I ask this question many times each year but even more so now. Why don’t I write a nice simple whodunit set in a bakery with a woman who is a former lawyer and a man who is a lumberjack/ veterinarian, wears plaid flannel shirts but has a heart of gold under the rugged exterior ? Instead I create the Molly Murphy series that requires more research than a PhD thesis and stand alone novels that have multiple stories in various time periods and the stories have to intersect, impact each other and end with everything tied up satisfactorily
The one I’ve given myself now, with the working title FROM SEA TO SKYE-- is a doozy ( does anyone use that word any more?). 
It takes place at a castle like this.
I’ve an elderly woman with dementia who can’t finish the book she is writing set on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. The young writer she has hired to finish it. The young writer goes to the island of Skye and finds what she thought was fiction was really true, only much earlier and may involve the elderly lady although this isn’t possible as she is Australian.
So I’ve got the same story essentially being told in 3 time periods, one having been written by an elderly woman with dementia in a different style from the rest of her famous series. In the telling of each story we find a clue to the truth. And we have a couple of the sort of twists when the reader will scream “What???” The sort of twist that will change the perception of the whole story. Like Debs’ Dreaming of the Bones which was so brilliant
I’m about halfway through and have more or less completed the amount of the written story the elderly writer has finished before she couldn't continue. So now I have to retell it as the young writer experiences it on Skye without being repetitive.
And being me I like a touch of romance but I have no idea where that might come in. A handsome lumberjack should be getting ready to come through the door on the island of Skye! At least I know how it has to end this time. It's the getting there that is like walking through a maze. After The Rose Arbor you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about having various time periods and various stories woven together.
I’m thinking of dropping writing and taking up crochet!
So Reddies: do you like complicated stories or do you prefer straightforward ones? (My stand alone that comes out in August is one woman's story, told from start to finish with no jumping around. Bliss!)
