RHYS BOWEN: Why do I do this to myself? I could stick to writing fun and funny mysteries in which my sleuth solves a murder in under three hundred pages. A linear plot. A cast of characters that I know and love.
Instead I set myself a challenge every year of writing something long and complicated.
Which is what I'm doing right now.
I'm writing yet another book set in two time periods with actually three story lines intertwining. One story involves an abandoned village in World War Two (remember I posted photos of it). Another involves a missing child in 1968, yet a third involves three little girls who vanished while being evacuated during the war, and... oh no, there's a fourth story line... the heroine's own personal story and what happened to her during her own childhood. And there is a love story ( of course. Have I ever been known to write a book without a touch of romance).
Each of these has to have clues that help to solve the others. We have to find out the clues in the correct order so that every revelation makes the reader go "Oooh, now I know what happened to that other child"
So it feels as if I'm juggling, constantly keeping several balls in the air, while at the same time filling in pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. This causes me to wake in the middle of the night thinking, "Wait. No we need to go to Devon and find the shop before she visits the ex girlfriend."
In spite of all this it's coming along quite well. I'm at page 265 with probably a hundred or so to go and I do know where I'm heading now. I'm currently calling it IN AN ABANDONED PLACE. But I'm also toying with THE LOST GIRLS, THE LAST LITTLE GIRL, MISSING, FLASHBACK etc etc. Suggestions welcome.
So here is a snippet. I've tried to decide what I can share with you that won't give too much away.
They came out through the gate and now started along the village street. In what had been cottage gardens weeds now ran rampant, brambles tumbled over walls. There was no sign that people had once lived here, no washing on a clothes line, no toy dropped when a child was called in to a meal. Nothing.
“This is all there was of it?” Marisa looked around. ‘Hardly much of a village.”
“There was a big house too, off to one side up there,” Dave said. “I think the village was built for the bloke who owned it. So he had his workers living on the spot. Or perhaps some of them were fishermen. There was a harbor.”
They continued forward, stepping over the great fissures and craters that had formed.
“They certainly gave this place a beating,” Marisa said. She looked back at Liz.
Liz was standing, staring down the street, frowning.
“What’s the matter, Liz?” Marisa asked. “Have you spotted something?”
“I’ve been here before,” she said in a puzzled voice..
“You can’t have,” Dave said, chuckling. “It’s been off limits since the war. It was taken over by the army in 1943 to prepare for the invasion. You weren’t even born, were you?”
“I was born in 1941,” Liz said.
“So you’d only have been two when the people were turned out,” Dave said. “You don’t remember much from when you are two, do you? I know I don’t.”
“They say some people remember their birth,” Marisa said. “That’s why they are claustrophobic, coming down that long dark tunnel.” And she laughed.
Liz was still frowning, looking around her. “I’m sure I was here once.”
“Maybe another village like it. There’s plenty of them on the coast here,” Dave said. “But probably not during the war. The coast was mostly off limits for civilians. They had mines and tank traps on the beaches. And this wouldn’t have been the sort of place you’d come on holiday. No hotels or caravan parks nearby in those days.”
Liz shook her head. “I can’t remember anything else. It just came to me that I’d been here. I’ve no idea when.”
“Like I said, it would have to have been before 1943 and you’d only have been a toddler.”
They continued walking. Liz stopped, looking up at the shell of what once had been the two story building. “There was a pub called The Big Boat,” she said.
“The Big Boat?” Dave looked amused. He examined the building. “I suppose that could have been the pub. It’s the only big building on the street.” He trod gingerly over to where a door had once been and peered inside. “Can’t see much in here,” he said. “just rubble where the upstairs floor has caved in.”
“But there is a metal hook on the side,” Marisa said. “Where a pub sign might have hung once.”
She too tiptoed forward and peered into tall grass. Then she stopped, looked up, her mouth open. “There’s a pub sign,” she said.
Liz and Dave went to look. The painting on it was faded and discolored but they could just make out the shape of a ship in full sail and the words THE GOLDEN HINDE.
Just one of the puzzle pieces. Hopefully all will be clear by the end, and will make sense! AND the reader will be able to follow.
So do you like complicated books like this or do you prefer the straightforward whodunit?
