Today's fragments

I shuffled into the kitchen for my first mug of Yorkshire Tea this morning, where Dave was playing his guitar, as per usual. This morning he wasn't listening to the radio at the same time, thank goodness.

'Are you OK ?' he said. 'You seem fed up.'

'It's the election.'

'Oh. Yes.'

I filled up the kettle, switched it on, turned round and said: 'The carpet man's coming tomorrow. You're going to be here, aren't you?'

'Yes, if I'm spared.'


Now, he is out for the day, and I have been for a bike ride,

done some washing, and also completed my 14 page character questionnaire on Sally Howe, one of the four characters in my new book. You would think I would know her by now: she is the heroine in Plotting for Beginners and Plotting for Grown-ups. But no, she's required further investigation, and in filling out this questionnaire I've discovered a secret of hers, which is going to cause her some anguish. 

In order to answer some of the other questions - for example about her language - I've been reading Plotting for Grown-ups again. I've been reminded that she likes to use little French phrases such as "n'est-ce pas" and also that she calls people "chuck." It's really important to me to make the voices of my characters distinct. I've completed the questionnaires on two of the other women, Josie and Elaine, but Kate is so far a mystery. Perhaps that's because she's so reserved.

When I'm imagining my characters I like to have a picture of them in my head, and in order to do this I cut out photos from magazines of likely candidates.

Elaine looks like the woman in the middle, although she has a complexion like the one on the left.

The one on the right might be Josie, but I'm not sure yet.

And now I've written this blog post. Next up - more washing and pegging out, digging up my cosmos to make room for wallflowers arriving this week, and making a start on Kate's character and plotline. 

Chrissie, my crime writer friend, is amused that I start by developing my characters, when she starts with her plot. For me the plots emerge from the characters. And usually I don't care about the plot - it's just something to make readers keep turning the pages. This time I have a feeling it's going to be different. 

Every time I write a new post for the blog I change the header, but I have realised that if you read the blog on your phone you won't see the header.

So here is today's, taken by Isaac a fortnight ago: