Flaming Nora: Gritting my teeth and getting on with it

Saturday, January 02, 2021

Gritting my teeth and getting on with it - my writing week

It's been another intense week as I tackle the structural changes to the first of my three cosy crime novels, Murder at the Seaview Hotel.

Structural changes to a novel are the really big edits that an author needs to make. We're not talking about dotting i's and crossing t's here. We're talking about moving huge passages of text around, deleting others, inserting more. We're talking about tying up loose ends, bringing things together satisfactorily for the reader, explaining, showing, leading the way so that the reader doesn't feel lost. It's hard work but necessary and well worth the effort in the end. But yes, it's very hard work.

It's set in a Scarborough B&B called The Seaview Hotel and a group of twelve Elvis impersonators (Twelvis) arrive but one of them is found dead and his blue suede shoes have been stolen. Just what is going on and who has murdered Elvis? Find out more at http://bit.ly/CosyCrimeGlendaYoung

In terms of actual sitting down on my backside and writing, I crafted another episode of my weekly soap opera Riverside for The People's Friend magazine. I've been writing Riverside weekly since 2016 and you can find out all about it here.

I also wrote another Coronation Street weekly update and sent it to my emailing list of thousands of Corrie fans around the world. I've been running this list since 1995 and if you'd like to sign up to receive these weekly updates, all details are here.