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This weekend the leaves have been falling fast from the trees after the first frosts and some of the puddles have been iced over in the morning.  When watching the weather forecast yesterday evening I realised that there are barely nine hours of daylight now.  Usually I hate the plunge into winter darkness, but this year there seems to be so much to do that I shall probably barely notice it.  In the Family will be published on November 15th and I am also helping several other writers whose books are about to come out.  I am delighted to have been invited to give an author evening at Bookmark, the wonderful independent bookshop in Spalding (the small market town where my novel takes place) and I have also been asked to talk to some reading groups.  I must admit that, although I’m very familiar with talking to bookshop customers, I don’t have much experience of reading groups. Some of them sound very sophisticated.  Does anyone have advice?  What have you talked to them about when you’ve joined them?

I have been spending an unusual Saturday today, reading Pam McIlroy’s Twitter ‘TAIR’ (Thoughts As I Read) through Mari Hannah’s new release Settled Blood, her second Kate Daniels novel.  Being new to Twitter, I had not anticipated how compelling such an exercise could be.  I have found myself creating a novel around Pam’s tweets, a novel which is no doubt very different from (and inferior to!) the original, but, I would argue, as fascinating as personal creativity gets to be.  The success of something like this depends on the skill of the reader to capture key aspects in a pithy way (and Pam’s delivery is trenchant indeed!) and, as I discovered as I was drawn in, some genuine audience participation to engage the mind.  I have been, as might be guessed in a writer contemplating the imminent launch of her debut novel, more than a little nervous about reactions to my book, so my response to Pam’s TAIR through Settled Blood (to be launched on November 7^th) has been touched with some extra personal piquancy.   So, as the TAIR tears onwards to its conclusion, I should like to congratulate Pam on her wonderful work and to wish Mari all the best for her launch.  Appetite whetted yet?  Mine is…

In a month of very new experiences, I’m proud to have been accepted by the Crime Writers’ Association this week.  Yesterday, I received my CWA member’s card, some very helpful information and the three latest copies of Red Herrings.  I’m delighted to discover that the editor of Red Herrings lives in Huddersfield, which is not very far from where I am, and I’m hoping to be able to meet him.  The information about meetings, conventions, conferences and readers’ groups all looks exciting.  The CWA’s Diamond Jubilee Conference takes place in Bowness at the end of April next year.  I shall certainly attend and hope perhaps that it will enable me to meet some of the readers of my blog and some of the merry tweeters I have so far encountered ethereally on Twitter.  In the meantime, if you have advice on how to make sure that I get the most from the CWA, I should be very grateful to hear it.

Well, the game bird shooting season is now in full swing and I’m already thrilled on my daily walks in local countryside to discover all these manly men (and occasional WAGs) in, depending on their shooter or beater status, their Barbours and Hunters or camouflage gear (I’m not sure why they wear this latter, as they are galumphing through the woods, bellowing to the birds, and even if they weren’t their bellies would be protruding from the undergrowth.). Of course, I must get ready to be shot down for saying that I don’t know how the shooters miss (which I notice they mostly do) the pheasants, which have been so loved and nurtured by their grain-generous game‘keepers’ that they hardly bother to fly. If ever there was a case for pecking the hand that feeds you, this is it. Let’s not get romantic about Mellors in the solitude of the wood; nor let us be seduced by the myth that ‘managing’ the countryside for game is good for wildlife (which flourishes just as well in woodland accessible for public recreation, though there might be fewer pheasants). Here are lots of Wilde’s unspeakables, powerful in their rural outfits, proud of their 4X4 lifestyles, pompous with their Purdeys. Some of them should find their way into novels, but not by reading them… I feel a character or two coming on.

Well, circulating on Twitter over the w.e. was an app to keep writers happy!  In the words of the website: “Your time is too valuable to waste.  For the cost of two lattes, Freedom will help you fight evil distractions so you can get your work done.”  Ten dollars buys you the ability to cut yourself off from the ‘net to concentrate on your writing.  Personally, I wouldn’t go for it; it’d be a bit like nicotine patches for me, who doesn’t smoke anyway!  Although I do inhale a bit of ‘netstuff, I’m not addicted and if I’m writing, it can go hang; likewise, four-legged friends will have to go walking without me once I’m engaged with my imagination.  I’d much rather have an app which dealt with the washing and ironing…  I do have a coffee maker already, but the downside is that he costs a lot more than ten dollars and I’ve had him for a lot longer than a ninety-day free trial.

A green label reads: “Are we there yet?”
A soft case for your imagination to solve: what happened to the owner of the boots left with the bag on a city street?

Welcome to Christina James’ crime fiction blog.  Here I hope that you will find something to whet your appetite for reading my D.I. Yates novels and pursuing lines of inquiry of your own.  I certainly don’t want anybody to be clueless!  As most of you will know from writing yourselves, putting a story together can be pretty challenging; then, when you do manage to get through to completion, everyone from your nearest and dearest (whom  you thought you could rely on to massage your ego!) to complete strangers is out to pick holes in what you’ve done.  It’s unnerving and can often be soul-destroying, but then there are those constructive critical comments that just help you to see how to improve on first efforts.  I’m certainly getting used to the metaphorical red ink and to being objective enough to know when to stand by my way of doing it and when to bow to better judgements.

I’ve always loved writing and it won’t be hard to believe that I spend a huge proportion of my life reading other people’s stuff, which of course influences what I do, though I may not always be aware of what or how.  I just hope that my stories grab readers in the way I remember from childhood: reading into the night because I couldn’t bear to put the book down.  If that happens to somebody when reading one of my books, then I know I’ll have got something right!

Just one thing: I used to have a fanciful idea about what being a writer was like: immersed in it from morning to night and never stopping.  Now I know that the real world is banging on the door all the time and concentrating is as hard as trying to sleep when you have the builders in.  Perhaps it will get easier, but I’m not banking on it!