What We're Writing--Debs and Garden(s)

DEBORAH CROMBIE: The last time What We're Writing Week rolled around, I was celebrating the birth of my brand new granddaughter (and NOT WRITING, at least for a few days.) Now, I can hardly believe that little Wren will be two months old on Sunday. How time flies with babies!  (She is absolutely adorable, by the way.)

Too bad it doesn't fly for me when I'm writing... But you all know by now that I am the slowest writer in the universe. Well, maybe the second slowest... (poking Julia here, grin.) 

But I'm making great progress on Garden of Lamentations, having got past what my quilter friend calls the "ugly quilt" stage. This is where you get a little way into what you thought was going to be the PERFECT book, and you start to think, "This is THE worst idea for a book, ever. It will never work. Why did I think I could write this????" It happens with every book, without fail. I recognize it for what it is, but somehow that doesn't make it any easier to deal with. I also know that the ONLY way to get past it is to WRITE. (Can I make those caps any bigger?) And I do eventually work out those details that seemed completely unmanageable, and then it starts to be fun.

I'm on the downhill now, and having a great time.

One of the things I'm loving about this book is creating my imaginary garden in Notting Hill. This is an enclosed residential garden (remember the garden that Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts climb into in Notting Hill?) but some of my inspiration for the landscape has come from Cannizaro Park in Wimbledon, just south of London. This is a Grade II listed park, small but much grander than my little fictional garden.  But the nice thing about fiction is that you can borrow as much as you like. Oh, and the garden is locked, just to make things more interesting...

Here's a snippet to give you a feel for the garden. Gemma, along with DCI Kerry Boatman, is investigating the death of a young woman, a nanny employed by one of the garden's residents. It's mid-May, so the azaleas and rhododendrons are in full flower.

“I’m getting the crime scene team on this,” Kerry Boatman said when Glenn had left them. “Although I don't think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that there’s anything left to find.” Putting her phone to her ear, she walked away from Gemma and began to pace up and down on the gravel path as she talked.

Gemma moved into a patch of shade and stood, gazing at the spot where Reagan Keating’s body had lain. Why this spot, at the edge of the glade? Did it have some special significance? Was there any possibility the body had been moved here? Kate Ling hadn’t mentioned lividity. Pulling out the little notebook she still carried in her bag, phone notwithstanding, she jotted a reminder to herself to check.

The tree was beautiful, as perfect as a drawing in a children’s picture book, set against the green sweep of lawn. What was it called in some of the old books Kit read aloud to Toby? Greensward, that was it. It had an Old English sound that made Gemma think of knights and enchantments. Or maybe she was just associating the way the girl had been described—laid out like a sleeping princess. She needed to see the crime scene photos for herself.

The turf showed no evidence of a struggle, although she did find a length of foot-wide parallel indentations at the edge of the path. Gemma thought it likely they had been made by the mortuary gurney, but there was always a possibility that it had been something else—a cart or a wagon, used if the body had been moved. She made another note, then looked up, trying to see how this spot related to the rest of the garden. Was it visible from the nearby houses?

She thought the trees and shrubs would have screened it completely from the houses on the left side of the garden. On the right, the small private gardens were dense with shrubs and flowering plants, although she thought it might be just possible to see the patch of lawn from the upper windows of the nearest houses. That left the approach from the center of the garden.

There, casual beds of azaleas swooped down towards the formal beds in the garden’s center, the riot of color punctuated by clumps of spent tulips and daffodils. Gemma thought a witness would have to have been quite close to have had an unimpeded view. She wondered how much light there had been late on Friday evening. The tall houses themselves would block any illumination from street lamps in the surrounding area.

It had been a very private place to die.

REDS and readers, whether dealing with books or projects, what hints do you having for conquering "ugly quilt" syndrome?