How to talk yourself into something you never wanted to do, by Catriona

I'm going off topic today, but briefly, on trigger warnings . . .

My take is that upset, offence and discomfort are part of every life, but PTSD is rare and serious. When someone is triggered into an episode of PTSD, they re-experience trauma as severely as when they went through it for real. Worse perhaps, since you can't escape what you've produced inside your own head. There's no running away. So people with PTSD are adept at avoiding their triggers and, although that much vigilance can be exhausting, no sufferer would rely on an author note to protect them. 

And now for soemthing completely different:

Buy links

I've been guest-blogging and doing appearances for the US publication of THE WITCHING HOUR. Today is the last one, but you can catch up with me at:

• Jungle Reds, talking about comfort food
• Wicked Authors, talking about folklore (mostly the devil)
• Chicks on the Case, talking about houseguests
• Stiletto Gang, talking about in-laws
• BOLO Books, talking about the perfect village
• Dru's Book Musings, outlining Miss Cordelia Grant's typical day.
• The page 69 test, does what it says on the tin.

Here at home, on Criminal Acres, I'm reflecting. Mostly on the fact that I never wanted to write about WWII. When I wrote Dandy Gilver No.1, I set it in 1922, kind of early for the Golden Age, specifically  so there was no chance I'd ever get there. Look how that turned out: The Witching Hour is No.16 and takes place in the spring of 1939, with both Dandy's son in uniform.

Ooft.

On the other hand, over the years I've been writing Dandy's approach to the period in history I never wanted to write about, I've read some brilliant home-front novels, some of which have made me believe a. I could do it and b. I might even enjoy it. Sort of to remind myself and thereby talk myself into saying yes to another book, then, here are my top 5.

5. Mrs Minniver, by Jan Struther.

But the book, not the film. (The film must be the least effort any American studio has ever made to suggest that something's taking place in Britain.) It's almost plotless, having started as a series of magazine articles, but it's full of detail about domestic life, with a few moments of high drama. I'd like to see Dandy in that kind of tight squeeze . . .

4. A Presumption of Death, by Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy L Sayers

Dorothy L Sayers also wrote morale-boosting articles during the war, outlining the doings of Harriet Vane and the Wimsey family, and Jill Paton Walsh used them as a springboard for an absolutely brilliantly-plotted crime novel, with a clue I use in a workshop about how to plant clues. God, if I could put Dandy into a story like this one . . .

3. Glamour Girls, by Marty Wingate.

I read this to moderate a panel and was blown away. It's not really a home-front novel, since Rosalie is a pilot, but it's an absorbing and rewarding look at women's lives in those six years. It's not a mystery, but you'd never notice as you whip the pages past. Could one of Dandy Gilver's daughters-in-law be as intrepid as this . . .

2. Death of a Flying Nightingale, by Laura Jensen Walker

Mallory and Dolly can't be up in the air though (even if I could begin to get that much research right) because that book has just been written! Laura Walker's series debut, about the nurses who tend soldiers as they're airlifted back across the English Channel from the battlefields, came out last week. It is really, truly, seriously good. It destroys all the excuses about not being able to find a murder plot amongst the war action. Curses.

1. The Village, by Marghanita Lanski. 

Now we're talking. This actually takes place on VE day, or rather night, as two women turn up for their - now unneeded - watch shift and realise that the close friendship they've come to share is over. Each is going back to her life on either side of the great class divide, suspended for the war but already reforming.  I've spent sixteen books leading Dandy Gilver out of the narrow and rather prissy world she was brought up to perpetuate. I'd kind of love to see her reaction as it shatters in the face of a common enemy. Maybe . . . And I wouldn't need to discuss troop movments beyond what's in the papers . . . And rural Perthshire wasn't a target . . .

I seem to be talking myself into writing about the war. But, if I can have a bonus book, there's always:

Never mind WWII novels, Sarah Waters popping into my mind is enough to make me give up writing completely. Fingersmith - plot to die for. Affinity - twist that makes Harlan Coben look like he's writing road signs. The Paying Guests - kill me now. The Little Stranger - remember that short period when Stephen King said he was retiring? I reckon he read this and had to lie down until he felt better.

Gah. 

Cx