My news this week is that I am now on chapter ten of Delamere Eleven with a working title of Thirteen. Funnily enough, this one isn’t about numbers, plural, but is inspired by the number thirteen.
After my Christmas and New Year break, I turned my mind to the next Delamere mystery, and found I was looking at an empty folder. When this happens, when I know I must write something but don’t have the ‘hook’ that starts the flow of inspiration, I turn to the news of the time. In this case, January 1894. (A couple of weeks after the events in the Clearwater Tales Vol. Two, ‘1893’, if you haven’t discovered that yet.)
It was while browsing the National Newspaper Archives that my eyes fell upon an article that appeared in The Sketch on January 17th, 1894, and an idea began to form. I had been looking for something else, but as I read the article, I became more and more intrigued with what I was reading, and, by the time I’d finished, I had found my ‘hook.’
This is the word that I use when I mean background, setting, or gimmick. For example, as ‘Follow the Van’ was set among London music halls, so Number Eleven could be set among the Thirteen Club. Rather, it could begin there, and I could build a mystery around their ethos to ridicule superstitions in the way ‘Acts of Faith’ was built around martyrdoms.
That’s what I am doing, and I have started with a rough draft of the action plot, which will change as I go through, because I tend to set my detectives mysteries without knowing myself the who and why of the crime. I also have an idea for an emotional subplot into which I want to weave some erotic or more graphic scene, because it’s been a long time since we’ve seen any of that on the Delamere pages.
While doing this, I have also had an idea for a ‘How To’ set of articles to assist new authors in my genres, which may or may not turn into a publication. Watch this space.
So, I am definitely back into creative mode and plodding on. Meanwhile, I am also taking an active part in various promotions to hopefully boost not only my readership, but also that of other indie authors. I have a few ongoing promos this month, as you might have seen from the recent newsletter, and I’ll drop them here along the way.
Let’s start with this one, which is only running until February 19th:
MM ROMANCE BOOKS $4.99 and UNDER
Genres: Romance, Romance / Active/Erotica, and Romance / LGBT I have my Mentor books in this promotion of 28 books. These are all MM Romance themed, and as the title says, they’re all on offer and priced under $4.99.
