It's not lying if you write it down, by Catriona

When you look back over your childhood and early life, can you see where being a writer, or indeed a crime writer, began for you? Were there definitive moments that sealed your fate?

I *am* going to look back today - briefly over the fate-sealing days of childhood - and then at the origins of the first book in the failed trilogy that is the Last Ditch Motel series. Failed because Book 7 is slipping off its chocks and into the open sea this week and that's not how trilogies are meant to go. 

Yes, I was always going to be a writer, even though I didn't start till I was thirty-five. Before that it was just long - I mean months - daydreams of such complexity and detail that some of it still feels familar decades later. I could draw a floorplan of the house I was going to live in with John Travolta after our marriage. I remember the lyrics to the break-out hit from the musical I was going to star in on the West End stage. And I shared my daydreams a lot too. They call that "lying". When I did write something down, there was a fair chance it would get read out to the rest of the class in that squirm-inducing way that teachers used to subject you to, as if being a head taller than everyone else and wearing hand-knitted jumpers wasn't enough of a playground challenge.

When bad hair day + front tooth fell out day = school photo day
(poor wee scone)

Crime writer? Probably. I don't remember much of what we read at school but I do recall Terry the 'Tec and the ker-LUNK of the clue that was supposed to bamboozle us in every story. I was convinced I could do better. Then I found Agatha Christie and was equally convinced that I couldn't do it at all. 

I'm away from my bookshelves so I'm having to be
quite resourceful with these pictures. 

I was right that I couldn't do what she did, but thankfully there's a whole career to be had between the Dame and the Tec. And six (out of thirty-five) books in that career got a new addition on Tuesday. I've been blogging relentlessly about it though, which is why today I'm going to think back to the start. 

I was asked for a trilogy in addition to Dandy Gilver and the standalones. (Still think that sounds like a band). Here's what I pitched (copied and pasted from the email to the editor):

Idea 1 Doris Day meets the X-Files

Genre SF mystery (urban fantasy mystery?)

Time 1950

Place California

Tone medium-boiled/funny

Protag Scottish female

Like         Sookie Stackhouse, Dana Cameron’s Fangborn

Stories 1. Protag comes to CA and learns the secret while investigating her own husband

         2. Small-town vs. big threat

        3. Protag discovers own history while protecting secret

Idea 2 Book Town 

Genre cozy

Time present

Place Wigtown, Galloway, South-west Scotland = Scotland’s book town

Tone soft-boiled/funny

Protag housekeeper to a rare-books dealer

Like         If I could write like Blaize and John I’d be very happy/Sheila Connelly

Stories 1. The Last novel of Jane Austen (fake) discovered in attic. Fight to the death among dealers.

        2. Writer of  roman a clef murdered at literary festival

        3. Wickerman festival (it’s about 30 miles away)

Idea 3 Calamity Jane Investigates

Genre Historical

Time 1870

Place Wyoming

Tone Medium boiled/funny

Protag Calamity Jane

Like         Laurie King/Alan Bradley/Little House On the Prairie not Deadwood

Stories 1. Jane avenges the death of her best friend with permission of sherrif and garrison

        2. Jane called in by respectable folks who heard of her avenging exploits 

        3. Back, tie-in story from Jane’s youth.

        4. Solving a murder among the local Indians.

"She came up from a very hardscrabble life, unacquainted with bourgeois notions of decorum; she probably never knew financial security, but even in poverty she was known for her helpfulness, generosity, and willingness to undertake demanding and even dangerous tasks to help others. She was afflicted with alcoholism and wanderlust (and, perhaps, promiscuity), but, as someone remembered her, "Her vices were the wide-open sins of a wide-open country – the sort that never carried a hurt.""

Obviously, I was most invested in Idea No.3. It's already a trilogy of four and I've got that final paragraph - did I write it? I must have or I would have attributed it. Anyway, given where I clearly wanted to go, it's typical that what I ended up writing was indeed a Scot-out-of-water in California - Leagsaidh Campbell at the Last Ditch Motel - albeit without the spookity-woo of Idea 1. (Also, Idea 2 ended up being Quiet Neighbors.)

Once the X-Files and Doris Day had been booted out, I was left with an idea for a book called Hang My Hat! and here is everything that I knew about it when I signed the contract:

• Huevos rancheros – delicious when deliberate and also a great excuse if your omelette goes wrong.
• Watermelon juice
• Police blotter

Now, that's a pantser, amirite? But eventually the book was finished - a comic crime caper that opened on 4th of July - and the title search began. I was joking when I said "Scot Free" and kind of aghast when the editor said "I love it". But if I've learned anything about the business of publishing (so different from the craft of writing) it's how to choose a battle, so I got onboard. 

Next came the the jacket. I sent a sketch:

  

They made a rough:

And we all agreed it was too soft for the book that had come out of me. So they sent another idea:

And I loved it! Althgough I did note:

Not that that was a deal-breaker in any way. And we were off!  Scot and Soda (Halloween), Scot on the Rocks (Valentine's Day), Scot Mist (Friday 13th April 2020), Scot in a Trap (Thanksgiving), Hop Scot (Christmas) and now Scotzilla (Wedding Day). 

The writing has been pretty smooth sailing. The publishing - really and truly not the same thing whatsoever - much less so. The series is now with Severn House and has been re-styled from Book 1 on:

Still gorgeous, eh? And I am in love with every single resident of the Last Ditch. That wasn't supposed to happen. They were all meant to be in Book 1 only and then move on. That was the whole point of a motel. I have stretched credulity farther than I thought I would ever get away with and pretzeled plausibility farther than I thought was possible, even in make-believe, and you know what? I don't care. I do know. I just don't care. Also, I think reality has caught up with me. Nothing about life at the Last Ditch feels as nuts as what's in the news and Cuento, Ca, is hella nicer for my happy band of LGBTQ+ people of colour and immigrants than even actual Davis, in actual CA, is looking, for the next few years anyway. I'm going to keep writing as long as anyone keeps reading.

Cx