Paul Whybrow
Full Member
I'm not sure that this announcement is worth a fanfare - more a toot on my penny whistle perhaps, but after seven months of querying and making submissions to agents, I am returning to creative writing.
I've devoted myself to hunting literary agents and publishers with open submission windows, doing virtually nothing joyful with my imagination. It's felt a bit like clocking into a grey factory every day, to work a twelve hour shift mixing porridge. Apart from writing four poems, I haven't done anything inspiring, though I've made copious notes recording story ideas, song and poem titles and names for future characters as they came to me.
I'd intended to write a frothy sex comedy as my next novel. This would comment on relationships and internet dating in the 21st century, and be something of an antidote to the doom and gloom that came from writing about psychopaths, fantasists and depression in 'The Perfect Murderer'. As I shot myself in both feet with my first novel by making it double the length of the accepted 80,000 - 100,000 words of a debut novel, I've decided to jump through that particular hoop by writing a prequel to it.
This will become my second first novel, and as I have the sequel already written things might take off. I mentioned a title 'Who Kills A Nudist?' in another thread, which some Colonists liked, so it will be a working title at the very least.
I've begun researching murders in Cornwall for the new novel. There were two nasty, sad and lonely deaths that happened in the last couple of years. One was a premeditated murder, and has been prosecuted - the perpetrator receiving a sentence of not less than 28 years. The other man's body was found on Perranporth beach, some twelve miles from where I live. I noticed the report immediately, partly as he was found on my birthday last year, and also because he looks like an older balder me!
The investigation into his death has been wound down, but it seems unlikely to me that it was an accident. The poor fellow was found lying on the sand, naked but for one sock and shoe - the other sock was stuffed into his mouth. He had extensive injuries, which could have been caused by an attack or from damage caused by his body being dashed against rocks by the sea. No one goes swimming in the nude at night in winter!
I won't be drawing on these cases too heavily, as I have too much respect, but I also uncovered something more worrying about murders in Devon and Cornwall. I remembered an unsolved murder from 1996, which happened on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall. A woman out walking her dog was knifed to death. This was also the fate of a schoolgirl near Exeter a few years later - again out with her dog. An elderly woman, also a dog owner, was killed and several other dog-walking females have been attacked, escaping with their lives. This has all happened over the last twenty years, and even though it looks like the work of a well-disciplined serial killer, it's almost an invisible series of crimes. I don't think that I'm being cynical when I say that it's probably something to do with not damaging tourism - in the way that the film Jaws showed so well.
Knowing my luck, I'll draw the murderer out with my new novel - though I don't own a dog - phew!
In the meantime, I'm back in the saddle again...
I've devoted myself to hunting literary agents and publishers with open submission windows, doing virtually nothing joyful with my imagination. It's felt a bit like clocking into a grey factory every day, to work a twelve hour shift mixing porridge. Apart from writing four poems, I haven't done anything inspiring, though I've made copious notes recording story ideas, song and poem titles and names for future characters as they came to me.
I'd intended to write a frothy sex comedy as my next novel. This would comment on relationships and internet dating in the 21st century, and be something of an antidote to the doom and gloom that came from writing about psychopaths, fantasists and depression in 'The Perfect Murderer'. As I shot myself in both feet with my first novel by making it double the length of the accepted 80,000 - 100,000 words of a debut novel, I've decided to jump through that particular hoop by writing a prequel to it.
This will become my second first novel, and as I have the sequel already written things might take off. I mentioned a title 'Who Kills A Nudist?' in another thread, which some Colonists liked, so it will be a working title at the very least.
I've begun researching murders in Cornwall for the new novel. There were two nasty, sad and lonely deaths that happened in the last couple of years. One was a premeditated murder, and has been prosecuted - the perpetrator receiving a sentence of not less than 28 years. The other man's body was found on Perranporth beach, some twelve miles from where I live. I noticed the report immediately, partly as he was found on my birthday last year, and also because he looks like an older balder me!
The investigation into his death has been wound down, but it seems unlikely to me that it was an accident. The poor fellow was found lying on the sand, naked but for one sock and shoe - the other sock was stuffed into his mouth. He had extensive injuries, which could have been caused by an attack or from damage caused by his body being dashed against rocks by the sea. No one goes swimming in the nude at night in winter!
I won't be drawing on these cases too heavily, as I have too much respect, but I also uncovered something more worrying about murders in Devon and Cornwall. I remembered an unsolved murder from 1996, which happened on the Roseland Peninsula, Cornwall. A woman out walking her dog was knifed to death. This was also the fate of a schoolgirl near Exeter a few years later - again out with her dog. An elderly woman, also a dog owner, was killed and several other dog-walking females have been attacked, escaping with their lives. This has all happened over the last twenty years, and even though it looks like the work of a well-disciplined serial killer, it's almost an invisible series of crimes. I don't think that I'm being cynical when I say that it's probably something to do with not damaging tourism - in the way that the film Jaws showed so well.
Knowing my luck, I'll draw the murderer out with my new novel - though I don't own a dog - phew!
In the meantime, I'm back in the saddle again...
