Moments In Crime

Waiting Around the Corner

By S J Bolton 

You know what they say about middle age: it’s always about a decade ahead of where you are at any given point in time. There comes a point, though, when you know that particular stage of life isn't just waiting round the corner anymore; it’s lurking, sniggering into its hand, steeling itself to leap out and yell, “Got you!”

And there are those unmistakable signs, that tell you middle age is decidedly on the horizon, if not lurching its way up the next street. Husband and I have fun, from time to time, trying to come up with new indicators of middle age. For example, you know you’re middle aged when:

Your reaction to rainfall is that it will be good for the gardens.

Your pelvic floor just isn’t up to the mothers’ race any more.

You live in a street that young people come home to for Christmas.

Words and phrases come out of your mouth that you last heard your mother utter thirty years ago.

Just lately, we've found we can tick just about all those boxes.

I suspect I've become extra- sensitive to the business of age having spent a fair amount of time the last couple of years talking to journalists. They always, to a man, woman and cub reporter, want to know how old you are.  And you have to tell ‘em. Because, “None of your effing business' is unlikely to result in favourable copy in the Oxford Mail. Nor can you lie. Knock a few months off and your in-box will be inundated with people who remember you from when you had licorice on your face and hand-me-down navy blue knickers.

Earlier this year, my French publishers, the lovely Fleuve Noir, embarked upon a rather innovative marketing campaign. They had six new, young (ish) female crime writers to promote. First up, they put us in a calendar.  I was Miss February (see above).  How cool is that?  Then they did a Wanted poster, in the style of the old wild west, with pictures of each of us.  Under each photograph appeared our names, country of residence and our age: Robin Young, UK, age 34; Chelsea Cain, USA, age 35; Sharon Bolton, UK, age unknown.

Now, Fleuve Noir knew my age only too well, but clearly honesty isn't the best policy when you're trying to promote the new “black babes” of French crime writing. No doubt, being French, they did a bit of creative air-brushing on the picture as well. And I'm female enough to be grateful they did.  

I'm wondering if the solution is take a leaf out of Clara Benning's book. Clara, the protagonist of Awakening, has no mirrors in her house. She avoids reflective surfaces like most women avoid small black creatures with many legs. As Clara knows, mirrors only work if you approach with care, in soft light, at the right angle. Let them catch you unawares and you're going to have to accept that the wrinkles are there whether you're tired or not, that those extra five pounds really do show and the bone structure around your jaw-line probably won't be seen again this lifetime.  

And that, as any woman in her forties will tell you, is hard. What do we listen to? Our hearts, telling us the better part of our lives is still to come; or our heads, saying 'get real girl, it's all downhill from here'?  

I'm with Clara, I've decided. The mirrors are going. Because without them, I can still be that slender girl of 20, with waist-length red hair, striding through life in search of adventure.   

This is my last blog.  Thanks for having me.  Stay well. 

  

 

Jive Talking

By S J Bolton 

This morning, the unprecedented happened Chez Bolton. We had a lie-in. I’m married, you understand, to a man who thinks the lark a rather sluggish bird, feels cheated if he misses a sunrise and is on first name terms with the milkman; who just plain can’t sleep. Yet, today, it was nearly 8am when the dulcet tones of our son in the bathroom dragged us from the depths of Lethe’s spring.

I put it down to the frenzied exercise of the night before. And before jumping to the obvious, please see previous post on same subject. I’m talking about modern jive, a craze that’s sweeping southern England faster than swine flu. Suddenly, church halls and primary schools throughout the Home Counties are inundated with the middle-aged, middle classes, attempting to master the shoulder sweep, the sway and the hip weave.

It’s spicy stuff, modern jive: highly flirtatious, deeply suggestive and involving prolonged contact with unfamiliar bodies.  It’s going down very well in the Chilterns.

After two sessions, our class has self-divided into two groups: the stay-with-your-own-partners and the swappers. Variety is the spice, himself and I agree, and so we’re getting to know some of our neighbours rather better than we once expected. Name me a man in our street and I can tell you his exact height, the extent of muscle definition on his shoulders and whether he knows the difference between a woman’s waist and her hip.

Just one complaint, though. To a man, my new dancing partners are just not firm enough. The hand in mine feels limp, the feet could go in any direction, the movement is vague, uncertain. I find myself taking charge.

‘Ladies, you have to let the men lead,’ calls Patrick from the stage, and he’s always looking directly at me. I try to be submissive. I fail. Patrick takes me by the hand and does all the movements out of order so I have no choice but to follow him. He is very firm; it all becomes blissfully easy.  Patrick is barely five foot seven in his Cuban heels with an overdeveloped torso but, do you know what, I might be developing a crush on him.

I’m sorry, but there really is something wonderfully sensuous about dancing with a man who knows what he’s about. It just seems so rare in Britain to meet a man who not only knows how to move himself around a dance floor, but can actually move you too.  I tell you something, if men knew how erotically charged a good dance can be, they’d all be taking modern jive classes.  And sod the Saturday morning football and rugby; they’d be signing their sons up for ballet class.

I’ve been trying hard to capture this sensual possibility in my latest book. Just before things get really nasty, hero Harry drives Evi up to a high Tor in the Lancashire Pennines. It’s early November, late at night, and they watch fireworks exploding across the moors. Then they dance, to Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark on the car stereo. Harry and Evi know they cannot get involved with each other. This one dance might be the only moment of closeness they ever know.

So hard, to capture on paper the erotic possibilities of dancing with a new partner for the first time. Try interchanging song lyrics with snatches of dialogue and copyright laws jump up and bite you. Talking about rhythm and movement seems straight out of Mills and Boon. In the end I just had to write about the heat from Harry’s neck against Evi’s face, his hand, ice-cold in hers and the wind that can’t seem to decide whether to join in the dance or hurl them both off the edge of the world.

Of course, She Who Believes The Red Pen Is Mightier Than The Author's Keyboard may well decide it doesn’t work but I’ll always have the picture in my head to console me: Harry and Evi, dancing amid the fireworks on the crest of the moor, falling in love.

I’ve finished book three. (Probably)  It still has to be read and approved by a whole army of husbands, agents, editors, sales and publicity people but at least I know it’s ready for that. It is as good as I can make it. The Blood Harvest. Published in 2010. (Fingers crossed)

 

 

My Real Life

By S J Bolton 

Apparently, my postings on this site are not the thing at all. Bloggers don’t want to read about snakes, deviant churches and badgers rising from the dead, I’ve been told. They want to know about me. What I do with my day? How I spend my time.

Trust me, you don’t.

There is absolutely nothing in this world less interesting than the life of the average writer. I’m not talking about the mega-stars now, who jet around the world on promotional tours and who probably have someone else to write their books. I’m talking about 99% of the world’s writing population. Those who actually write.

My friend Adrian (former detective with London’s Metropolitan police and my special adviser on all things police related) thinks I should make it up. He has a point. Inventing exciting lives seems to be what I do best, so why not invent my own.

There’s a knock at the back door. I peer from the window. Rain drops are shining on the tight black curls of the man below me. His sinewy frame is taught with expectation. I take a deep breath and go downstairs …

Like I could ever keep that nonsense up. He’s come to mow the lawn, of course. It’s Mark, the gardener, the dog loves him.

 Well, don’t say you weren’t warned, here is my typical day.

6.30am approx: Dog pokes wet and slimy nose under the sheets. Time to get up. Spend next hour and a half bullying child into eating, dressing, abluting and climbing into the car that takes him to school.

8.00am: Set off with dog for walk. Lose dog. Spend hour looking for dog. Threaten dog with Blue Cross Dogs Home.

9.00am: Stare at computer screen and move fingers rapidly up and down.

12 noon: Wander round house thinking really must load dishwasher, unload washing machine, remove maggots from bottom of fridge. 

1.00pm: Read over morning’s work. Despair.

3.00pm: Collect son from school. Feed, wash and exercise son. Put son to bed.

8.00pm: Scrape maggots off remaining contents of fridge and serve up for dinner.

9.00pm: Stare at TV screen.

10.00pm: Bed.

Of course I’ve also, in those hours, clambered through abandoned chalk mines, gone head to head with the world’s most venomous snake and fallen deeply in love for the first time in my life. I’ve learned that the south west of England is rich in underground oil reserves. I’ve also received an e mail from a woman on the other side of the world, who I will never meet, but who wanted me to know that she really, really enjoyed reading my book and that I must not, under any circumstances, stop writing.

She needn’t worry. I wouldn’t change my life for anything.  

Photographs show a book launch, the one day in the year when I'm allowed out of the garret, and Lupe. 

The Church of the Weird and Wonderful

By S J Bolton

Slithering alongside the venomous snakes of Awakening is the book’s other dark theme: that of compulsive and dangerous religions. 

Round about the time of the second world war, the US in particular saw the revival of various charismatic churches. What they all had in common was enthusiasm verging on the fanatic, a very close and literal interpretation of the Bible and a belief that God passed on some of his own supernatural abilities to mankind. One church that immediately intrigued me was The Church of the Latter Rain.

This church still exists, of course, and everything I’ve read in its literature and on its website suggests that it is an entirely respectable organization, working hard to promote the messages of God’s love and peace throughout the world. I want to make that very clear.

But when it started out – oh boy – could you get more gloriously weird?

Healing through fasting, driving out demons, levitation, a fascination with the zodiac, the sudden manifestation of supernatural fire and smoke, resurrecting corpses. Back in its infancy, the Church of the Latter Rain indulged in some very odd practices. And had some decidedly strange leaders. The Reverend Franklin Hall, to name just one, a bestseller author (of religious pamphlets) who claimed to be able to resurrect dead bodies. 

In learning all about him – he features in Awakening – I came across the eerily sinister story of his fawn jacket. No, you didn't misread that. Rev Franklin, we are told by his followers, wore the same pale brown coat every day for years and although it was never cleaned, it showed no sign of grease, dirt or odour. This was taken as a clear and indisputable sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life.

For the love of whoever is up there!  A fawn jacket! Are we seriously expected to believe the power that can part the sea, rain down plagues of untold misery and destroy the world in flood, would choose to manifest itself in a fawn jacket bought at Kmart? I haven’t heard anything so daft since my Granny started talking about Great, Great Aunt Alice coming back as a bluebottle.

Bringing back the dear departed though, that was a different matter, and Hall claimed he could do it. He wrote a book: ‘Formula for Raising the Dead.’  Do you know what? I sent off for a copy. All the time I was waiting for it to arrive, I was actually nervous. Would it be a dusty, leather-bound ream, inscribed with runes, as untranslatable as they were ancient? Would I be unleashing old and unspeakable powers just by having it in the house? 

It arrived. It was an orange and white pamphlet, full of misspellings and was (call me a basement-dwelling troglodyte, if you must, Rev) barely intelligible.

He defeated me in the end though, Rev Franklin. He was born in the early years of the 20th century. I looked hard to find the year of his death so that, in Awakening, I could make a cheap joke at his expense. You know the sort of thing: ‘Reverend Hall died in 199x, my dear, one can only imagine he didn’t get his followers up to speed in time.’

I could not, and cannot still, find any record of Reverend Franklin Hall’s death. So – maybe I’ll have to eat my words – maybe he did it after all.

 

 

Photographs were taken in and around Lyme Regis, the idyllic spot on the Dorset/Devon border that is the setting for Awakening.  

‘All the other reviewers must have been family ….’

I’ve been thinking about reviews today, good ones and bad ones. One reason is I was flicking through some of the earlier guest blogs on this site and came across Stuart MacBride talking about bad reviews on Amazon. He argues, in typically hilarious fashion, that people who post bad reviews on Amazon are "basement dwelling troglodytes who’ve never seen a real person of the opposite sex naked."

I’m completely with him in one respect: the men who post bad reviews, (I just know they’re 90% men) invariably assume that reviewers who take a different view, i.e they actually liked the book, must be close family members of the authors. 

Clearly no basement dwelling troglodyte has ever met my mother.

I sent mum an advance copy of my first novel, Sacrifice. It had taken me the better part of five years to write and was the fulfillment of a decade’s ambition. I was glowing with pride and foolishly assumed she would be too.

Her first reaction?  ‘Hmmn, I think I’ll have to read it again.’

I waited, teeth firmly clenched. Her more considered view? ‘It was okay in the end, once you stopped waffling.’

A year later – no, you’re right, I will never learn - I sent her an advance copy of Awakening. Wait for it … ‘I didn’t like it as much as your first.’

This is my MOTHER, for the love of God. What happened to maternal pride? And I’d dedicated it to her as well. I was wittering about this the other night to a book club and one of the women there suggested the perfect revenge. She says I should dedicate my next book to my mother-in-law, for her ‘constant support and encouragement over the years.’

If only I were that brave.

It got me thinking though. Why is it that I really don’t give a toss what the troglodytes on Amazon say, (unlike Stuart, I can honestly say they’ve never bothered me) but I do care deeply for my mother’s opinion? Steven King says that every writer has a first and most valued reader, the one who’s opinion matters above all others. For him, it’s his wife, Tabitha. For me? Well, it’s not my mother, that’s for sure. It’s not my husband either, who’s response on reading Sacrifice was, I kid you not, ‘Well, you’re not Jane Austen, are you chicken?’

Possibly, it’s my agent, Anne Marie, who always reads my stuff first and who I can rely upon for absolute honesty. Just lately, though, I think she’s secretly in touch with my mother. Shortly after Christmas, I sent her the first draft of what should become my third book. A few days later I get an e mail. ‘I really love the title,’ she says. 'Let's talk about the rest.'

I sometimes wonder how I go on.

If you’ve never read my books, please don’t be put off by the views of my nearest and dearest. Some people, who know a lot about books, think they’re good. Like the critic in The Times, for example, who described me as the “high priestess of English rural gothic.” I got rather excited by this, for the minute and a half it took me to start thinking, well, hold on, who else is writing English rural gothic? There’s … no, different sub genre completely, but what about ….no, she doesn’t really fit. I suppose there’s always….no, he’s been dead for thirty years. I was forced to conclude, it’s just me. I am the high priestess of a cult of one. Go SJ! 

 PS: Please don’t tell anyone my husband calls me Chicken. A high priestess of English rural Gothic has a reputation to keep up. 

Photographs show Heptonstall - the English rural gothic town on the Pennine moors that was the inspiration behind my third book. 

Snakes among sweet flowers do creep

Slay a king cobra and its mate will hunt you down and kill you in revenge.

 

True? Actually, no - just one of the many snake myths I’ve uncovered lately. More below, if you’re interested, together with a few true facts that almost seem less plausible.

 

An unexpected bonus of writing fiction, I’ve discovered, is the obligation to research obscure but fascinating subjects: the rate of decomposition of the human body in different environments, for example; or common techniques of embalming. In Awakening, I had to learn about venomous snakes, and I was starting from scratch.

 

Discovering that my home village, a peaceful, picture-postcard place in the English Chiltern Hills has a thriving snake population was the inspiration behind my second book. I became fascinated by the idea of life that seems perfect on the surface, but with something sinister lurking in the undergrowth. 

 

Researching snakes gave me the opportunity to indulge my twin passions: folklore and forensics. Folklore, because the snake seems to have wriggled its way into the mythology of just about every culture in the world. (Ever wondered why the snake is a symbol for modern medicine? Or of Freemasonry?) Forensics, because I got to find out, in glorious detail, exactly what happens to the human body once snake venom is injected into it. Here’s a little extract from Awakening, by way of example. It may not be for the squeamish.

 

“Taipan venom is nasty because it contains both a neurotoxin and an anti-coagulant,’ said North, leaning back against the wall. ‘The neurotoxin binds to the neuro-muscular junctions and stops them functioning. Most victims suffer respiratory paralysis within four to six hours of being bitten. The anti-coagulant would cause continual bleeding from the bite wound and from the gums. Internal haemorrhaging is a problem, especially in the brain. You’d have suffered convulsions, probably slipped into a coma. Oh, and the poison eats away at muscle tissue. Your piss would turn reddish-brown as your muscles deteriorated and passed through your kidneys.” 

 

Snake experts (herpetologists, zoo-keepers and the like) argue that we fear this animal out of all proportion to its ability to harm us. The snake is a shy, secretive animal, they stress, posing no danger to human life until threatened itself. Its venom evolved to paralyse its natural prey - lizards, small mammals and birds, not us.

 

Perhaps it’s an English thing, this disproportionate fear of snakes. On this small, safe island of ours are we just unable to get our heads around the possibility of wildlife being dangerous? We have robins, rabbits, rodents of various description – nothing scary. True, we also have badgers, and they can be pretty fearsome beasts, but let’s be honest, death by badger is rare.

 

I got to rather like snakes this past year, graceful, mysterious, strangely beautiful creatures that they are, with their silk-like skin and their gravity defying movement. One thing I do struggle with though: tell me this, you proponents of the gentle, largely harmless, much misunderstood creature. If the inland taipan hunts mainly rats and bandicoots, why does it have enough venom in a single strike to kill 62 people?

 

 

Anyway – want to play a game?  Try the “Snakes: Truth or Myth” quiz. To win a signed first edition of Awakening, copy and paste the text below, indicate whether you think each is either a myth (M) or true (T) and send it me via my website. wwwsjbolton.com. I’ll send books to the first three correct answers.

 

·         The serpent has been used as a symbol for Christ.

·         The African black mamba can outrun a race-horse.

·         Three people in the UK die every year from poisoning, or allergic reaction, following adder bites.

·         Rev. George Hensley, founder of snake handling sects in the US, died of poisoning following a rattlesnake bite.

·         Alexander the Great was a snake handler.

 

As I write, I can feel a snuffling round the nether regions. The dog has woken up and wants her midday walk through the fields below the village. Time to don thick walking boots and tread very carefully…

 

 

Photographs show our picture-postcard Chiltern village, our resident venomous snake: the adder, and the world’s deadliest reptile: the Australian taipan.

Blogging this Week: SJ Bolton

Blogging this week is SJ Bolton. Bolton grew up in Lancashire, England, and now lives near Oxford with her family. Awakening, her second novel, is inspired by her fascination with British folklore. Visit her online at www.sjbolton.com.

Clara Benning, a veterinary surgeon in charge of a wildlife hospital in a small English village, is young and intelligent, but nearly a recluse. Disfigured by a childhood accident, she generally prefers the company of animals to people. But when a local man dies following a supposed snakebite, Clara’s expertise is needed. She’s chilled to learn that the victim’s postmortem shows a higher concentration of venom than could ever be found in a single snake—and that therefore the killer must be human.

Assisted by a soft-spoken neighbor and an eccentric reptile expert, Clara unravels sinister links to an abandoned house, an ancient ritual, and a fifty-year-old tragedy that has left the survivors secretive. But for someone the truth must remain buried in the past—even if they have to kill to keep it there.

Awakening is a disturbing tale of dark secrets and insidious rituals that will have readers unable to stop for a breath until they’ve reach the stunning climax of this extraordinary read from the author of the acclaimed debut novel Sacrifice.