Zoë Sharp's FIFTH VICTIM

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Today I have the great pleasure of interviewing my blog sister, Zoë Sharp, on her new book, the ninth in the Charlie Fox series: FIFTH VICTIM.

 

To introduce the interview, I started thinking back to the first few times I met Our Zoë.  And I realized when I first met her, I was intimidated. Now, that’s not something you’ll hear me saying often, about anyone. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I was intimidated because I knew I couldn’t fool her. Writers are perceptive people as a species, but even so I think most people tend to buy my public persona.  Which is not NOT me, it’s just not ALL of me.  With Zoë – I knew that wouldn’t work, not for two seconds. There was going to be no hiding anything from this woman.  I didn’t know how I felt about that, so I hung back until I knew her better.  (It was worth the wait!)

Zoë’s heroine Charlie Fox is that way. You cannot get anything by her; she sees to the core of people and also to the core of situations. She has a wry sense of humor and she can take the piss out of anyone (how’s that for British?) without even trying. But she also has this aura that is pure, white-hot power. You do NOT want to mess with this woman.  You especially want to be careful when she gets still. And if you were in trouble, this is the first person you would want to have watching your back.

Just exactly what you would want in a bodyguard.

We sat down over our computers, transatlantically, to talk about the book.

FIFTH VICTIM  

On Long Island, the playground of New York’s wealthy and privileged, Charlie Fox is tasked with protecting the wayward daughter of rich businesswoman Caroline Willner. It seems that an alarming number of the girl’s circle of friends have been through kidnap ordeals, and Charlie quickly discovers that the girl herself, Dina, is fascinated by the clique formed by these former victims.

Charlie worries that Dina's thrill-seeking tendencies will put both of them in real danger. But just as her worst fears are realized, Charlie receives devastating personal news. The man who put her partner Sean Meyer in his coma is on the loose.

She is faced with the choice between her loyalties to her client and avenging Sean, but the two goals are soon inextricably linked. The decisions Charlie makes now, and the path she chooses to follow, will have far-reaching consequences.

Alex: So how do you research the habits and habitats of the wealthy and privileged?  Enquiring minds want to know. 

Zoë: My day job used to involve a lot of writing about classic cars – often very expensive and rare vehicles that were, by their definition, owned by people with a lot of disposable income. Spending any time of time around these people tells you that the rich are another country – they do things differently there. For the families I describe in FIFTH VICTIM, I guess I just built on that experience and took the next instinctive leap forwards.

Alex: Well, I love how completely unfazed Charlie is by all of it - her dry nonchalance is a riot. Also I noticed Charlie's pretty comfortable around horses and slings that terminology around like a pro. Did you grow up riding?  Do you still?

Zoë: I confess that I did grow up with horses. In fact, my only professional qualification is as a British Horse Society riding instructor. It struck me when I started planning FIFTH VICTIM that I’d  never used this knowledge in any of the books, and yet I’d made mention  of Charlie having horses in her background, so I thought I’d like it to  play a larger role. Besides anything else, it fitted into the story so nicely, in a way that tennis lessons, say, simply would not have done.

Alex: Wow, I didn't know that about you, although you do have the aura. I thought it was clever how Charlie uses the horse in that one fight scene. So obvious, and yet I've never seen it before.

Okay, since we’re kind of on the subject, when I blog and teach I'm always reminding my readers/students that people read books and watch movies for a vicarious experience. In FIFTH VICTIM you take us into the rarefied world of the Hamptons, the horse culture, the yacht culture.  As an author, do you consciously use settings like this to provide a fantasy experience for your readers? 

Zoë: Not especially, although for people to require close protection, often by definition they have the most to lose. The higher the stakes, the greater the conflict, and I like to put Charlie in situations of conflict.

Alex: Speaking of conflict, you've got a great love triangle going on in FIFTH VICTIM (I'm Team Parker, if you're wondering).

Zoë: Are you? Hmm, interesting. I thought you’d be more of a fan of Sean’s bad-boy image.

Alex: Maybe I hit my limit in real life. But what I was wondering was - did that complication surprise you, or have you been plotting the triangle for years, now?

Zoë: I’d love to be able to say it was all planned from the start, but the truth is that the awkward relationship between Charlie and Sean and her boss, Parker Armstrong, was one of those things that developed more as the series went along. When I came to write this book and I was looking back, though, I was surprised to realise that there had been little signs previously that Parker looked on her as more than a simple employee. So it must have been fermenting away at a subconscious level somewhere. 

Alex: I love it when that happens, actually!

All right, now I have to ask about Torquil. He’s one of those wonderful love-to-hate-him characters. Just that name! You can refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate you, but is he anyone you know?

Zoë: Actually, Torquil is nobody I know – honest. OK, so there might be one or two traits I’ve observed in various people who shall definitely remain nameless, but nobody specific. I think that all through this book I was working on a theme of people appreciating what they have – or failing to appreciate it until it’s too late and they don’t have it any more by which time it’s too late to go back. I wanted to embody some of that feeling in one character in particular, and Torquil was it. 

Alex: That is the way it played out – I never expected to feel sympathy for him, but I did. 

A completely different question, but fascinating to a non-series writer: I like the way your number titles are always actually significant to the story!  Does your series name concept influence your plots at all, or do you have the plots first and then figure out how to integrate the proper number in as a clue or significant phrase?  Is it a hassle or does it actually inspire you?

Zoë: It’s both inspiring and a hassle – and totally confusing, as FIFTH VICTIM is actually the ninth book, not the fifth. See what I mean?

Alex: Oh, yike. That is confusing.

Zoë: I wrote the first three books (KILLER INSTINCT, RIOT ACT, HARD KNOCKS) before the title FIRST DROP arrived from the rollercoaster reference. I  had absolutely no idea that my first US publisher would jump on that  and want the next book they took (actually book six, as ROAD KILL came  after FIRST DROP) to be called SECOND Something. I’m dropping the numerical sequence for the next one, a New Orleans-set tale called DIE EASY.

Alex: And you know I can't wait for that one! Tell us a little about your research in my favorite city. 

Zoë: There’s a feel and a texture to New Orleans that really interested me. Plus the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing aftermath give the city a stark edge. People there spent a long time looking into the abyss and you can’t go through something like that and not emerge unchanged.  I was in New Orleans in mid 2010 – five years after Katrina – and some parts of it still look as though people evacuated and never went back. 

And although you look at the tourist areas and it’s all business as usual, there felt to be something defiant about it, something ever so slightly forced. I found that contrast fascinating. As an outsider I also felt there was a great sense of betrayal. Coming four years after 9/11 I think there was an expectation that if something really bad happened – whether a natural or man-made disaster, the government would be ready for it. Katrina proved they were not. 

Alex: Not ready or not willing. But you don’t even want to get me started on the betrayal surrounding Katrina!

So what's next for Charlie—besides that complicated love life? 

Zoë: That’s a good question. I’m planning to take a little break from her next so I can write something new. In 2011 I had a pretty full-on  Charlie Fox year, what with organising getting the backlist to e-book  format, plus I did the short story e-thology for which I wrote a brand  new 12,000-word long short, Truth And Lies, and then did another  Charlie short in December, Across The Broken Line, plus DIE EASY. So, I’d really like a breather, just to take stock with the character and the direction she’s moving in. Having said that, of course, an idea for the next book in the series has already been forming vaguely in the back of my mind. I shall try to keep it in check!  I’ll keep writing about Charlie for as long as people want to keep reading about her. As long as I continue to have avenues of her character that I feel I can explore – as long as she has something to say to me – then the interest is there for me as a writer. I keep putting her under pressure, whether it’s physical, emotional, or psychological, and I see what happens. So far she’s always come out fighting. 

Alex:  Was your first Charlie Fox book your first novel, or did you have a few practice novels before that? 

Zoë: I did write a novel when I was fifteen, which I wrote long-hand and  my father, bless him, typed up for me. It did go out to publishers and  received “rave rejections”. I believe it may still be in a box in the  attic. My father keeps threatening to dig it out and put it on eBay. I  just threaten him at this point … Charlie was, therefore, my first real novel, and although I rewrote KILLER INSTINCT several times the basic  core of the book stayed true to the original idea.

Alex: And you've now got all the first Charlie Fox books up as e-books.  Can we get a list, in order? 

Zoë: To try to diffuse the confusion I’ve added the book order into the titles. It just seemed the best way to do it.

The full list is:

KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one

RIOT ACT: Charlie Fox book two

HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three

FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

ROAD KILL: Charlie Fox book five

SECOND SHOT: Charlie Fox book six

THIRD STRIKE: Charlie Fox book seven

FOURTH DAY: Charlie Fox book eight

FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine

DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten – coming 2012!

And today we're giving away an e book to a randomly chosen commenter - any one of the first five Charlie books, winner's choice.

Thanks so much, Zoë!

Three Nuns, a Russian Drug Dealer and a Clown …

Zoë Sharp

I know this sounds like the start of a joke, and in some ways it is. A few years ago I was at a convention – it may even have been ITW – and members of the audience were asked to come up with an opening line for the panel members to pick at random out of a hat and run with.

I wrote:

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

The unlucky panelist who picked that one out?

Lee Child.

Did he run with it?

Of course – in his own inimitable style.

Has he entirely forgiven me?

Hmm, not sure about that one :)

So, when I was asked to contribute a piece about beginnings for a bulletin for the upcoming CWA Debut Dagger competition, held every year for unpublished authors by the British Crime Writers’ Association, this line sprang to mind.

And as an aside I asked competition entrants to complete the line in their own style. Here are some of the most entertaining, all of which will receive a copy of one of my e-books. And if anyone else would like to give it a whirl, I’ll give away another copy to the best effort!

Gary Ian David

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

Charlie fumbled desperately in the huge pockets of his unique suit. Out came streamers, sweeties, a disorientated live pigeon that flew to the roof and knocked itself out on a steel girder. A million silk hankies, a rubber sausage and a plastic hammer. A box of confetti exploded as he threw it away and a tramp caught an exploding cigar in mid flight. Children raced after the strange group of misfits, giggling, fighting over the clowns discarded novelties and falling over one another in their haste. A group of workmen did a fair interpretation of Benny Hill’s theme music as the group raced around, everyone chasing someone or something… all that was missing was The Keystone Cops. Wait for it… here they come. Nuns holding their skirts up, showing off their woollen stockings charged ahead of the drug dealer when he fell over and a bag of cocaine burst on the tiled floor. Yoshi Agnetha Yamashita pulled Aiko Frida Shoda back by her hair and screamed when her auburn wig came away in her hand. Michiko Benny Minamoto knocked his mate Atsushi Bjorn Takahashi over as they both struggled to head the nuns. Several uniformed police officers struggled at the back of the pack. The uniformed head of department stepped out in front of the charge and held his hand up. ‘Halt,’ he commanded. He was trampled underfoot. At last Charlie found his phone and held it to his ear. He stopped dead and the crowd ran over him. As they rushed toward a pair of glass doors, they slowly swung open… too slowly. The nuns crashed into them and as they fought one another a dwarf lifted up Sister Mary’s skirts and ran between her legs. He dived on top of the counter and grabbed the Walking, Talking, Weepy, Sleepy, Happy Chappy doll… the last one in the store… in fact the last one in the world. Camera crews filmed him holding the toy above his head and wealthy Harrods customers offered him obscene amounts of cash to part with it. He ignored their pleas and walked out with his head higher than anyone else’s in the store. On Christmas Day his son would be the envy of the world.

KJ Rabane

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

"Right so you say you've got the wine and the Russian rug runner-how are you getting on finding the Japanese arbour? The clown answers "they say Harrods is a store where you can find anything but I'm having trouble with the Japanese Abba. And this phone is hopeless I can hardly hear what you want. You should have written it down. What time did you say your mother was coming? By the way I'm wearing the clown outfit so I'll be ready for the kids when I get home."

Heath Gunn

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

"Waterloo, how does it feel you won the war", shrieked the ringtone, the clown, with his mop of thick orange hair, glanced over his shoulder, held up his empty hand and all nine of them stopped dead in their tracks next to some French extra mature cheddar cheese.

"Billy, Hi", gasped Thomas, the clown, "yes we are aware the fancy dress party started over an hour ago, and as soon as we beat our way to the tube we'll be there", "I know but unfortunately people who jump from railway bridges have little consideration for the timing of your birthday party". He rolled his eyes at his pursuing entourage just as Lydia, the Russian drug dealer, tapped impatiently on the face of her bright yellow wrist watch.

"Billy the quicker I get off the phone, the faster we can all run to the tube station. Yes I'll pick up some beers on the way, and vodka". With that Thomas slid his thumb over the smooth screen of his phone and with a nod of his head the unlikely looking group lurched on through the well lit food isle.

Jean Harrington

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

Three nuns and not one a virgin. Why should they be? Zoe loved sticking pins in stereotypes and that sexually innocent women were the world's most virtuous was one of her favorites. Take these three: a widow, a divorcee and a lesbian. They could probably write erotica if they so chose, but instead here they were in the Amazon fighting sin and snakes without a luxury or a lover among them. As she paddled downstream, they sat without speaking, waiting for their destiny to unfold, waiting perhaps to be pierced by a dart gun as they had been pierced by the Lord. But surely not by anything else.

Sandra Powley

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings...’

"Crap timing Ruth," gasped the panting clown, clutching the phone to her ear. "The flashmob’s gone pear-shaped here and store security are getting heavy. Wait up..." She ducked down an aisle. Three nuns and a Russian drug-dealer ran past, pursued by a bellowing Japanese Abba tribute band - struggling to gain any speed in their platform heels – followed by two hefty, wheezing security guards giving chase. As the strains of karaoke Water-roo faded, she pulled off her red nose, took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on the voice in her ear. "What do you mean Hitler’s been shot? I’ve got News at Ten filming him outside St Pauls in an hour." She pushed back her curly scarlet wig and scratched her scalp. "I know it’s short notice Ruth, but if Adam’s in hospital, I need a stand-in, so just get down to the protest camp for the news crew...Hang on."

Spotting a mountain of pannetone, she scooted over the lino like a commando and took cover. "Yes – and you also said that your rabbi is liberal...Hitler-Schmittler, Ruth - global economic crisis trumps religion," she hissed, replacing a dislodged package in the display. "I’ll call you from casualty, once I’ve seen Adam and found out who shot him – and while you’re sourcing your Third Reich outfit, have a look for your commitment." She put her phone in her pocket and ripped off her clown suit, scanning the food hall for a place to remove her make up.

Five minutes later, a middle-aged woman slipped out of the ladies room, wearing jeans and tassled loafers with a smart jumper and a Liberty scarf. Her face was bare and a navy beret masked her wig-flattened blonde hair. She took a pair of Prada-framed glasses from her expensive leather handbag, pausing for a moment to browse a row of preserves before she hurried off, empty handed.

Marian Crowe moved purposefully, navigating the crowded streets to the Royal Free Hospital, unaware that her journey was pointless. Adam had been dead for forty-seven minutes and his body had already been relocated by The Service.

Michael Higgins

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings.

"Yes, Mr. President?" said Jo-E, a smile on his face, well he always had a smile on his face, as he slammed open the leather-padded walnut door leading to the East Dulwich Deli. "No, no, I can talk, Mr. President."

With a flicker of regret, Jo-E kicked one of the tables to the floor with a shoe the size of a London double-decker bus. This really would be a great place to eat, he thought, if it wasn’t for that damn Dancing Queen and her killer poodles.

Janelle Colquhoun

‘Three nuns, a Russian drug dealer and a clown are being pursued through the food hall at Harrods by a Japanese tribute band to Abba, when the clown’s cellphone rings …’

They abruptly halt. The three nuns knock heavily into the Russian. Anger shows on the eldest nun's monobrowed face. The three members of the Japanese band look at each other with raised eyebrows and shrug.

"Keep going," the Russian drug dealer yells, lapsing out of his Russian accent.

The cellphone persists with it's Wiggle's "Hot Potato" ringtone.

"For fuck's sake answer the frigging thing!" the youngest nun screams, tearing off her wimple and stamping her foot, "This is fucked anyway! Like, hello, what sort of a daft film script is this anyway?!"

The clown, with his hands shaking and his painted smile drooping at the corners, reaches to press the button to answer the call.

There is an enormous explosion. The last frame the cameraman captures through his viewfinder is the clown's red nose spinning off into the Harrods' lobster display.

"And that," Detective Malevolent said, pressing the remote control button, "Is what we know so far about the explosion at 6:03am in the Harrods' food hall this morning. Any questions?"

All these are tremendous in their own way, and I wish everyone who took part the very best of luck when their entries to the Debut Dagger go in.

This week’s Word of the Week is pusillanimous, meaning lacking in courage and strength of mind; faint-hearted, mean-spirited, cowardly.

I shall be travelling much of today, but will get to comments when I can.

MY-NoWriMo

Zoë Sharp

November may have been National Novel Writing Month, but for me it was one month out of a three-month novel writing push.

I’d love to be able to say that the 50,000-word NaNoWriMo goal was the bulk of a book for me. Sadly, when I look back at the last nine in the Charlie Fox series it’s barely half way there.

But having started on October 4^th, I was hoping to be at 70,000 words by yesterday. I hadn’t counted on only actually getting a total of seven days out of the whole of November when I wasn’t either away attending events or festivals, or had Something Else on to get in the way of a clear writing day. By the time I counted up my month’s words at midnight, I had just scraped 65,000 words. By two whole words.

Not bad, but no cigar.

(Don’t ask, by the way – this was taken at an event at the Velma Teague Library in June last year. My fellow chocolate cigar ‘smokers’ are Jeanne Matthews, Sophie Littlefield, Juliet Blackwell, with über-librarian Lesa Holstine reclining.) 

OK, so I’ve also been prepping the five stories from FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short story collection to go live individually, and as Christmas is coming up I thought I ought to have a new Charlie Fox short, too, which I’d written the bulk of a month or so ago, but you know how it is when you’ve put something aside and then you pick it up again. It really did need another fiddle. And a new title. And a cover.

(The cover is another belter by Jane Hudson at NuDesign that just captures some of the urgency and the flavour of the story for me. I know I keep singing her praises, but it’s not difficult when someone has as much talent as she does.)

Across The Broken Line – which has become the eventual title – was originally going to be part of the FOX FIVE e-thology. I wanted to have a go at a very broken-up timeline of catching Charlie in the middle of a job and then tracking back and forth through the various stages to show how things got to the point where it all goes bad. Sounds simple when you put it like that, huh? But I wasn’t happy with my early attempts so I put it aside in favour of Truth And Lies, which grew more into a novella than a short story. Whether I’ve got the broken timeline just right this time is another matter, though. I’ll wait for you to tell me!

But still, not making my 70k on DIE EASY rankles. I’m very good at beating myself up for not hitting a target so I’m still feeling a little disgruntled that I’m not as far forward with the new book as I would have liked. I’ve already dragged Charlie through a helicopter crash and the emotional trauma of coming face to face with someone from her past she never wanted to see again. And now she’s running round a hijacked sternwheel paddle steamer on the Mississippi river with bad guys abounding.

I even have a provisional cover – another from Jane at NuDesign:

But it makes me wonder about everyone who does manage to achieve their NaNo goal. I’ve seen/heard on Twitter about plenty of people who’ve done it, but how many fallers are there? How many achieved their 50k? How do you feel now it’s over – good or bad? And what do you think of what you’ve written – how much of it will you keep hold of? Are they finished words or just a starting point?

Was it your first attempt? Will you do it again? If you haven’t attempted it, would you ever consider it? Or have you ever put yourself through any kind of concerted effort for a relatively short period of time, like a month – whether it’s a diet or an exercise plan or whatever? Good experience or no?

Also, I can’t ignore that – if yesterday was the end of November – today is the first of December. I can officially say Christmas is coming. Today the tree will go up, the cards will start to be written, pressies will be wrapped.

And there’s now 40,000 words to be done by the end of the month …

This week’s Word of the Week is trepan, which not only means an obsolete cylindrical saw for perforating the skull (just in case anyone was stuck for a Christmas gift for that difficult relative) and to cut a cylindrical disc from something, but it’s also a decoy, a snare, or to ensnare or lure. Unlike a trepang which is a sea cucumber eaten by the Chinese.

Just for the fun of it

Zoë Sharp

I hope you’ll forgive me this week if I repeat a blog I did over at Sirens of Suspense a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been rushing around like eejits for the past week or more, and although we expected to be home a couple of days ago … we’re not. Long story that involves builders letting people down and the prospect of houses not being finished for Christmas means our DIY skills have been called into service. And, weirdly enough, we rather enjoy it.

Part of the rushing around involved seeing our friend, fellow crime author Anne Zouroudi, doing two events for Kirklees libraries with Penny Grubb and Lesley Horton, plus a crime writing workshop also with Lesley, and interviewing the delightful Martina Cole at the 4^th Reading Festival of Crime Writing last Friday. So, if you’ve been wondering why I’ve been very quiet on these pages, that’s my excuse …

 

When was the last time you did something just for the fun of it? Or took a moment to really observe rather than just see your way through a familiar journey?

As a race, humans are becoming hardened to beauty, disconnected from the simple pleasures in life, and I find that very sad. As a writer, part of my job is to dig deep into the kind of emotions that drive us on a primal level. To do that, I need to be in touch with those kinds of feelings.

And maintaining a sense of wonder definitely falls into that category.

Andy (my Other Half) is as daft as I am about this. We rush to the office window to see a steam train passing on the other side of the valley, a low-flying Hercules transport plane lumbering overhead, or a particularly beautiful strake of sunlight on the hills behind our house.

I still build snowmen – and snow-bears, and snow-Easter-Island heads, and I was in the middle of a full-size horse last year, but the snow turned powdery and its head fell off, dammit. I know – what an excuse – the wrong kind of snow …

I still ride the shopping cart back to the stack after we’ve loaded up the car at the supermarket, still laugh like a drain at dirty jokes and whoopee cushions. But frost on leaves or winter mist or sunlight through a cloud leaves me breathtaken.

Because how can you hope to write something that will instil any sense of wonder if you don’t have it yourself?

We are not simply hardened to beauty in the modern world, but isolated from it. A fabulous cliff view will now have a safety railing to save you from yourself. Everything, we are told, would be better with our lives if we just had the latest gadget, a larger TV, a newer car, a bigger house. And it takes something drastic to make us realise that those things are not important.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to come out with some worn platitude about the best things in life being free. Whoever said that has never had to pay for meds, make the rent, or put food on the table. Those things cost money, and you better have it when the red bill arrives, or life is going to turn pretty ugly pretty fast.      

At the moment I’m caught between rich and poor in my writing, and it’s making me re-evaluate a lot of things. By definition, my bodyguard heroine Charlie Fox works for those wealthy enough to afford her services. In the latest book, FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine, she’s babysitting the rich and powerful of New York’s Long Island playground. She sees what too much of everything has done to these people, and it makes her reconsider what’s important in her life – love, health, happiness.

And just as FIFTH VICTIM is gearing up for its January 2012 publication in the States (sorry, but it’s been out in the UK since March this year) I’m also hard at work on the next in the series – DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten. For this book I wanted to set the ‘haves’ much more firmly alongside the ‘have-nots’. Where else was better to do that – where was the contrast more stark – than New Orleans, post Katrina.

OK, so the centre of NOLA looks very much as it always did, but some of the outlying areas are derelict ghost towns. It’s a fascinating setting for a book, and one that grabbed me from our first visit last year. As for the huge recycling plant – Southern Scrap – a crime thriller writer couldn’t ask for a better location for a confrontation, or a show-down.

But driving round the place it was hard not to be saddened and sobered by the destruction still on view. I came away grateful for what I have, and even more determined that as I pass the good things in life, I don’t want to miss them because I have my eyes in a text message and my ears in an iPod.

So, ‘Rati – what did you see today? And what will you notice tomorrow?

This week’s Word of the Week is innuendo. An Italian suppository …

Getting to the heart of it

Zoë Sharp

I used to tell people that I had ideas for maybe forty novels, but a few years ago I was advised to stop doing this. “You don’t want everyone to think that you’re churning them out like some kind of production line,” I was told severely. “Every one should be hand-crafted and ripped from your soul.”

But they are – trust me on this. Yes, I have a word target each day, calculated from how many words I want to achieve each month, but that doesn’t mean I just dash off any old rubbish purely to fill an empty space. I can’t work like that.

I know there are the theories that say you can fix a page but you can’t fix a blank page, but I’d rather have it more or less right the first time. Once I’ve imagined a scene, written the dialogue and the action, it’s like I’ve cut the grooves in a record and trying to go back and make major changes to existing words just scratches the whole thing into an unintelligible mess.

Like I said: clean, simple, and right (ish) the first time.

So, I do agonise over every sentence, every line, every word and chapter break and scene. I plan and re-plan the sequence of events, the major plot points, and even after I have my writing outline sorted, there’s still room for total left-field changes.

I just had one of those with the new book, DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten. My original plan was for a bus hijacking.

What I’ve just written is a helicopter crash.

(And I don’t mind telling you this, because I’m only a third of the way through writing the book. By the time I’ve finished it and it’s been through the production and publishing process, you’ll have most likely forgotten. Hell, I’ll have most likely forgotten.)

And in that synergistic way things have of happening, it just so happens that for many years I’ve known somebody who was a rotary wing pilot before he retired. Not only that, but he survived a very nasty crash-landing in Australia. I called him up and he talked me through it in wonderful, atmospheric detail.

So, when you read the pilot’s name as Capt Andrew Neal in DIE EASY you’ll know he really exists and has the skills to match.

And maybe it was something to do with the fact that the pilot went from being just an invented name, an actor playing a part, to someone I actually knew, but he instantly rounded out into a very real person. One of those cameo parts that steals the scene. Not that the character of Andrew Neal matches the real Andrew in many details, although I did borrow one of his real experiences as a throwaway line.

This seems to be happening a LOT at the moment. Another character has gone from a bimbo to a MENSA-level businesswoman. She’s just made my main character, Charlie Fox, an offer she will find it very hard to refuse.

I never saw that coming. It certainly wasn’t in the outline.

But I’m damn glad it’s happened.

For me, these organic changes are a sign that the book’s coming to life under my fingers, that parts of the story are weaving back in on themselves and getting stronger. I may not analyse to quite the same amazing degree that our David does, but I hope the overall effect is the same.

These are real people to me. I care what happens to them. I’m thoroughly engaged by what’s driving the bad guys. The good guys are never entirely good, all the way through. Light and shade. Bright and dark.

I admit, though, that I get a little nervous when things are going well. It’s like the two cops in the squad car in the middle of the graveyard shift and one says to the other. “Boy, it sure is quiet tonight ...”

But at the moment, the new book is humming along and the best I can do is cling on for the ride – at least while the going is good. And yes, I did hit my 35,000 word target by the end of October. Woo-hoo!

Because I know, come the final page, I’ll be absolutely convinced it’s the worst thing ever written. Not just the worst thing I’ve ever written, but the truly worst thing. Ever.

The writer’s life – one day up. One day down.

But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

This week’s Word of the Week is carphology meaning fitful plucking movements as in a delirium, from the Greek karphos straw, and logeia gathering. Also floccillation which has a more specific meaning – the fitful plucking at the bedclothes by a delirious patient.

Next week, by the way, I am appearing at:

• The Wordpool festival in Blackpool, first at the Palatine Community College at 11:30am, then at Moor Park Library at 2pm, and finally at the Central Library with Meg Gardiner and Jenn Ashworth at 7pm, all on Monday, November 7^th.
• At Meltham Town Hall (1:30pm) and Slaithwaite Library (7:30pm) with Lesley Horton and Penny Grubb for two LadyKillers events on Thursday, November 10^th organised by Kirklees Libraries.
• I am interviewing the remarkable Martina Cole at the 4^th Reading Festival of Crime Writing at 5pm on Friday, November 11^th.
• And finally, I will be teaching two workshop on crime writing with Lesley Horton at Huddersfield Town Hall on Saturday November 12^th (again for Kirklees Libraries) starting at 9:30am. Oh, and I’ll be trying to get a bit of scribbling in as well ...