While my first draft gently weeps, by Catriona

As we head into a rather big news week - do you ever get stories “ripped from the headlines”? How much do you rely on current events to fuel your stories?

Ha-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. If that's how we're spelling hollow and yet deranged laughter. I'm writing this on Wednesday night and my kneejerk answer is to say that this week's big news doesn't fit anywhere into my fictional universe. But let's see. 

(I'm illustrating the rest of the blog, not with book pics for once, but with a few recent snaps from around Washington DC, where I'm currently billeted. I'm not in a promo state of mind.)

I write a series of preposterous detective stories, in the style of the British Golden Age. They started in 1922 and the latest is set in spring 1939. You know 1939: when a western nation had let a petty tyrant lead them into darkness and were just about to unleash unprecedented misery on the world? Thing is, in my fictional universe, he's not much cared for and ultimately won't prosper.

I also write a less preposterous series of historical sleuth novels, set in 1948, when said petty tyrant had chowed down on his cyanide pill and the world was trying to recover. In Britain, where my detective lives, a large part of that recovery was the formation and launch of the welfare state, including a national health service. My heroine works for the NHS and the first book, written in 2020, ended up being a love letter to it as well as being dedicated to it. The book was pitched and commissioned in 2019, but the headlines ripped into it thematically, I suppose you'd say.

I write stand alones too. The stories that draw me are about secrets, betrayal, shame, trauma, survival, and . . . here's the rub . . . justice. In my standalone psychological thrillers things make sense in the end and evil doesn't triumph. In my standalone thrillers, women find their feet, their voice and their power. They are unstoppable. They face tough odds but they prevail. I'll just leave that there with no further comment.

And I write comedies. In fact I'm writing the first draft of a comedy right now. I wrote 2.5K words today. It took me six hours and - understand that I'm a pantser - all of a sudden, in my story, there was an abandoned Mustang full of blood and bits of scalp. So, yes, some of the first draft of Scot's Eggs has a mood, if not a plot, ripped from today's unconscionable headlines. I'll have to get rid of it in the edit, but for now it stays. It answers the moment perfectly.

Cx