Strops, sex and death: creative essentials for crime writers.

So, there’s a blog tour on, and The Horrormoanal Woman was tagged by the very lovely writer and possessor of amazing white hair, Wendy Storer. The idea is, that I’m going to say a few words, like a bad father at a wedding or a covetous best man trying to show his lifelong friend up in front of a room of 100 drunken, beige people wearing nice clothes from BHS, because really, he would have liked to have knobbed the bride. I’m going to talk about my creative process...except for me, of course, this presents a problem. This blog that you’re reading now, festooned with lurid tales of shitting in baths full of cold baked beans and being fingered on the night bus, belongs to The Horrormoanal Woman. She’s an anonymous type, pictured right, in a snowboarding anorak. You can’t even see her face. And that’s the way she likes it. The one who does all the serious work, however, is her alter ego, Marnie Riches, who wears actual deodorant and nice clothes.

The only good hair day in 20 years.

For today only, for the purposes of this exercise, I shall write as a strange mash-up of The Horrormoanal Woman and serious author, Marnie Riches, because as Marnie Riches, I don't have a blog and as The Horrormoanal Woman, I just sit around swearing and drinking and generally lady-frotting against the flotsam and jetsam of the internet.

So...

What am I working on?

Just like in love, you know when you've written The One. Chemistry is King.

I have a euro-noir crime thriller, Blown Away that is on submission to editors. The book is marbled with so many of my own experiences, and the characters have become so real to me, that I would say it's my soul-book - a term a friend came up with. Rather like a soul-mate. If you’re lucky enough to find a true soul-mate, you cling on for the ride no matter what, don’t you? Because you know life without them will be a poor facsimile of what it would be with them. It’s a high risk strategy emotionally. You may crash and burn. But it’s so worth it, if and when it blossoms into something wonderful. I’ve always felt like this about Blown Away. 

Being on submission is a tricky waiting game and can mess with your mind after a while. When my agent first started sending Blown Away out, I was faced with making a decision. Should I start something new? Should I plan further novels in the series? Or should I just twiddle my thumbs and wait? Thumb-twiddling was never an option. So, for a while, I worked on a high concept Young Adult novel. I got half way through a first draft and then Christmas happened and then I limped on for a while longer and then my inspiration ground to a halt. I switched tack and have started work on sample chapters and an outline for an entirely new adult thriller. But to be honest, my heart still beats strong for Blown Away. My fingertips are poised to launch into the second book in what I hope will be picked up as a series. Time will tell...

How does my work differ from others of its genre and why do I write what I do?

In terms of writing crime, I try to meld well-crafted prose with snappy dialogue and a plot that moves at a blistering pace. There’s no doubt that my tastes are commercial as a reader and my writing is too. I want to thrill. I want to be thrilled. I like to punctuate the darkness with lighter moments. Humour is often frowned upon in the crime genre. But life isn’t like that, is it? Even in the midst of tragedy and horror, life is full of those darkly comedic moments. We can fall in love even when our worlds are crumbling around us. We see it in TV series like, Breaking Bad. Why shouldn’t we read it in novels?

Violence is good in crime, as far as I’m concerned. It ups the stakes. I’ve always been fascinated by chains of events that turn apparently ordinary people into dangerous psychopaths. I’m interested in a serial killer’s modus operandi too. Guns? Strangle and dump, sexually motivated murders? Boring! I strive to make this element in my writing as unconventional as possible.  Best of all, I choose to have really strong, complex characters – many of them women, of course - who are often deeply flawed or anxious beneath their evil or heroic exteriors. I’m interested in blurred boundaries and grey areas. This is what holds fascination for me in life, as it does in fiction.

Different locations and cultures lend a rich, extra dimension to my writing. I have lived abroad and like to travel extensively, finances permitting. The criminal landscape of today is an international one, so why would I ever base an intricately-layered story in just one place? Blown Away is set mainly in Amsterdam, but the action also moves between Heidelberg, London and Cambridge. Writing stories with international reach offers the reader a more interesting journey.

I like to explore racial politics and have at least one major character who is Black or Minority Ethnic. Although I am white, I have a culturally rich, minority ethnic heritage. White, middle class, Anglo-Saxon is not my experience of life, so I write ethnically different characters because they feel familiar.

How does my writing process work?

Well, if I was writing as The Horrormoanal Woman, I would tell you that I wait until I have stinking PMT and get pissed off about something and then I compose a rant. Then I go through it and inject some laugh-out-loud bullshit observations and phrases, which makes me seem a little less like a homicidal old bag with an axe to grind. Writing seriously as Marnie Riches...? Not much different! In savouring the melodrama of life, stories come to me fairly thick and fast. I select the more compelling ideas. Initially, I might do an outline that is about four pages long, before embarking on the manuscript. First, I’ll write a rough draft. I’ll think it’s the best thing I ever wrote. Then I’ll realise it’s cobblers and the characters are thin. Then, I’ll do a second and third draft until it’s better and about five times longer and full of swearing and nookie (which is one of my favourite things to write – always nice to deposit new thoughts in the wank bank - and one of the most excruciating things to have other people read) and really horrible violence. Now, it’s definitely the best thing I ever wrote. By this stage, my agent might tell me it’s still shit, except he wouldn’t actually say “shit” but something like “needs a bit more thought”. I might throw a paddy in the privacy of my own home but I will listen to good advice, go back and take a machete to as much of the text as needs be, rewrite it and finally, produce something good. Maybe. Until the next draft. And most of the nookie and swearing will have gone, because reasonably well-behaved and professional, Marnie Riches is more likely to sell lots of books than that filthy cow, The Horrormoanal Woman.

So, that’s your lot. Watch out for news on Blown Away...

Now, I’ll pass the blogging baton onto two real stars

First, the tremendously inspiring and energetic Martin Ed Chatterton - a fellow north-westerner who shares my passion for crime writing, children’s fiction and general interest in world-domination.

Martin Ed Chatterton has been illustrating and writing for thirty years. His children’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages, and have won or been shortlisted in awards in the UK, US and Australia. Mort, his time-travel series is in production as a TV series by Endemol Australia. As ‘Ed Chatterton’, he writes dark crime fiction. He is currently combining writing his PhD with co-writing a children’s book with James Patterson.

...and secondly, the novelist, Emma Jane Unsworth whom I met a while ago through a mutual friend and who shares my keen interest in drinking and swearing. Her word-wrangling is both elegantly executed and funny.

Emma Jane Unsworth's first novel Hungry, the Stars and Everything won a Betty Trask award and was shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2012. Her short story 'I Arrive First' was included in The Best British Short Stories 2012 (Salt). Her second novel Animals will be published by Canongate in May. 

Women over 40 - improving like strong cheese.

There was a thing going round on Facebook this week. You know...one of those quotes from someone I’ve never heard of that rang true and everyone I know ticked “Like”. It was about women over forty, but the wisdom had been espoused by a man. Though I agreed with it all, I think it should have come from a shouty woman, who is actually 42 AND HAS FUCKING PMT THAT COULD TAKE OUT HALF OF CENTRAL ASIA.

So, here are the facts, in no particular order, on behalf of women like me. I know there are lots of us out there. And if you don’t agree with us, we don’t give a flying fuck, because they’re OUR facts, not YOUR facts:

1. Most of us have shat children out of our foofs. Don’t mistake this for weakness. We gave life. We are God’s emissaries on earth. 

Think carefully before you say whether it looks big in this or not

2. If we say our arses are fat, it’s because our arses are currently fat. We do not have self esteem issues. We just like wine and crisps and sit on our arses a lot doing clever things. But please note, just because we say it, doesn’t mean you are allowed to agree with us.

3. Many of us work. Some of us have been self-employed for years. We are successful, ruling entire families like benevolent dictators. We are used to being our own bosses, so don’t think we’re hoping you’ll help/participate/let us out in traffic. We are expecting you to do our bidding. Our cars are bigger than yours. Fucking move it!

4. We don’t play mind games because we don’t have to. We ask for the things we want, praise the things we love, drop the shutters fast on people who disappoint us and God help anyone who really gets on our tits. 

5. We don’t need to be told how intelligent or impressive we are, because we have a raft of qualifications that prove how intelligent and impressive we are. That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy being told how intelligent and impressive we are, so SAY IT, MOTHERFUCKER! 

6. We don’t need to be told that we’re attractive. We’re very comfortable in our own skin. But we do enjoy being told. Follow the previous instruction.

Seriously? Fatal Attraction was not a documentary.

7. We have love, energy and enthusiasm in abundance. If you are nice, we will share them with you. See point number four. This does not mean that we are going to eat you/boil bunnies/start crying at 4am, clutching an empty bottle of gin. Although if you are not nice, we might well eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

8. We are human. We have piles and fart and belch after meals. We like to talk about ailments. We don’t care if you find this unpleasant. We like to talk about masturbation and our enjoyment of sex, which should raise the roof if you’re doing your bit properly. We make no apologies when we forget to shave our legs and armpits. We have 1970’s lustrous pant-shrubbery. Deal with it.

If we wanna rock a Brian Blessed on the beach, we will.

9. We’re not domestic drudges. If you’ve been treating us like that, we’re angry now, so get some fucking life insurance.

10. We are not your mother. You already have a mother. Never confuse us with her. 

Fifty Shades of Shite

Great retro smut

My generation grew up skimming the pages of Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robins and Jackie Collins books for kicks and to gain a politically dodgy sex education.  What child had not plundered their mother’s library book pile and read the goldfish scene in Lace by the age of twelve?  The early eighties was still a period in history when it was acceptable for a man to be master of a woman’s body and her will.  But not now.  Not 2012.  No fucking way.

Toilet roll

Therefore, in the interests of protecting the public’s mental health, rather like a twelve year old kid from the eighties but with the writing skills of an agented author, the academic understanding of somebody who studied the feminist politics of violent hardcore porn at Cambridge University and the sexual experience of a forty-year-old who has been around the block a few times, I have read the first chapter and then skimmed my way right through Fifty Shades of Shite, from one nookie scene to another.  I have done this, so that you don’t have to.    

The writing in this MFI wardrobe of a novel is appalling but there are other bloggers who are currently taking this to bits very well.  I want to concentrate on the portrayal of sex in the book.  

First of all, there are several leit motifs and character ticks in the novel that crop up time and time again.  The most irritating is Ana Steele’s constant use of, “Holy Crap” and “Holy Cow” and even “Holy Moses”.  Holy Cow is used with such regularity that I began to wonder if EL James was hinting at the spiritual value of beef curtains.  Crap, double crap and triple crap are the sort of expletives I would expect from Hermione Grainger before she was legal.  All wrong.  If you’re going to write a novel with sex on pretty much every other page, for fuck’s sake, learn to swear properly and do it with style.  Other leit motifs include nuzzling body parts with your nose, including Miss Steele’s flange, and the ripping of a foil condom pack.  Now I may be going out on a limb here, but incessant crotch sniffing is reminiscent of truffling pigs and the act of opening a foil condom packet makes me think only of basting a Sunday roast.  Both are about as sexy as taking a shit in a bath full of cold baked beans.  

Which brings me onto my next topic.  Taste.  Mr. Grey makes Miss Steele shove her thumb up her woo woo and lick the resulting lady blancmange on many an occasion.  She describes the taste as “salty”, as though she’s referring to a Kentucky Fried Chicken family bucket.  Anybody who has had a go at this will know that fanny batter tastes neither like hummus, nor like marmite, nor like a bag of soggy Walker’s ready salted.  It’s a frankly ridiculous choice of word.  And Miss Steele, who seems to have no gag reflex, unlike 99.9% of all other women, thinks giving Mr. Grey a blow job is like sucking on a popsicle.  Well, we are already told that his erection rises out of the bath like the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Boy of Ghostbusters fame.  Interesting when, in terms of size, most ordinary men are upstaged by a Cumberland sausage.  But not only does Steele not gag, she doesn’t comment that his todger tastes like a cucumber made of meat with all the pissy aftertaste of a badly filleted steak and kidney pie. 

Nor is Mr. Grey’s love juice anything like the reality of lumpy porridge mixed with PVA, smelling like a cross between a slime alien toy and bleach.  She swallows enthusiastically.  Dickhead!

The other preposterous pile of Holy Crap in this novel is the assertion that Miss Steele is a 21 year-old-virgin but has never touched herself.  Mr. Grey insists his submissive woman have a shaved kebab.  But what 21 year-old virgin is not going to have a Brian Blessed down there?  And what 21 year-old has never masturbated before, let alone embarked on a bad experiment which resulted in frost bite off that carrot in the fridge?  Or at least tried to fathom the erotic qualities of the back door by shoving a biro up their bum hole?  This text is saying that only a man can bestow sexuality on a woman.  Before that, she is an asexual blank canvas with no understanding of her own body.  What piss!  And don’t get me started on the politics of a man forcing a woman to go on the pill.

There are elements of the sexual activity that are just naive.  Anyone woman who’s ever done it in the bath knows two things: soap stings like fuck and any water-based nonsense ends up in strange soapy wee leaking out of your body for the next 20 minutes like you’re an incontinent chemical toilet.  I’ve yet to meet a woman who, on the second day of her period, wants to shag more than she wants to punch someone.  Above all, at no stage does Christian Grey fart under the duvet, wear his socks during sex or get a pube stuck in his teeth.

No, it seems clear to me that a fourteen year old boy and a virgin at that has written this book.  The writing is shocking.  After just skimming it, “my subconscious is quaking at the knees” suddenly has new poignancy.  If I ever have to read about someone rolling their eyes at themselves or having their sex cupped again, I may eat my own bile.  The sex is utterly puerile and consists only of grabbing a girl’s boob, a bit of wanking, a spot of missionary and one occasion with her on top.  That, apart from the female character being knocked around a bit and LOVING it, is basically it.  Fifty Shades of Shite is about as satisfying and adventurous as being fingered on the night bus.  Do yourself a favour...don’t read it!

Wash, dry, repeat...

I’m taking the liberty of composing a blog post today about something that affects us all.  Personal hygiene.  And bottomly stink.  Over the past month, I have suffered all kinds of bum-flavoured intimate guff, none of which was mine.  It’s now time to share...

The most up-to-date vulvular violation happened earlier today, when I met a friend in a cafe in Chorley and used the cafe’s toilet.  I stared down at the toilet seat and there it was, grinning back at me: someone’s secret smile; a labia lithograph, etched on the plastic like sinister photocopied genitals.  Except there was no photocopier involved and the ink was actual fanny batter.  Yes, I’m taking about the beastly phenomenon of a fangita print on the toilet seat.  Eeuw.  To make matters worse, the mean age in the cafe was about 82.

I know you’re weeping with sympathy for me here, but it is not the first time I have experienced this.  My former place of employment specialised in hoopla, goolie and bum prints on the one toilet that was shared by about fifty people.  Not to mention, the occasional turd dressing with a side-order of wee.  

Several questions spring to mind here. 

A: how can people’s eye/arse co-ordination be so bad that they can’t manoeuvre themselves accurately onto a seat that is designed to allow the bottom bits to hover comfortably over a hole, without hitting the seat?  

B: What have the people done to have dangleage so dirty, that they leave a greasy mark? 

C:  How can they stand up and walk away from arse inspired toilet-seat-decoration that is as eyecatching and distinctive and NOTICEABLE as Warhol’s tins of Campbell’s soup? 

See, the Japanese have got it spot on.

Wipe the fucking toilet seat if you can’t be bothered to wash your genitals, people!  And don’t piss all over the seat and leave it!  You’re not a cat and it isn’t a litter tray.

 

For defacating-age adults

Only the other week, on holiday, I visited the swimming pool toilet after a very expensively groomed and bikini clad older woman came out of the cubicle, having dropped her intestines and a guff bomb that would take out Rochdale.  She never warned me.  I nearly choked to death.  Could she not have said in a range of languages, “Give it five minutes.”?  If I were teaching languages in school, this would be one of the first things I would teach children.

My other gripe is personal stink.  If I, sitting next to you, can smell your intimate savoury twang, why can’t you?  Everyone has occasion to go to the toilet and think, fuck, I’m a bit ripe.  Time for a go on the bidet.  Even the girl in Homeland wipes her kebab with a soapy flannel when she has to go to a meeting but hasn’t had time to shower.  That Billingsgate/chocolatey tagnuts smell, people, is a prompt to get out the soap and water BEFORE people sitting near you start to smell you through your jeans.  Same goes for armpits.  Nobody needs to choke on oniony ones.  Get 'em washed.

There is a school of thought that says human intimate smells are natural and full of pheromones and arouse the interest of the opposite sex, even while driving a Fiat Multipla, wearing orange polyester.  But I say, we’ve come further than that.  Let Vivienne Westwood put fanny batter in her perfume.  I don’t need to pay £50 for a bottle of Eau de Boeuf.  And neither should you!

I agree in principle, but men aren't always the culprits.