Authors Electric

It can be hard to work out how much reality to incorporate in your fiction. I have just published (yet) another mystery novel in a lengthy series that is set in a fictitious small town on the coast of Fife near the very picturesque real-life village of Culross. Over the years I’ve drawn inspiration for plots and sub-plots from real life in several cases. For instance, a story that revolved around an inheritance was based on something that really happened in my own family, though happily without the murders I introduced into it in the novel. My mother was contacted out of the blue by a firm of solicitors who were trying to track down the relatives of one of her first cousins who had died intestate. The task was particularly tricky because of the number of cousins and the extent to which they had dispersed across the globe. In the novel I brought many of the cousins back to Scotland for an ill-fated family reunion. In real life, however, they just stayed where they were and waited for ne...

I have already committed two murders, and I'm now contemplating a third. Is that enough to make me into a serial killer? My first murder happened in Cornwall - in my book for 9-12 year olds, "TWICE TIMES DANGER". I'm making no confession, because anything I say might be used in  evidence against me, and would anyway be a spoiler. Curiously, my second murder takes place in Cornwall too (what is it about Cornwall that incites such violence?) This one takes place in my Young Adult novel, "SIRIUS RISING", which no one has yet had the courage to take on, so I may do it myself in the New Year. If I do, it will be my first purely self-published novel as opposed to re-issuing my currently out of print work as ebooks, but I first have to find the courage and expertise to do it, both of which are sadly lacking since I lost my fantastic husband, David, back in March. And my third murder? Ah, the third. It's going to happen in France, and the victim won...