A Question of a Title

Sorry I missed the blog last Saturday, I am still trying to rest my arm as much as possible, though I am still writing. It’s a little frustrating, only putting in half a chapter a day or around 2,500 words when I am used to writing 4,000 or so, but it has to be done. Anyway, I am not complaining!

Newsletter & Promos

If you want to check out loads of new titles and authors across various genres, then sign up to my newsletter. I have got into the habit of joining three or four free promos per month, and sharing the details with newsletter followers, pointing them towards a whole series of mystery, thriller, MM Romance, and LGBT stories, novels and collections. These are all free to browse, and I’ve picked up some great new reading from them. Each month, I send out a newsletter to announce that month’s promos, so if you want to be in on it, simply sign using the two boxes over there on the top right. >>

Here, for example, is a promo that covers: General Fiction / Contemporary Women, General Fiction / Historical Fiction, and Non-Fiction / Biography & Memoir.

Click the banner

A Question of a Title

While that is happening in the background, I am still working on Delamere Six. I am at around 60,000 words, and the story is coming together nicely. It’s one of these where I know the climax and outcome, and am working towards it along planned lines, when one of the characters throws me a bombshell twist and I have to get myself out of his predicament. At least, that’s how it feels. This book’s subject started off as being about photography, and although that is involved, it’s now more about graverobbing and gay cruising grounds of the late 19th century.

What’s missing still is the title, and I have a few to consider. As it’s me, I like a play on words and thus, am thinking go ‘Grave Developments’, as that brings in both photography and the other theme of the novel. Actually, having spoken to you aloud about that possibility, I think I will stick with it! I also had in mind, ‘A Grave Affair’, but that sounded like ‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde (which I couldn’t get through, sorry), and I also thought of ‘A Very Grave Shock’, which is a line from the story, but which sounds too twee.

So, Grave Developments it is – it kind of fits with the early Clearwater in that it’s two words summing up the novel’s theme; ‘Deviant Desire’, ‘Fallen Splendour’, etc.

And the images today are relevant in that they are parts of what I have been researching recently. The Invalid Asylum for Respectable Women in Stoke Newington, and more photographic background.

A service that might put Dalston Blaze out of work.

Back to Work

I haven’t posted here for ten days! That’s because I had to take a week off due to an arm injury. Well, RSI caused by too much typing, so this will be brief so I can save my typing time for writing the next book – which still doesn’t have a title! Very unlike me, as the titles usually come during the writing of the first half of a new MS. I still only have ‘Snapshot’ as my working title, but I am now thinking about something to do with a play on the word grave. Why? That will become clear when you read the story.

While I am working on it (50,000 words so far, so halfway through), I am pleased to say that ‘A Case of Make Believe’ is doing well, as is the whole series. So is the Clearwater series, and Larkspur is coming in close behind in terms of page reads and books ordered.

I wasn’t lazy while I was sofa-bound. I read two books about Jack the Ripper, and a couple of short stories by Thomas Hardy I’d not read before.

Thomas Hardy

The JtR books were interesting. One was a collection of all theories and the various ‘solutions’, which, of course, are not solutions, because there never can be a solution, and that’s why the mystery endures. The other was a book written by ex-policemen, and this one doesn’t say ‘This is the solution’ but gives the facts as they were known to the police at the time, and that’s it. We then make up our own minds. The Thomas Hardy shorts were completely different though if you like colloquial language and West Country legends, try, ‘The Withered Arm.’

I thought that title was appropriate considering I was off work with just such a thing.

And today’s highlighted promo is this one (below). Click the banner to find a selection of women’s lit, mystery, time travel and bio books to keep you busy reading.

In a Former life

I think it was in 2013 that a film crew came to this island and tried to make a film version of a book I had written, or was writing. It’s a long story – the one behind the film, not the book – but this company had asked me to come up with a horror story that could be cheaply and easily filmed. So, I did, and we agreed it would be set here because the location is atmospheric, and I could write the script around locations I knew to be easily accessible. I had the book already on the go, ‘The Judas Inheritance’ (under my original name), and so, putting together a scripted version was straightforward. For me, but not for ‘them.’ By the time they started filming, we had raised the necessary but very limited budget, we (being Neil and I) had arranged an army of keen volunteers to assist with everything from giving free accommodation to making meals, I had become the location manager, and they were using script draft number 12 which, thanks to everyone knowing better than the writer, bore little resemblance to the original story.

They also ignored my advice about where to film, so they spent much time and effort moving equipment to tricky locations, resulting in a lack of filming time, and then the producer had a breakdown, fell out with the director who did nothing but complain and demand more money even though he knew what he’d let himself in for, and… I could go on. It was a farce created by a group of ‘professionals’ who had no idea, and took no notice of people who lived here who’d given up time, jobs, money and effort. It was not a pleasant experience and worst of all, the investors saw no return and none of the things they had been promised. Still…

 ‘The Judas Inheritance’ is the title of the book. The film was eventually titled something else and although it won some awards at minor film festivals, I think that was more out of sympathy than anything else. It’s a horror story written in the first and third person, and constructed very much along film storytelling lines. The blurb reads thus:

An ancient curse? Desperation in the economic crisis? What is causing the suicides of so many adults and children on this small Greek island? When Chris Trelawney arrives on the island to take away his late father’s belongings, he finds that he has been left little more than a mystery. Was his father mad at the time of his death, or did he actually believe that he had awakened a powerful evil? An ancient evil that now stalks the islanders, growing stronger by the day. A curse that will cause the death of everyone around Chris unless he allows himself to believe that such things exist. But when he discovers the truth, Chris realises that death is the easy option.

Standard stuff and written long before I invented Jackson Marsh, but still, a good read, I believe. (There are some production photos that Neil took at the bottom of this page.)

I mention it because I have books in a promo that’s promoting thrillers, psychological thrillers and suspense reads, and I wanted to point you in its direction. There are some great covers to browse, with lots of night scenes, creepy castles and dripping knives, and some great titles too. ‘The Judas Inheritance’ isn’t among them because that’s under my Collins name and I can only afford to promote one pen name at the moment, but if you want to take a look at ‘Judas’ just click here.

If you’d like to support other authors and get some ideas for spooky Halloween reading, then click this banner:

The Judas Curse being filmed as ‘The 13th.’ Photos © by Neil Gosling

My godson Harry and his dad on set (H is now 17!)
Kurtis Stacey and ‘Joe the Jam.’
Richard Syms

WIP Update: Delamere Six

Here’s an update on where I am with my current work in progress, Delamere Six. That might well end up being its title as nothing has yet sprung to mind. I am nearly at the halfway mark, well, nearly at 50,000 words and coming up to a nice twist, but things are going slowly. This is because of my arm injury, or ‘tennis elbow’ as the doctor called it. It’s a repetitive strain injury caused by typing and holding my tablet to play ‘Sherlock.’ So, I am trying to do less of both, and am doing more with my left hand, like lifting things and opening bottles. It’s amazing how weak the left hand/arm is compared to the right, but being right-handed, I guess that’s how it is.

Trouble is, it means I am doing less wringing too. Where I would normally aim for three to four thousand words a day, I am now only able to do two. That’s on top of the blogs, this one and my day-to-day life on a Greek island one, Symi Dream. This is why you might find my blog posts shorter than usual. At least until after I’ve had another treatment on the elbow thing, which should be in the next week or two.

Meanwhile, this week I am promoting a series of books that are all available on KU (Kindle Unlimited). You can click on any of these, and if you fancy their blurbs, you can find them in KU and add them to your reading list. Deviant Desire is in there along with some other intriguing-sounding titles and blurbs. ‘The Case of the Four Fingers’ looks interesting with two detectives one hundred years apart working together. I don’t have KU but I might buy it in Kindle format and download it to the tablet that way. Here’s the banner, just click it to find some new mystery, thriller and suspense reading.

Passing Time in the Past

One of the things I love about writing is the research that goes into it. how often have we heard people say, ‘Write about what you know?’ The other day, I heard someone admit that she couldn’t write a book about XYZ because she knew nothing about XYZ and had never experienced it. Well, I’ve never walked through a London sewer in 1893, but I managed to get a few pages down about the experience. How? By researching.

Researching Matters

Of course, you can write about what you don’t know. You just have to do one of two things:

  1. Research it until you do know
  2. Imagine it

The end result should be a mixture of the two, with the researched information truthfully reimagined.

As an example, this week, I sat down to write chapter 11 of ‘Snapshot’ (working title). In this sequence, two of my detectives meet Doctor Markland in a laboratory at the London Hospital, now the Royal London Hospital. (That was my first fact check/research. What was the hospital called in 1893?) The detectives were there to test some soil and other samples with the madcap but brilliant doctor, and I wanted things to be as authentic as possible. So, how would a chemist or pathologist test soil samples and flesh samples to discover if the soil could have decomposed a body rapidly, and how would they have done it in 1893?

And away we go…

Here’s an edited down sample from the chapter to whet your appetite:


‘Beneath the sink, you will find a small box with a Mackie’s label and a bottle of Hills and Underwood’s. Bring them forth…’

‘That be Mackie’s baking soda, be that.’

‘I know. Not to be confused with arsenic, as so often happens. There was a case last year when a man mistook one for the other with not very pleasant results.’

‘Oh? Would it make him sick, Sir?’

‘Made him dead, Mr Maddiver. This was in Lanark, so it wasn’t a great sensation, but the man was a baker which rather worried the town. I don’t suppose they bought bread from him after that.’

‘Not if he were dead, Doctor.’

‘A very good point…’

‘Your education continues,’ Markland said, waving Ned to his side, and showing him a white powder. ‘What we have here is a mixture of sodium, oxygen and hydrogen otherwise known as sodium hydroxide. Do not touch, and certainly do not do as an unfortunate boy of eleven did recently, and drink it. Poor lad. Mind you, he lived in Liverpool, so… Worse, was the man who, last October, fell into a boiling vat of the stuff.’

‘You be saying the man was two weeks dead when someone then poured caustic soda over his face?’

‘I be saying just that, me hearty,’ the doctor joked in a bad West Country accent.

Ned stared at him, for a second and said, ‘That’s not funny.’


And so on. The point is, I had no idea you could test for alkali and acid by using baking soda and vinegar, but then, unlike my brother, I am not a chemist. As for the chemical makeup of caustic soda and whether you could use it to disfigure a dead body so no-one could see the face… Apparently yes, you can.

Btw., the tragic cases Markland mentioned were cases from 1892 that I found in the national newspapers.

Other, less gruesome things I have been investigating this week include the Zoka Detective Camera Will Merrit could have bought for 12/6.

Then, there was the Nurenburg Pocket Timepiece that could be bought for 2S 6D. (Two shillings and sixpence, or half a crown, or 30 pennies, roughly £10.26 in today’s money according to a converter site.)

Just a few of the things I have been looking at as I prepare the first draft of Delamere Six. It’s all in the research!


This month’s Promo

As usual, I have a few promo pages to share with you this month, and today, I’m featuring Mayhem & Motives, Mystery, Thriller and Suspense reads available on Kindle, Unlimited, Kobo and other platforms depending on the book. There are loads of titles to browse including three of my own, and the novels are varied in time and place.

Mayhem & Motives has over 100 titles!