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7th July 2026 Process of Writing

I thought I'd try to describe the process of writing, especially as regards my latest release "Murder at the Mansion"

Unlike most authors, I do not write a plotline or do any pre-planning. I let the creative process run itself. I start off with a seed of an idea and let the story almost write itself. I am aware that this probably makes for an unusual style and that some readers might not like the style that comes out of the process. But that is how I write.

In the case of " Murder at the Mansion", I started out with a murder and a rather clichéd detective and his sidekick who is hopeless at following clues. Of course, I had to throw in a resentful, impatient police detective.

I decided to set it after World War Two when homosexuality was illegal, as I thought it would be interesting to describe a young man's thoughts, feelings and fears. He has a very difficult struggle over how men like him are treated after the war.

Next, I created a bunch of characters and amused myself by giving them silly, suggestive names along the smutty lines of the British "Carry On" movies. The name I liked the best was the well-endowed "Dixie Normous". Some readers might not like the names, but I did have fun making them up.

At this point I had the murder and the suspects, but as the writer I had no idea who the murderer was. Sometimes, I wonder where the ideas come from, when they are not pre-planned.

A rather strange thing happens when writing: things that I write become explainable by later things that I haven't written yet! This is a fascinating process where the story explains things to me, the author! I write something, and then realise" "oh, that is why such and such a thing happened earlier!"

Meanwhile I wrote deeply homoerotic scenes laced through multiple murders.

Towards the end of the book, the murders were "solved" in my mind and got written down in a clichéd ending in the style of a Miss Marple or Poirot. The solution was explained to me, the author, by the events that I had already written, in the same way as the detective explains it to the suspects.

I think this might be quite an unusual way of writing but is the process I have used in most of my over twenty novels. I hope some readers enjoy it.

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