'Step so grave' - at last!

and now available via Blurb

Eight years ago I signed up for NaNoWriMo 2011 with plans to write a murder mystery (a genre I then knew little of).

I had a title. An idea: a cruise ship on which brides were bumped off to order. I had back stories for a dozen honeymooning couples; for ship’s crew and owners (some good, some bad). Best of all I had DI Luke Darbyshere and crime reporter Baz Rose, whose from-the-cradle friendship had turned toxic. All I needed to do was convincingly bump off a few brides under suspicious circumstances, by person-as-yet-unguessed-at, for reasons I could not begin to imagine.

Nearly eight years later, the final, final version of ‘Step so Grave’ is available to order.

Not only did the original undergo a change of title and me commence a steep learning curve – simultaneously reading some 700 crime novels and learning how to structure a readable novel – but, thanks to fellow writers and a succession of beta readers, asking pertinent questions and pointing out self-indulgences I reached a point where Step so grave was far removed from a shitty first draft and, having undergone eleven rewrites, became something I’m confident enough about to release upon a paying public. [Click on the link via the image in the sidebar]

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50219754-step-so-grave" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Step so grave (Love triangles with murder #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563968396l/50219754._SX98_SY160_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50219754-step-so-grave">Step so grave</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1226042.Sandra_Davies">Sandra   Davies</a><br/>

<br /><br />

Available from: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9633748-step-so-grave">https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9633748-ste...</a>

<br/><br/>

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/8882805-sandra">View all my reviews</a>

Not wanted on voyage - re-revised

Another version - a first third-round prototype - hopefully avoiding those generic,
one idea fits all images,but intimating a bit more what the book might be about.

(I haven't yet re-thought the blurb, and black is not right for the back page text, but the wood-grain title is an improvement, I think.)

The art of cover appeal - a revision

And possible solution ... ?

The art of cover appeal - a self indulgent poll

The book is written and I'm awaiting feedback before publishing.   I've been designing covers again (and this beats housework any day ...)
To make it less self-indulgent I'm turning it onto a poll.

At a glance, which one would you'd reach for if you saw

it on a shelf, wanting to know if it was something you might

like to read?

would it be (l-r) 

a) splurge of larks

b) boat ribs

c) boat of celebration

d) apples and serpents

e) none of these

Not wanted on voyage - in process of proofing.

Received my to-be-proofed copies last week, in good time to take one to a neighbour and the other to my daughter in Germany for their opinions on the story itself - does it work? make sense? entertain?   What words did I get wrong because the correct one could not, at the time, be retrieved from within my head? (I have already replaced 'status' with 'credibility' and changed 'ears' to 'instinct' and 'rejuvenation' to 'restoration').   Also  swapped sisters for brothers for continuity's sake in the next novel!
I've now been through it twice and made dozens of corrections (mostly minor, but the quantity is embarrassing) and re-written a couple of bits.   Yesterday I uploaded the 'one-piece cover' for the corrected edition.   Fingers now crossed to get it done for early July.   AND to work out how to make it available as an e-book.

Still hiccups, but I've changed my mind ... again

A relatively short amount of time hunting for possible images and I came up with this - an amalgamation of two long-ago photos, both taken in Orkney, which is relevant.

More black surrounds and enhances it ... but the price is still being mis-quoted ... grrr!!

Best laid plans ...

I have today successfully uploaded my NaNoWriMo2011 novel, after help from Blurb to overcome a hiccup and then solving further problems because I don't know how to create transparent jpgs so at the last minute changed to what had been plan A for the cover.

BUT on hitting 'order now' I found the price of the book was being stated at £32.95 and not the £9.95 quoted on the beginning page.   Another hiccup no doubt but minorly frustrating - vanity certainly doesn't stretch THAT far!

Playing with covers again

Having almost completed the first draft of last November's NaNoWriMo novel, and had extremely useful advice from the Blurb Help Team, I'm shortly going to upload this as a proof copy.   It'll be a 6" x 9" Trade book, running to some 360 pages, and at £11+P&P (~£7) it's not a cheap way of producing books but such is vanity.
The final background colour of the cover might change - this worked as a mock up and I quite like it but other colours might, with experiment, look better (and the ships will be the same size ...)

NaNoWriMo2011 - fifteen weeks on

A bit of a 'Eureka!' moment - after weeks of tweaking,  adding and refining,  a sudden impulse yesterday to write an 'Aftermath'.   Two thousand words later - and the whole thing coming together far more smoothly than looked to be likely at first (i.e. I avoided the 'and then, and then' dreary explanation, as well as the compulsion to tidy everything) - so that at 125K I do believe the end is nigh!

Rose Madigan - Baz's description

 He had heard a great deal about her before ever they met.   As soon as she arrived in the city, some three years or so ago now, there had been would-be scurrilous and often bitchy gossip – from blokes – most of whom had tried it on with her and failed to impress, or had actively earned her allegedly considerable wrath, usually for incompetence or for patronising her.   Much of it stemming from jealousy of her reputation, which they refused to admit could be due to talent and hard work.   Having met her, go to know her, he thought ‘feisty,’ as used by the less prejudiced, more literate, was one of the better words to describe her, but one which was insufficient to fully encompass what he admired in her, which was her hard-working professionalism and her tenacity.   And her dislike of playing the feminist card, particularly the two-face, only-when-it-suited version.   What he had not heard was any hint of any other man – or men – in her life;  he doubted she was celibate and guessed she’d raised discretion to a hitherto unheard-of level in the newspaper world.

Waiting at the bar, for the pint of Dark Island she had asked for – he had not known in advance what to order and, having arrived earlier, was already halfway down his pint of the same, impressed that her choice coincided – he watched her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, unseen by her because she was studying a notebook she had pulled from her scruffy leather shoulder bag.   As  with every entrance she made, although he did not think it was intentional, just came naturally, she had come through the double entrance doors of the tartan-carpeted bar with all the energy of a mini-tornado, her thick tawny-coloured hair looking wind-clumped as usual,  salt-rinsed even, as though she had crossed a particularly stormy stretch of ocean to reach here:  incongruous in the centre of the city.  

Her eyes this evening were grey and peaceable, almost matching the jacket she wore, over a plain white cotton top, but he knew that they were capable of flashing a vivid green when angry or especially heated about something.   And when in the throes of sexual  passion no doubt. (He smiled at himself here)   And smiled again, knowing this to be a comparison he would never – probably – tell her of, but at such times – the anger, not the passion – she reminded him of a Tasmanian devil he had once seen in Ballarat zoo, solid-packed with muscle and bad-temper.   She certainly wasn’t skinny, was well fit, in the old-fashioned, conventional sense and he knew that as well as sailing occasionally she climbed and ran regularly.   Rumour had it she boxed too but he hadn’t ever asked about that.  

What she would be like as a wife he could not imagine.   He certainly couldn’t see her as ever being  meek and subservient, and, thinking about it, realised that he didn’t even know the extent of her domestic skills, if any.

Baz Rose - Sunday morning confrontation of newly-ex.

Baz’s appearance, when he eventually answered the door ... unshaven, barefoot and wearing old jeans and a misshapen university sweatshirt, had further pointed up the differences between them.  

His stubble-shadowed unkemptness also exacerbated his undeniable ugliness ...   He was ugly, his features large and over-mobile, surrounded by folds and crevices of flesh which added to the expressiveness of his words but removed all likelihood of him ever being referred to as ‘chisel-featured’.   His near-black curls were abundant and unruly, always over-long, although presumably he did go to the barbers reasonably regularly, and his sideburns hinted at some gypsy past.   (The lack of red-spotted neckerchief created a small desire, at least in some female observers, to place, initially their fingertips in the hollow of his throat.)   His nose had been broken in his youth, ‘more than once’ and his mouth, also over-large, was asymmetric.  

His eyes were his best feature, dark, and shiny as well-oiled olives, habitual merriness indicated by the sunburst of pale lines at the outer corner of each eye, and his every remark was emphasised by surprisingly well-shaped black eyebrows. 

At first sight he could be taken for a taller-than-average gondolier with pugilistic proclivities.  At second sight, but again solely to female observers, he might still suggest gondolier, but the overwhelming impression was of a devastating sexiness, in a bad, guilt-inducing sort of way.  

NaNoWriMo2011 - five weeks on

A friend, questioning my reasons for absence from Six Sentences ("I am impressed that you are still novelling") surprised me because it really is NOT possible to write a novel in a month, and I knew that 'Not wanted on Voyage' would take much longer than that to properly complete.

For three of those five weeks (two were taken up, most enjoyably, with friends and family) I've been editing what was already written and trying to fill in the scamped bits which were necessary to reach 'The End' by November 30th.   Harder than writing from scratch in many ways, and the more it grows the harder it gets and the more apparent the holes in it.  

With a cast of around thirty-five, a whole shoal of red herrings and three, four, five attempted murders, it's more like plate-juggling.   It took two days to write a half-hour episode of confrontation simply because I couldn't keep in my head how many policemen there were supposed to be in the room, and had to keep practising on myself to understand how to describe how someone could be held tight, walked backwards, with a knife held to their throat ...

   And the word total has grown only 10K from the 78K I ended on, but there is still more to write as well as more to prune.   Not that I'm not enjoying it, just it's mind-consuming, and likely to be so for a few months yet.

Not Wanted [7] - today's favourite version - and [8]

I have to say I prefer these to the one posted in October ... but there'll doubtless be several more

This has a slightly out-dated feel to it in some ways;  has the look of books my father, a librarian, used to bring home, when book covers had more appeal than their content. I'd have been around eleven at the time ...maybe, but cannot find an example of what I'm remembering in my copy of 'Front Cover'(Alan Powers) 

Apple and serpent - not working on 'Voyage'

Some more displacement activity while I wait for the words to start flowing again - I have the mysteries of Ian to reveal and the supposedly nightmare-ending rendezvous for Sarah to work out.

In the meantime I thought about an alternative cover design for my NaNo novel and fancied re-using the apple and serpent images created for a screenprint some half a dozen years ago.   I spent a good three hours playing with multiple Photoshop layers to achieve the best possible colour combination.
But my original idea - of a couple of columns of this motif, an outline ship - just did not gel, so I scrapped the lot.

Not a disaster - it allows me to play again another day.

Book Blurb Friday - truly inspirational!

I made no secret of the fact that my NaNo novel was kick-started by a response to Lisa Ricard Claro's Book Blurb Friday over on Writing in the Buff but I have just checked and as well as #16 ('Not wanted on voyage') I have included characters from #4 ('Thickness of thieves' where Luke Darbyshere and Francesca Lloyd made their first appearance), #5 ('Smile now darling, just for me' which has photographer Davey and the shivering model Fay) and #9 ('Seeing double', Rose Madigan's first appearance).   BBF #13 ('Angels fall') has more Luke and Francesca and there is also a nod back to #15 ('Parts others cannot reach').
I can thoroughly recommend the challenge as an inspiration for plots - and I shall be making an effort with this week's because Lisa is using one of my photos.
And congratulations to Lisa who has reached her NaNo total, despite having been 20,000 words behind schedule at one point.

Day 29 NaNo - 77713 - and verified

In panic mode I have put in all the notes I have made re the endings and the whole thing into one document, and hastily written a final paragraph which tells the ending completely without elegance or subtlety.  And this is the total for NaNo purposes.   But it is a LONG way from finished.   And NaNo have marked my total up by a bit too.

Day 28 NaNo - 72067

Not so much new stuff created today as already-written snippets slotted into place thus enabling them to be counted.

Day 27 NaNo - 70797

Working towards the finale ... and tidying up the anomalies!

Day 26 NaNo - 69698

850 words from today's total were the sort that makes writing so satisfactory:  having had a note in my text, saying "sort confrontation with Peter Walpole" for over a week, which I had found impossible to make progress on, suddenly this morning it all came good and ideas tumbled out.   That and a less-than-enthralling arrest mean that nearly all the loose ends should be tied by next Wednesday ... fingers crossed.

Day 25 NaNo - 67179

Another solid day's typing and a couple of satisfactory long passages which make more sense of the rest.   Thus I believe I will have the bare bones of the story in place by the end of the month while knowing that they are inadequately fleshed.   A mixed sort of satisfaction, partly because I have done better than I expected at putting some of the plot elements in place - at concealing and then revealing, and at explaining - but as so often happens, having reached one rung up the next beckons.   My hope is that I can maintain momentum to get the thing finished properly.