A New Way of Working

December 2025 saw the release of a new genre to me. Grave Concerns is a cosy murder mystery set in the idyllic village of Myrtleberry Dell. Of course, because I’m a fantasy writer, it also has a fantasy twist to it, so, as one reader put it, Myrtleberry Dell is a cross between Midsommer and Hogsmeade.

The idea to write a murder mystery came to me in 2023 when I considered doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I needed something contained, rather than an add on to my existing series and after watching a couple of talks on the subject, decided to give it a go.

It was really hard!

Normally, I’m a pantser, writing whatever comes into my head without knowing the journey in advance – although I usually have a destination in mind. You can’t write like that with a murder mystery. You have to know your suspects, your clues, and your red herrings before you put one word on the page.

I also write my first drafts by hand. I find it helps my creativity and also acts as a sort of planning exercise. It’s messy and scribbled with alterations and asterisks everywhere as I work through my story. Having to log my word count daily meant that, rather than counting every word I’d written in a notebook, I decided to write directly on my laptop.

This proved to be an added difficulty, as that is how I usually edit the first draft of my books. I found myself deleting stuff and rewriting, getting bogged down in details, and researching instead of getting the words on the page.

Consequently, I barely made the word target of 50,000, and only then because I added other scenes at the end to bulk it up. It needed a fair amount of editing before I was able to release it.

Maisie was very keen to have another mystery to solve, so when NaNo came around again, I decided to write A Fete Worse than Death. This time, I was better prepared. I did quite a bit of planning beforehand with suspect and clue sheets, a plot outline, and a plan. The first part was writing the draft in a notebook and estimating the number of words per page. Then I rewrote the story on my laptop, still editing as I went, but having a clear idea of where I was going.

Because of that, I hit my 50k target even though my manuscript came in at just under 40k.

Last December, I reread it and discovered to my horror, that I’d actually left one of the main suspects out of the narrative until the very end. Again, I have had a lot of editing to do before passing it to my beta readers.

Nano is no more because of controversies surrounding it, but ProWriting Aid decided to host Novel November for those of us who find it really helpful to kick start our work. Maisie was, of course, called into service yet again, this time for Grave Concerns, and armed with the knowledge of two years of experience, I finally found the formula that works for me.

First, I created my six suspects, with motives, opportunities, and clues or red herrings. I also made a character list from the previous two books so I could reintroduce familiar people into the story. Then I wrote out a chapter-by-chapter plan of what was going to happen and what to include. All this was prepared in the month or so leading up to the November 1^st start date.

It didn’t go quite as planned, because my brain still insists on editing as I write. I also found myself deviating from the plan after the first six chapters, but that was okay. I made a note of what I had added and highlighted the bits I still had to include, and it worked.

I didn’t reach my target of 50k, although I could argue that all the work that went on beforehand should be counted in the total, but what I do have is a complete novel with all the elements included. I won’t know until I reread it in a years’ time whether it works completely, but my gut feeling is that it won’t need a lot of work, at least not on the plot.

What started as a fun exercise has become an important string in my bow. Myrtleberry Dell is growing as I add more and more to the world. My intention is to use NovNov to write each book, and I have already printed off the resources ready for 2026.

Maisie is delighted.