My Writing Life

Although mainly a crime writer, I have had short non-fiction published on various subjects and Reluctant
Queen, my first historical - under the name Geraldine Hartnett - about Henry VIII's younger sister Mary
Rose Tudor, was published by Robert Hale in March 2004.

Blood on the Bones is my twelfth novel and the ninth in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, (UK May
2006, US August 2006). A Thrust to the Vitals, my tenth Rafferty & Llewellyn, comes out in Jmuary 2007.

My first crime series features Detective Inspector Joseph Rafferty and Sergeant Dafyd Llewellyn and has a
strongly humorous element. When I first thought of writing a crime novel I took it for granted that it
would have to feature a middle-class, middle-to-highbrow detective (as do P D James's Adam Dalgliesh,
Colin Dexter's Morse, Ruth Rendell's Wexford etc). I almost gave up on the idea then as, being working-
class and mostly self-educated, I thought it unlikely I would be able to 'walk the walk' or 'talk the talk' of
the middle-classes.

But then, when I thought about the area of society from which the majority of police officers came, I
realised I didn't have to adopt unnatural, middle-class mores; even in these days of graduate entrants, most
recruits are still drawn from the working classes.

I had often longed for an injection of humour in the crime novels I read. At that time I hadn't come across
any, though I have since found Reginald Hill's wonderful Dalziel & Pascoe books (what a creation is
Andy Dalziel; you can practically smell him!), Ruth Dudley Edwards and Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's, to
name but a few of the authors whose books delight me. For me, these were all the better for the humour
injection; it added another dimension to the puzzle, which was what I hoped to achieve with my Rafferty &
Llewellyn novels.

So I came up with Joseph Aloysius Rafferty, like myself Catholic-raised and secondary modern educated
(sic), from a working-class family who were far from averse to back-of-a-lorry bargains – particularly his
Ma, Kitty Rafferty (widowed young, uneduated and working class with six kids to raise, how else was she
expected to manage?!)

I felt this added a touch of reality – who – whatever their class –doesn't like a bargain? And the working
classes – having less money - are even more likely to be prone to buying suspect 'bargains'. Why should a
working-class policeman's family be any different?

This gave me the humorous element, with his family forever causing poor Rafferty problems. For his foil I
hit on Dafyd Llewellyn - the university-educated only son of a Methodist minister - a Welshman more
morally upright than the Pope, who thought the law should apply to everyone – even the mothers of
detective inspectors.

So I had my main characters. All I had to do then was write the novel…

My crime novels tend to have 'the family' as one of their themes and unlike Margaret Thatcher, I don't
necessarily believe that the family is always a 'good thing'.

This family theme is also a feature of Up In Flames, the first in what I hope will become another crime
series. This features new police characters Detective Inspector Will (Willow Tree) Casey, the only son of
unreconstructed hippies for whom the sixties never died and the politically incorrect Sergeant Thomas
Catt, who was brought up in various children's homes. Up In Flames was published by Severn House in
December 2003.

Although for Reluctant Queen, my first historical - to make sure I didn't leave out something essential! - I
had to force my mind to think in straight, historical, time-lines, for my crime novels I tend to get just the
basic idea of what the novel is to be about. I then tend to write in scenes rather than straight lines; I
certainly don't write from the end to the beginning as most crime novelists are said to write.

I tend to be a 'seat of pants' writer: I have a rough idea of where I'm going, coupled with blind optimism
that I'll get there. I have tried to move on from this 'seat of pants' aspect with later novels and to plan in
greater detail, but I still find myself 'going with the flow' more often than not.

I tend to assume that I could write novels that would be more highly regarded by 'the literati' if I adopted a
more planned stance, but, hey, maybe, if I did that, JAR Rafferty, Ma and the rest of the crew, would stop
being living, breathing human beings. I love my characters, so let's not go there.

This first draft is pretty rough, so I then go through it however many times it takes, moving scenes,
enlarging them, adding descriptions, more scenes or even the odd, additional character; whatever I feel is
required. Finally I cut extraneous matter and tighten generally. Then I do those useless spelling and
grammar checks: I call them useless, because the damn things always want to call me Gelatine Evens - so
how reliable can they be?

As I said, cutting to length is the final aspect and it often seems to be even more demanding than creating
that first draft (if you're a creative person - you create - it's natural to you. But editing requires that nit-
picking, character aspect, which, when you're trying to nitpick your own much-loved 'baby', with whom
you've usually lived for months (if not years) is not something most writers are very good at.

But doing that final edit is essential (and getting it right only comes through plenty of hard work). It
certainly seems to take ages and is very demanding of the writer's editorial eye. But for all you would-be
writers out there, I cannot stress too highly the importance of first impressions, and that includes a
typescript that's as perfect as you can make it before you send it to an editor/agent (think first date terms
and how much you fancy that person: you wouldn't turn up loking scruffy, unkempt and carelessly attired.
Neither should your typescript; not if you want more than a rejected first date with an editor).

This method of writing has so far produced twelve published novels, comprising: one romance, Land of
Dreams (Hale 1991), one historical, Reluctant Queen (Robert Hale March 2004) and nine crime novels:
Dead Before Morning (1993), Down Among The Dead Men (1994), Death Line (1995) The Hanging Tree
(1996) – all published by Macmillan, Absolute Poison (2002), Dying For You (June 2004), Bad Blood (Dec
2004), Love Lies Bleeding (Aug 2005), and Blood on the Bones, all published by Severn House, as well as
Up In Flames (Dec 2003), the first in my Casey & Catt series, also published by Severn House. My next
novel, another Rafferty & Llewellyn, A Thrust to the Vitals, comes out in Janury 2007.

Extracts of all these novels are available to read on this website - just click the link buttons above.

As to how I came to take up writing, I've always been an avid reader and I had sporadically tried novel
writing during my early to mid twenties, but I never finished any of them. Then, when I hit the milestone
age of thirty, my mind concentrated wonderfully and I wrote – and finished – a book a year for six years,
only the last of which (Land of Dreams) was ever published. But it was a beginning, and when I asked
myself what I'd done with my life, I at least had something to show for it (even if it was just one measly
novel).

Although I now concentrate mainly on crime novels, as I have said, my first 'full on' attempts at writing
were for the Mills & Boon romance market. After six years of rejection - I cut my losses, cut the sixth book
to a length and content acceptable to what was then the Rainbow Romance series of Robert Hale – and it
was accepted from the slush pile. That book, Land of Dreams, set in the Canadian Arctic, was my first
published novel. But it didn't set the world on fire. Nor did the next one I sent to Robert Hale – they sent
me back to Reject Alley.

That rejection encouraged me to ask myself some belated questions; specifically, why I, a person not at all
romantically inclined, had tried to write romantic fiction in the first place. Like a lot of writers who have
tried that route and failed, I suppose I had thought it would be easy. Big mistake! Learn from my mistakes;
if you're not naturally inclined to the romance element in fiction, don't try to force it for the sake of
getting a published book under your belt, because you are more likely to fail than not. If, like me, you
think Mills & Boon romantic novels are easy books to write, please think again; I did (OK, by then, after
suffering so many rejections, I really did feel like murdering someone, so I did) and I turned to crime…

After all my rejected romance novels, you can imagine my astonishment when the very first crime novel I
wrote was picked out from Macmillan's slush pile on only its second outing and published, though not
before I had some serious rewriting to do. That book was Dead Before Morning, the first of my Rafferty &
Llewellyn crime novels. Macmillan went on to publish three more novels in the series, two of which also
sold to the States in hardback and paperback and two of which sold for large print publication in this
country.

Unfortunately, Macmillan was then taken over by a firm of German publishers and about a third of their
writers were dropped from their list, including me. The next six years were a repetition of my first six years
as a writer; nothing but rejections, even though by this time I had a good body of work. Alongside the
novels, I had also written short non-fiction pieces on a variety of topics and had quite a number of these
published in magazines (The Lady, the now defunct Writers' Monthly, and various county magazines
amongst them).

Despite being without a publisher for a second period of six years, I kept on writing and sending work out,
steeling myself against the, by-now, expected rejections. Many people would probably have given up. I
didn't, because, in spite of what it had put me through, I still loved writing. I knew I had to have faith in
myself, even – especially – when no one else seemed to.

Then one day there was a message on the ansafone when I got home from work. It was from one of the
agents to whom I'd sent a short submission. By this time, all I was sending out was a one-page letter,
listing my writing achievements, mentioning my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime novels and asking if the
agent/s would be interested in a crime novel about new characters which I had just completed (Up In
Flames).

The agent said she would not only like to see the latter, but was also interested in seeing some of the
Rafferty novels, as well as the last in the series (Absolute Poison), which, at the time, had not been
published.

Before I knew it, I had another agent. In a matter of months my agent managed to sell a novel I'd almost
given up on (Absolute Poison), obtained contracts with Severn House for three other books (two Rafferty &
Llewellyns (Dying For You and Bad Blood) and Up In Flames, the first Casey & Catt novel) as well as
selling a fourth, my first historical, Reluctant Queen, to Robert Hale. Blood on the Bones, my twelfth
novel and the ninth in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, was the first book in yet another two-book
contract with Severn House. If you would like to read an extract of Blood on the Bones, go to my News
Page or my Home Page, and click on the book links you will find in both places. I will put up an extract of
A Thrust to the Vitals asap.

So, given my experiences, I would say to would-be published writers: be persistent, no matter how many
rejections you receive. It certainly paid off for me. Secondly, certainly for your first novel, use the services
of a reputable criticism service – I used Success Writers' Bureau (who advertise in Writers' News
magazine) and found them very helpful (see my Links Page for contact details) And thirdly, as you will see
from the above paragraph, in these difficult days in the publishing world, try to get an agent; they can
make all the difference by providing that extra 'push' to get the acceptance.'

Fourthly, which I didn't mention above, listen to that quiet, insistant voice inside, that keeps telling you
you're writing in the wrong genre. I ignored that quiet voice for years - all the years during which I
received nothing but rejections for my romantic novels. But when I acted on what that quiet voice was
saying and turned my hand to writing crime novels, after only its second outing, as I told you before, my
first crime novel Dead Before Morning, was taken from Macmillan's slush pile and published. And
although I went through another six year fallow publishing period, it's now all systems go!

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