The manuscript for Paula Langford Book Three came back from the editor this week, which means I have spent the last several days doing the part of writing that nobody asks about at parties. Not the plotting, which sounds vaguely glamorous, and not the first draft, which at least has the romance of creation going for it. This is the part where you sit with someone else's careful, considered, entirely correct notes and try to work out how to do everything they've asked without breaking the book in the process.
The Forgotten Corpse has been out in the world for four days now, which is just long enough for the initial adrenaline to wear off and the more familiar feelings to settle in. I thought it might be worth writing some of this down while it's fresh, partly for anyone curious about what the launch of a book actually feels like from the inside, and partly, I suspect, because writing it down is cheaper than therapy.
There is a particular kind of anticipation that comes with picking up a book you know almost nothing about. The cover caught your eye, or a friend pressed it into your hands with a look that suggested it would be worth your evening. You sit down, open the first page, and you have no idea yet what kind of story you are about to enter. I have always thought that is one of reading's great, irreplaceable pleasures.
There is an email in my inbox right now from someone I have never met who is extremely keen to help me with my marketing. They found my book on Amazon, they say. They loved it. They have some great ideas for a book trailer. They would be happy to jump on a call at my earliest convenience.
There is something slightly irrational about the appeal of the amateur sleuth, and I think most readers who love the genre know it, in the same way you know that a biscuit at eleven o'clock is not strictly necessary and have one anyway. Logically, if a murder needs solving, you want a trained investigator. Someone with access to forensic databases and the legal authority to compel answers and a warrant to search the premises without having to invent an excuse about returning a borrowed casserole dish. The professional detective has all of this. And yet, time after time, the reader chooses the retired schoolteacher. The curious neighbour. The village librarian with a tendency to ask one too many questions at the wrong moment.
There is a particular kind of reader who will tell you, with some satisfaction, that they knew something was wrong from the very first page. Not who did it, not what exactly happened, but that the world of the novel was tilted, that something beneath the surface was waiting to surface. They cannot always point to what gave it away. That is the point.