Well, we are finally here, the day of publication of book 3 in the Morgan Morales Murder Mystery Series - Deadlier than the Male.
There are some writers who say that the writing is the easy part, whilst others liken it to some kind of divine agony, with months spent tearing out their hair.
Some authors say the book writes itself, and I think I am that kind of writer. I start out with a vague idea of what the book will be about. Luckily since book one I have two of the protagonists securely in their place - my dear friend Dave Morgan and our dear friend Juan Antonio Morales. And yes, they do feel like dear friends to me. We have been journeying together for quite a few years, probably since about 2014!
Then in book 2, O What a Tangled Web! we met Sarah, and she immediately became a member of the now happy trio, well happy most of the time! As we know, Morgan and Morales butt heads occasionally, but they will never go so far as to not remain friends, and now they have Sarah in the mix, she will, I am sure, tell them to behave when they get stroppy with each other!
So, getting back to the book sort of writing itself. As I said, I have a vague idea, a premise, an outline of what the book will contain, story wise. Often, I will write the prologue and then a sketchy final chapter and the epilogue. Its after that the book starts to write itself, I think of some characters, build them up in my mind, work out their place in the book … and write.
All of the three books so far in the series are stand alone, they are a complete story within themselves, with a start and finish. I plan for that to continue but, it is not just the fact that the characters of Morgan, Morales and Sarah appear in all of the books, I am trying to build their relationships and their dynamics within the trio.
Sarah plays a very big part in this latest book and, without giving it all away, she also takes on a new role and is crucial to the storyline with her intuition coming into play, seeing things that Morgan and Morales failed to see.
One of the things that happened lately was that I suddenly had a good idea. There was mention of a freebie newspaper, every area of Spain where there are a considerable number of ex-pats, have free newspapers, sometimes with very little news, but possibly some interesting articles, perhaps a puzzle page, and lots of advertisements, which pay for the printing of the paper.
So, I thought that, instead of just putting “freebie newspaper”, I would name an actual newspaper. The one that is most prevalent in this area where I live actually has a wider audience stretching along all the east and south coasts of Spain, together with the Island of Majorca, and is called the Euro Weekly News.
Well, I found out where their head office was and proposed that, if I put Euro Weekly News instead of freebie newspaper, then could they put an article in their paper about my new book, and they were happy to! Also, it appeared on their website as well. Always nice to get a bit of “free” advertising.
Another thing is, during the interview the journalist asked me what genre I write in and, before I could answer, asked if it was “cozy mystery”, as that seemed to be a very prevalent and popular genre. I replied that I did not believe that cozy mysteries had any spicy bits in them, which my books do have. Oh, he said, in that case it must be a spicy cozy mystery”. Let's hope that becomes even more popular than the tamer version!
So here we are, book three is published. Well, book three is published in English, I shall have to get on to the Spanish version soon!
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