The Lost Name and the Blue Grass...

Hi, Sin here.  Today I’m joined by Belinda, someone my author, Shaun, met something like four years ago.  She thinks I’m cheeky.  I can’t think why.

Hi Belinda.  What’s your name?  Now, I realise I just said your name but, well… erm… introduce yourself…

My name is Belinda G. Buchanan — and before you ask, I won’t tell you what the middle initial stands for.

I reckon it’s Glinda, as in the good witch from Wizard of Oz.  Or perhaps Gregory.  Garry?  Gina?  Nah, I’ll go with Glinda.  Anywho.  Where are you from?

Kentucky, also known as the bluegrass state.

You have blue grass?  Is that where James Cameron got the idea for Avatar?  Do you like living there?  If not, where would your favourite place to live be?  If yes, where would you least like to live?

Well, I….you know, Sin, your questions are a tad confusing. I’ve lived in a few different states since I’ve been married, but I have to say that the city I’m living in now is the best. It’s a small town where everyone waves at you…it’s a nice place to raise my sons.  The place I’d least like to live would have to be the Waverly Hills Sanitarium (which has been called the most haunted place on earth) and is less than an hour from my house.

You think I’m confusing?  You have a middle initial without a name… although I’m the man who lost my own last name along the way.  Oh, and you live somewhere where they have blue grass.  Doesn’t it get confusing if you go to the seaside?  Do you think you can walk on the ocean or is it swim in the sea?  See, now I’m confused.  As you’re a writer, is this your ‘day job’?

Writing is my day job, night job, and all jobs in between - that, along with being a mom to two boys.

Sounds good.  I’m sure Shaun wishes he could write all the time.  It would mean it’d be less cramped in his head for me.  Tell me about your latest project.

‘Tragedy at Silver Creek’ has just been released and is a novel about a small town in Montana that is trying to cope with the aftermath of a serial killer’s reign of terror.

Let’s hope they don’t have blue grass to contend with too.  Seriously, though, it sounds great.  I have to ask, though, how do you feel about bacon?  A crazy person once said it was the food of the gods.  OK, I admit that person was myself...

I adore bacon and….wait…I think you’ve got some bacon juice on your chin.

Don’t you hate it when that happens?  It’s all that time in a strait jacket.  You sometimes forget you can actually wipe your chin!  So.  What is your favourite film?

It changes from year to year as new ones come out. My current favorite is The Age of Adaline with Blake Lively and Harrison Ford. Have you seen it? If not, you should.  I mean, they have movie night here, don’t they?

I haven’t seen it yet, though I’ve heard good things about it.  Yes, we occasionally have a movie night and, occasionally, it’s a decent film rather than the one we saw three weeks earlier and everyone fell asleep at!  Have you always wanted to be a writer, or is it something you found yourself doing one day?

I began writing when I was ten or eleven I think. Stories would just pop into my head and I’d put them down on paper, hiding them under my mattress where only I could read them.  That intensity carried over, and when I was in my twenties, I wrote, After All Is Said and Done. I love to write stories, and can’t imagine not doing it.

It must be fulfilling to be able to bring your creations into life and not need to hide them.  Do you have so many ideas they dribble out of your nose if you don’t get them down, or do you have to hunt around the floor and the back of your sofa to find where your Muse is hiding?

The words flow through my fingertips like a running faucet, but the day after is comparable to a bad hangover. I look at the screen on my computer and wonder what the heck was I thinking? Type, delete, rewrite…repeat. My muse is usually right beside me, but sometimes she disappears (maybe out of boredom, I don’t know).  I wait patiently for her to return, but if she doesn’t come back by nightfall, I leave an unwrapped KitKat on the stairs. It usually takes her about five minutes to smell the chocolate and come around.

Ah, bribery!  I like your style.  And a Kitkat, good choice – I’m partial to a finger or two myself.  If you were in an asylum, what would your particular delusion or psychosis be?

I suffer from an acute syndrome of talking about the characters in my novels as if they are real. I have a tendency to babble on and on about them like they are an extended part of my dysfunctional family - a habit that drives my husband nutters.

I can always find room for him here.  I’m sure Connors wouldn’t mind.  And, as for treating your characters as real, that’s a bit strange isn’t it (says a fictional character talking to you)?  I think you’d both fit in very well!  What genre(s) do you write?

I write edgy, women’s fiction and mystery romance/suspense. They’re filled with emotion, intimacy, humor, and angst. If you don’t mind a few racy scenes and a sprinkling of profanity here and there, then my novels are for you.

Sounds interesting.  Joy, my sister, liked those sorts of books.  She read almost continually.  And, what genres(s) do you read?

I mostly read women’s fiction, & mystery, but if I see a cover that’s striking and like the blurb, I’ll read it-even if it’s not in that genre. I am a huge Star Trek Fan and have boxes and boxes of their paperbacks that I scored at a yard sale a few years ago.

Star Trek!  Cool!  I love Star Trek myself.  I think Shaun quite likes it too, though he’s never said.  If these are the same, what attracts you to them?  If they’re different, why do you think that is? 

I like women’s fiction because I like a story with drama. I give certain afflictions to my characters (alcoholism, mental illness) and sprinkle in a few flaws (like adultery). My women are not weak, and my men are not always strong. Giving them these problems makes them human and brings about a certain vulnerability, because even a hero has a chink or two in his armor.

Very true and a good premise.  A flaw can be the floor to help you stand up straight and true.  Or something.  Bacon – just cooked or crispy?

I like my bacon so crispy that it snaps in half when you bite into it.

Wow, that’s crispy!  I like mine crispy too, but not so much that I’d break a tooth!  Now you’re in the asylum with me, how do you aim to get out?  Do you have an escape plan? 

I do have an escape plan, but I’m going to need your help. Do you have a coin? Flip and catch…

The problem with tossing a coin is you never know which way it will land, or who will die in the process…

So, there’s Belinda.  A lovely woman, I can assure you, though with her blue grass and not knowing her middle name, she may need a night or ten in the asylum…

You can find out more about Belinda at the following locations.  I can recommend dropping by and checking out her books!

Website: http://belindagbuchanan-author.weebly.com

Blog: https://belindagbuchanan.wordpress.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Belinda.G.Buchanan.author

Buy links:  Amazon   Barnes & Noble    itunes     kobo     

Twitter: @BelindaBuchanan

The Case of the Vanishing Idea...

Don't you hate it when you get an idea, but then, when you're in a position to actually do something with it (write it down and CREATE), the idea is gone? Just on the outer edge of your memory, dancing about, leaning in just to tantalise and tease you before jumping back out of reach?

Don't you just hate it?

Hmmm...

I've been struggling, a little, with Mortal Sin. Not in a religious way, but in a creative one. Mortal Sin is the sequel to Sin and I was stuck fast with the whats, whys, whens and who-be-dos.

The 'where' was easy. I was - or rather am - setting it, once again, in Grimsby. They say 'Write what you know,' and I know Grimsby. Not quite New York or London, but it was founded by a Dane trying to protect the heir to the throne of another country from assassination. Not too shabby an origin, methinks.

I'd come up with some ideas, including a 'half-way house' where the our man (though he doesn't know he's Our Man) is taken by a woman feeling sorry for his plight. I knew exactly where this house was going to be. Welholme Road. Large homes overlooking the People's Park. Perfect. Enough room and rooms for the various odd tenants to come and go and to gradually become more... well... ODD.

Luckily, I know someone, my wife, who knows those houses inside out and can give me highly detailed plans and information about the layout etc. From the type of flooring to the colour wallpaper to the light switches, I can get a real image of what they look like inside. Not that I'll necessarily go into that amount of detail in the book. You need to picture it yourself - but I will be able to picture it myself too.

Even if yours and mine don't quite match, that's fine. It's all in the eye of the beholder, but we'll both be walking, pretty much, hand in hand.

But the rest. Sin's DEAL. What of that? Well, I had inklings. I had musings. I had odd samples of script all worked out, though they'd be forgotten by the time I came to that scene - if I ever did. But the actual MEAT, the food on which the hungry reader would satiate their appetite? Well...

A friend at work, yesterday, asked me if I'd watched the new Jonathan Creek on BBC1 on Monday night. I hadn't and I kicked myself for not realising it was on. Jonathan Creek, for the un-initiated, is an offbeat detective show starring the wonderfully strange Alan Davies as a magicians 'assistant' (in that he's the one who comes up with the illusions). He finds himself tied up in various murders and mysteries which have the police stumped and his unique outlook is the only thing that can solve them.

Jonathan Creek is... different. It's comfortable and quirky and fun and I always enjoy it. As such, I wasn't too happy that I'd missed this episode. The show finished a couple or more years ago, so I wasn't expecting it to resurface. On Monday night, oblivious to Creek’s resurrection, I'd been watching Broadchurch, an excellent drama series starring (amongst other familiar faces) ex. Doctor Who, David Tennant. So, last night, tablet in hand, I watched Jonathan Creek courtesy of the BBC iPlayer. And it was a welcome return indeed - not disappointing in the least.

So? And?

And. I don't know what, in the programme, prompted me. I really don't. But, something in that 90 minutes of conundrums and disappearing bodies, an idea popped into my head. It wandered around for a while, letting me concentrate on the show, and then, as I lay in bed, it expanded in my mind and became a plot. It became a three course meal for those ravenous readers. That was it. That was what would happen. That was the what and also the WHY.

Then I fell asleep.

Then I woke up.

Now I'm sitting here berating myself, once again (for this in not the first time) not having a notepad beside my bed.

The idea has faded. It's stepped out for a moment and may be sometime. I can just see its shadow, and its Cheshire Cat grin as it knows I'm trying to grab hold and I can't.

Maybe I'll look the other way. Pretend I'm not interested. Maybe then it'll step back within reach and I can lunge, notepad in hand, and snatch it back up, shovelling it back into my brain like coal into a bucket - fuel for the fire. No, it'd be more cramming it in, like the last pair of pants into a suitcase that you have to sit on to zip up, knowing you'll be over the weight restriction and, once opened, you'll never get it packed quite the same.

Either way, hopefully we'll be reunited, like Jonathan Creek and his not-quite sidekick Sheridan Smith. Let's hope the puzzles will be solved and the end result won't be a crime to the literary world. Eh?