Office (with a little help from the National Trust...) Debbie Young, going places... "Where do you write?" asked a very pleasant lady at a talk I gave recently to the Cheltenham Writers' Circle. I gave my standard answer: how lucky I am to have my own study in my  Victorian Cotswold cottage , with a big desk facing a window that looks out over the garden. But next morning, when I sat down to write there, I shrieked as a sharp pain shot from my spine to my ankle, reminding me that lately I had been spending far too long at my desk-with-a-view - and I felt  desirous of change . Prompted by the arrival of my new  National Trust  card in the post the day before, and licensed by my friend and mentor  Orna Ross  to fill the creative well with a weekly "create date" with self, I stowed my purse, my shades, and my notebook and pen into my backpack, donned my walking boots, and set off to nearby  Dyrham Park . ...

Partners in crime at CrimeFest, on a panel chaired by the fabulous Zoe Sharp, far left In the same month that I joined the Romantic Novelists' Association , I also pitched up on a panel at CrimeFest . An unlikely duo, you might think, but my cosy mystery series has a foot in both camps, with a strong romantic subplot  underpinning the murder in each novel. In some respects it's a similar situation to visiting Greenwich and being able to stand on the Meridian line with one foot in the east, the other in the west . Further variety is added by a generous helping of comedy running throughout my books. But I'm by no means the only one to tread such a complex path, genre-wise. Fellow CrimeFest panellist Alison Morton adds alternative history to her crime/romance split. Deemed by The Guardian to be the best crime writing festival in the world A Multiplicity of Murderers Just because two authors write in the same genre, doesn't mean their books need have much ...

Call me old-fashioned, but I love a good bookmark, and I have a large collection ready for action whenever I need one.  Some of these have been made for me by those too young to read my books yet... I have some that I've treasured since I was very young - I've had these two since I lived in California at the age of 8... I have some handmade ones, such as these two I embroidered when my eyesight was sharper than it is now... Some are souvenirs of bookish events I've enjoyed or at which I've spoken... Bookmarks make great low-budget souvenirs of places that I enjoy visiting as a tourist... So when I decided to produce some swag to promote my growing Sophie Sayers Village Mystery novels (four and counting...), a good bookmark was the obvious choice. But as to the design, I was stumped. I love the gorgeous book cover designs produced for me by the wonderful Rachel Lawston of  Lawston Design , but with three more books to come in the ser...