Hannah Dennison on Writing Rituals.

 RHYS BOWEN:  I'm so happy to include my good friend Hannah Dennison in my week of celebration this week. Hannah and I are fellow Brits. We used to meet for long chats, but since she's moved back to UK we have to meet for long Facetimes. I miss her.  And I love her new series set in the Scilly Isles (not the silly isles) just off the coast of Cornwall. So it's great to welcome her here today.

HANNAH DENNISON: It’s so great to be back posting on Jungle Red today. Thank you, Rhys, for inviting me. My second adventure in the Island Sisters Mysteries, Danger at the Cove, came out mid-August and this is the tail end of an intense couple of months of promoting it. For those who aren’t familiar with my new series – or, by some miracle, missed seeing all the hoop-la, it’s set on Tregarrick, a fictional island in the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago twenty-eight miles off the southwest Cornish coast. As the series title suggests (how I longed to call it the Scilly Sisters, Rhys’s idea and sadly, out voted by my publisher), the series is about two sisters who find themselves chatelaines of a crumbling Art Deco hotel and naturally, murder and mayhem ensue.

 For the last two years I have been working flat out writing two books at the same time (I don’t know how anyone writes three) and continuing to work virtually as a Miss Moneypenny for my boss in Los Angeles. As you know there is a time difference of eight hours which, because I now live in England is eight-hours behind. I have a lot of late nights.

 But now I am in the no-deadline zone for three more weeks before I start writing the next book and I am feeling discombobulated. I’ve finished mucking out my office (I had horses growing up, trust me, it’s an accurate description) and have caught up with chores and friends who thought I went to Mars, but I am still floating around in my pajamas until 11:00 AM.

 The pajama “thing” started fifteen years ago when I got up at 4.30 A.M every morning so I could write before heading off to work in downtown LA. I’d get straight out of bed, collect three cups of coffee (two with foil on top to keep the heat in) and climb into the bed in the guest room – all made up with nice pillows and linens—with my laptop and my cat Mister Tig who has long gone. I’d stay put for two to three hours, not leaving that spot. At weekends, I’d get up a little later, but then I’d be in my pajamas a little later, too.

 Without realizing it, I’d created a ritual. It had become an important part of my creative process. Anne Lamott, in her wonderful book, Bird by Bird mentions donning lucky socks; Christa Faust says her office must be immaculately tidy before she can even begin to write; Stephen King goes through these motions when he sits down to write; "I have a glass of water, or I have a cup of tea. I have my vitamin pill I have my music; I have my same seat; and the papers are all arranged in the same places.” Jill Mansell says she can’t start without a mound of jellybeans—another admits to having the television on playing reruns of CSI with the sound on mute. One of my students—a Methodist minister who lives in Wales—told me that before he writes his sermon, he drapes a scarf around the back of his chair and lights a candle.

The same is often true for readers. My sister only reads in her special reading chair in the corner of her sitting room, my mother must have a gin and tonic on hand and me, I must have something to graze – preferably chocolate. Unfortunately, I’m quite sure that does not qualify as a ritual but as a bad habit.

 Sometimes I worry that my pajama ritual has become a bad habit, too. Of course, I can write fully dressed (!) but not those early drafts. That initial part of my writing process comes from the subconscious muse. When I wake up in the morning, I must go straight to my laptop. If I stop to shower, it’ll take me a while to get into my creative groove. Does anyone remember Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way (1992)? She talks of “morning pages” – the stream of consciousness that spills onto the page immediately on waking before the distractions of the day take over. Although I no longer do morning pages, the discipline has stuck, and it’s become an unbreakable – and very good, habit.

 There is a big difference between habits and rituals. A habit is an activity you have repeated so often that it becomes automatic like brushing teeth or mindlessly eating popcorn when watching a movie (my guilty pleasure). There is very little energy or thought that goes into it.  A ritual is the exact opposite of a habit because there’s an energy, and a commitment behind it. It’s a conscious preparation and an intention that needs to be honored.

 As fellow writers and readers, do you have rituals that have become habits or vice versa? I’d love to hear what they are. Perhaps one of them might inspire me to replace my pajamas with something a little more professional.

 BIO

British born; Hannah originally moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting. She has been an obituary reporter, antique dealer, private jet flight attendant and Hollywood story analyst. Hannah has served on numerous judging committees for Mystery Writers of America and teaches mystery writing workshops for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program now on Zoom. After twenty-five years living on the West Coast, Hannah returned to the UK where she shares her life with two high-spirited Hungarian Vizslas.

Hannah writes the Island Sisters Mysteries (Minotaur), the Honeychurch Hall Mysteries (Constable) and the Vicky Hill Mysteries (Constable)

 

Social Media Links

https://www.hannahdennison.com  

https://twitter.com/HannahLDennison

http://instagram.com/hannahdennisonbooks         

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Death at High Tide by Hannah Dennison

Jenn McKinlay: I am absolutely thrilled to have one of my very favorite wine drinking pals, um, writing mates visiting all the way from the gorgeous Devon countryside to celebrate her latest release DEATH AT HIGH TIDE. Hannah and I have been friends for many years and many series now, and I am always pleased to see her even if it’s mostly on Facetime these days when we do one of our marathon catchups. Hi, Hannah! Welcome to the blog!

Available Now!

Hannah Dennison: Thanks so much for inviting me to Jungle Red Writers today. I have been a guest on this amazing blog a few times now and I feel very honored to have been invited back!

Eighteen months ago my domestic situation changed in a way that I could never have imagined. After twenty-five years of living in California followed by a short stint in Oregon, I found myself moving back home with my two Hungarian Vizslas, for good.  

My daughter picked me up at Heathrow airport and drove the two hundred miles to a tiny hamlet in south Devon where my sister Lesley was waiting in what would become my new home—a beautiful barn conversion that she had found for me to rent—along with a bottle of celebratory champagne. 

Although we’d been super close growing up, Lesley and I had drifted apart as the years passed, especially after my move overseas. As the oldest, I used to be the bossy one but I discovered that it was Lesley now who ruled the proverbial roost. As my mother, (a feisty ninety-year-old), said, “Your sister holds the rolling pin.”  

Lesley is a force of nature and has to be one of the most optimistic people I know. As a single mother of three grown-up sons, her life hadn’t been easy. She’s been an Avon rep, Brown Owl for the local Brownie pack and was a Weightwatchers lecturer for two decades. These days she works as an estate manager for a country house that was the location for the recent remake of My Cousin Rachel that starred Rachel Weisz. 

A relationship with a sister is like no other. Who else can I belt out songs from Queen, Genesis and David Bowie with or drive our mother to distraction with our signature—and disgusting—Hot Snot Bogey Pie schoolyard rhyme?

Sisterhood can be both wonderful and challenging. I find that being labeled Eeyore to her Tigger is still extremely irritating. “That was fifty years ago,” I’d grumble, sounding very Eeyore-like. If I were any character in the Pooh stories it would have to be Kanga. 

That’s the thing about sisters. They have a knack of telling it like it is. They also have an amazing ability to recall embarrassing moments that we’d much rather forget. But it was Lesley who insisted that I’d always wanted to be a writer—something I hotly denied. 

But six weeks ago, whilst going through old photo albums and storage boxes my sister presented me with a few handwritten pages with the words First Draft scrawled in pencil. “You see,” she said triumphantly. “You always wanted to be a writer.”

This First Draft was a murder-mystery story about two sisters, “one scatterbrained and one practical” that find a dead gamekeeper in the forest. I must have been twelve when I wrote it and even though it was, literally, just a first draft I was surprised that I had actually plotted the whole story out with bullet points. I honestly couldn’t remember writing it. Of course after that first rush of excitement Lesley presented me with another envelope. “Oh, and here’s that rejection letter from Woman’s Own magazine.” And it was at that moment I knew why I’d buried my writing dream. 

It concerned a love story that my twelve-year old innocent self (who had never been kissed) had sent off to a woman’s magazine. The return of my short story with NO, written in big red letters across the generic buck slip promptly stopped me picking up my pen again for a very long time.

Hannah and Leslie in a helicopter on a research trip 

So it seems fitting that my new series is about those two sisters but Death at High Tide was already in production when we found First Draft in that storage box. It must have been percolating in my sub-conscious for decades. In Death at High Tide there is no gamekeeper in the forest but there is plenty of murder. But most of all it’s about sisterhood. 

There is a saying, “Sisters by blood, best friends by choice,” and to that I shout Amen!

What about you, Reds and Readers, any sister stories out there to share?  

What's being said: 
"Winning...Two murders and a high tide cutting off the police heighten the suspense. Intriguing characters and an intricate plot lift this twist on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Cozy fans will look forward to further skullduggery on Tregarrick." ―Publishers Weekly

"Thrilling....Vividly described setting, effective plot twists, and a strong portrayal of sisterly love distinguish this 'locked island' mystery." ―Booklist

DEATH AT HIGH TIDE released on Aug 18th! 

Death at High Tide is the delightful first installment in the Island Sisters series by Hannah Dennison, featuring two sisters who inherit an old hotel in the remote Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall and find it full of intrigue, danger, and romance.

When Evie Mead’s husband, Robert, suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, a mysterious note is found among his possessions. It indicates that Evie may own the rights to an old hotel on Tregarrick Rock, one of the Isles of Scilly. 

Still grieving, Evie is inclined to leave the matter to the accountant to sort out. Her sister Margot, however, flown in from her glamorous career in LA, has other plans. Envisioning a luxurious weekend getaway, she goes right ahead and buys two tickets—one way—to Tregarrick.

Once at the hotel—used in its heyday to house detective novelists, and more fixer-upper than spa resort, after all—Evie and Margot attempt to get to the bottom of things. But the foul-tempered hotel owner claims he's never met the late Robert, even after Evie finds framed photos of them—alongside Robert's first wife—in his office. The rest of the island inhabitants, ranging from an ex-con receptionist to a vicar who communicates with cats, aren't any easier to read.

But when a murder occurs at the hotel, and then another soon follows, frustration turns to desperation. There’s no getting off the island at high tide. And Evie and Margot, the only current visitors to Tregarrick, are suspects one and two. It falls to them to unravel secrets spanning generations—and several of their own—if they want to make it back alive.