What Do You Write? The Many Faces of @JennyTwist1

It’s always the first question new friends ask an author and I have never felt able to give a satisfactory answer.

The thing is, most of my books don’t fit into any one obvious genre.

My stories mostly have supernatural or science fiction elements, but even so, they range
over a variety of topics. When I published my first book of short stories, “Take One at Bedtime”, reviewers wanted to know why they didn’t have a common theme. Only one spotted that it did have a theme and that theme was revenge. It’s not exactly a genre, though, is it?

Of my novels to date:

“Domingo’s Angel” is a romance, but also historical fiction, about how one small mountain village lived through the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s fascist regime.

“All in the Mind” is a story about an old woman who progressively gets
younger. It won a science fiction award, but it’s not just science fiction – a great deal of it is about life during the Second World War in England, with a deviation into what it is like for ethnic Indian people in England and in modern day India.

“The Owl Goddess” is a re-writing of the Greek myths according to von Däniken’s theory that the gods were spacemen. Is it science fiction, or fantasy? Both perhaps.

And finally “The Cottage at the End of the World is a dystopian
vision of how a small group of people on an isolated farm survive COVID and the collapse of civilization after the onset of a second, very different plague.

 

None of them bear much relation to each other and what is perhaps even more surprising and rather odd is that none of them are in the genre which I most enjoy reading myself – detective fiction.

I’ve often wondered why, when I read so many, I have never had an idea for writing one.

Until now, that is . . .

To be fair, “A Gift for Murder” began as a short horror story. I can’t tell you what it would have been because the main scenario is the climax to the novel and if I told you it would be, in effect, a spoiler and I would have to kill you.

What happened was that the night I had the idea for the story, I had a dream of a hand floating in water and I woke up wondering how on earth it got there. What kind of a person would cut off someone’s hand and throw it in the river?

I imagined someone finding it and what their reaction would be – and that’s the point at which the story started writing itself and I could more or less sit back and let it get on with it.

It has turned out to be the longest book I have ever written and I loved writing it. My other obsession is with logic puzzles, and the satisfaction in presenting what is, in essence, a logic puzzle, planting all the clues and occasionally distracting from them, was an unexpected joy.

But where do the people come from?

A friend of mine, also an author, said to me recently that all your characters come from yourself, that there is part of you in each one. But I think I can honestly say that I have never been anything like Tommy Ross. Except that I think I am kind and I like good food and nice clothes and dogs, and I believe in the goodness of most people. Oh, all right then, Miki, you win.

But I don’t have his magic. Tommy Ross seems to understand people (and dogs) so well that he almost seems to be reading their minds.

I think he might be dangerous if he wasn’t on your side. His superior officer (and surrogate father), DI George Bradshaw admires Tommy for his sheer doggedness. When Tommy Ross wanted to achieve something he held on to it like a dog with a bone and he wouldn’t let go until he’d mastered it.

I had intended George to be the hero detective and, although he is a detective and also a hero, once Tommy Ross appeared, he took central stage and it was him I cared about most of all.

He is, in essence, a boy my son brought home one day. He was homeless and barefoot and had nowhere to sleep that night. Unlike Tommy Ross, he was not an orphan, but he shared Tommy’s lack of formal education, his intelligence and his great desire to please. He stayed with us for a few months, until the Night Shelter offered him a proper paid job with free accommodation.

I also used to work with a delightful man who came from a family of travelling horse traders and who loved new words.

I have sadly lost touch with both of them. I hope they are living long and happy lives.

In the meantime, Tommy Ross lives on. I can’t get him out of my head. It is just about a year after he solved the mystery of the severed hand and he has settled down to the more mundane world of everyday policing, when another murder is thrust upon him.

I can’t wait to find out what happens.

A Gift for Murder is available free on Kindle Unlimited, or can be bought as an e-book or paperback from any Amazon store:

Amazon UK:  

Amazon US

Joshua found the girl shivering in the stream, clutching a severed hand.

              Horrific as that was, it was not the worst thing.

              The worst thing was the nightmares.

              The monster was coming. It was coming through the corn. Every night it came                  closer.

             And it was coming to kill.

            For PC Tommy Ross this was his first murder case. And he had no idea how to solve it. How do you find a killer when you can’t even find the body?

Not One but Two #Romances #Free for your #Kindle this Valentines weekend

The stores are overflowing with velvety, red roses, heaving with heart-shaped chocolates and golden bottles of champagne; some with provocative lingerie and others with cuddly toys, cute nightwear and cosy slippers, in an attempt to show they cater to all styles and tastes.  And I thought: why shouldn't I?

So, to celebrate Valentine's long weekend, I'm making two of my best romances free for you to download to your Kindle from Amazon this weekend only.  I hope you enjoy one, or both of them.

The Nightclub - a contemporary romance with suspense:

When cash-strapped Laura becomes a nightclub hostess and finds love, she learns that a world of sex, drugs and corruption is not a good place for either her, or love to survive.

Download your free copy from Friday February 11th, only from Amazon:  Getbook.at/TheNightclub

Shopping for Love - a contemporary romance

Primary school teacher, Emma Bennett shops for an elderly neighbour, while software developer Greg Harper does the same for his aged grandfather.  

When two people shop out of love for others, it seems inevitable that they should find it for themselves.  But jealousy, spite, greed and corruption attack from all sides.  Will that push the price of love beyond their reach?

Download your free copy from Friday February 11th, only from Amazon:  Getbook.at/ShoppingForLove

Finding Writing Inspiration by Guest Author Savannah Cordova (@savannahcordova)

Where to Find Writing Inspiration When You Think There's Nowhere Left to Look

So you’ve re-read your favorite books, watched your favorite movies, even started a dream journal – anything to find inspiration for a new story. But, you’ve found nothing worth writing about.

Before you retire that pen and paper, check one more time. They say you always find what you’re looking for in the last place you look, so search a few more places for that pesky inspiration.

Here are my five favorite places to find writing inspiration. They’re free, easy, and instant, and I always have something to write about every time I sit down to write. And now you can too.

Music that tells a story

Take a scroll through your music library. What do your favorite songs say? Songs tell a story as much
as prose does, so put your music on shuffle and really listen to the lyrics. 

You can find an entire story condensed into the four-minute run time of a song. What does the artist choose to highlight in those precious few minutes? Let’s look at “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey as an example. The lyrics present us with vignettes of different scenes. We see images of midnight trains and busy street corners. We even smell a few of the characters in this song. There’s a lot of life being lived in the lyrics of “Don’t Stop Believing”. 

But, even with so much given to us, there’s a lot happening under the lyrics. We only see characters for a single verse, but the chorus of the song connects them all to the same sense of longing — of looking for more out of life. So what’s happening with these characters? Why did Journey choose to highlight them? And what do we think happens to them after the song finishes?

Create character profiles for the characters in your favorite songs. Tell us what’s happening to them before and after the four minutes of lyrics we get about them. Extrapolate a backstory from the information given in the song. Give them a voice and actions. Put them in new scenarios. When you’re writing, check out our favorite writing playlists for each genre.

Art with a story

If you’re a writer, you’re an artist. You’re creating art every time you sit down to write. So, why not look to fine art to inspire your own? Fine artists often tell a story in their work, leaving the viewers to decipher it for themselves.

Take Georges Suerat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” as an example. 

There is a lot going on here. The longer you look at this painting, the more you see happening. There are children running around, rowers on the water, and, in the foreground, a lady with a monkey on a leash. Take the woman standing at the water’s edge in the yellow hat. Maybe she’s in conflict with the woman sitting behind her. What could they be arguing about?

There are thousands of stories waiting to be seen in this painting. We can only glimpse a fraction of a second of these people’s lives, so we’re forced to imagine who they are, where they came from, and what they’ll go on to do.

Take a trip to a local museum or a virtual tour of one you’ve always wanted to visit and pick something that speaks to you. What is it saying?

Bonus: Art work is a brilliant thing to practice your ‘show don’t tell’ skills with. We’re shown so much in this work – how can you show just as much with prose?

Pictures with a thousands words to say

Much like art, a photograph can tell you so much about a person. Take out an old box of photos your
parents actually had developed, or check out that coffee table photography book. What photos catch your attention? Take note of why. 

This exercise may spark memories of your own life story, but maybe you find a photograph that you have no background knowledge on. What does the photo say to you? What do you imagine happening before and after this photo was taken?

You can even pick a handful of photos and write a story that links them all together. Include the details that made each photo stand out to you.

Stories unfolding around you

As writers, our biggest job is to start noticing. Notice what’s happening around you while you’re out for the day. Notice the way the grass smells, notice how people do that half-run-half-walk thing as they cross the street. Go to a cafe and eavesdrop a little on what people are talking about. Take in as many details about your day as you can.

Take notes of what you notice. Whether you carry a notebook with you and write things down everywhere you go, or journal at the end of your day, it’s important to really soak in what you’ve noticed. Add these details to stories you’re writing, or use them to launch a new narrative.

Did the clerk at the grocery store say something that caught you off guard as he was packing your groceries? Maybe the bank has a distinctive smell of fake leather chairs, pen ink, and hand sanitizer. That person you overheard on the phone, what’s their life story? These details are real, and will help bring your prose to life. It may even help spark your creativity to start writing again.

Inspiration on the go

No matter how you’re collecting inspiration for your writing, take note of it. Whether in your phone’s
notes apps or in an analog notebook, keep a running list of what stands out to you during the day. Do some journaling in this log as well. Write scenes of what’s unfolding around you, write the story points you’ve uncovered from a photo or song, or scribble your 3am I-just-woke-up-from-the-weirdest-dream thoughts here. 

You’ll create a never-emptying well of ideas and passages to draw from for a new short story. The key to this is that this log should be uncensored. Don’t judge this writing, it’s not for publication — it’s all for you to work through ideas and keep gold nuggets of inspiration in.

Having an idea log can save you so much time in your writing sessions. Instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what in heavens you’ll write today, scan your notes for anything that jumps out at you at the moment and run with it.

The more you open yourself up to unusual inspiration, the more you’ll find. As writers, we can’t sit and wait for inspiration to strike, or we may never write another word again. Go out and find your own inspiration — and then lock it away in your notes so it can never escape you.

Savannah Cordova is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys reading contemporary fiction, listening to audiobooks, and writing short stories.