So I said that this party was for special people in my life - friends I've made during my years as a published writer - but there's one person who I couldn't possibly miss out - someone who was with me before I was ever published - before I ever even submitted my first manuscript to Mills & Boon - someone who brought me coffee while I was writing, held my hand through the waiting, supported, encouraged me, believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself - and cheered the loudest when I sold my very first bookSo who better to start off the Great Big Blog Party than Him Indoors - the Crime part of the Crime and Passion duo - the Babe Magnet himself ?
Be gentle with him - this is his first ever venture into the world of blogging.
Dear Bloggers in the world of romance,
I have been asked to contribute to the celebrations and to come up with 200 words of entertainment. Well my theme is how to write about murder when romance creeps up the stairs, into the rosebeds and curtains and even into the cats. Yes, I am the bluff Tyke, square shaped, brought up on Tetley's Bitter and Leeds united, but then I had an encounter with a romantic in the shape of my bit of Irish crumpet otherwise known as the missis. 
What does a man do when he has to switch from a day spent with murderers, either from the past or across the table in a cell, to this very unpink and unCartland modern romance which is all about hunks, seduction and emotions spinning into magic words of love? Well, he retreats into the past and writes about more distant and manageable emotional turmoil.
I'm not saying I retreat from romance - oh no - I just flounder like a tugboat (dirty British coaster) in the wake of that elegant ocean liner Kate Walker. As writers, we drop anchor in different ports but I still meander on about historical psychopaths and the availability of arsenic in 1850.
I confess unashamedly - I live in the past, I hunt for stories there, I raid it for sensation and shock. Then the living world of romance, here in a steel town with wide green spaces, is waiting for me in the other rooms of this life, where my lovely wife reminds me every day why I love her.So, writers out there - do you travel back to the past or leave it as a foreign country whose language puzzles you? I have a copy of the Grim and Gruesome A-Z of Yorkshire Murder to give away to the winner.
Steve Wade, alias Dmitri Todgeroff alias the BM
20 comments:
What a lovely post.
But hugs on being a Leeds United supportor -- U nderstand things are more than a rocky at the moment.
There again, if you live in the past, you can always relive their glory years...
It is wonderful that Kate has such a rock behind her.
Dimitri, I vunder if you and I vill ever meet. It seems ales, as if perhaps (said with heavy emphasis on the h...so it sounds like throat being cleared with much phlegm) not. The vay you toch about your vife makes me very very sed. I think I must to jump over very big breedge...and perhaps (see above for pronunciation) svim alongside your tug boat until the murky depths claim my poor broken heart.
The pest for me, vithout you is as dead as the future...
Yours, forever drowning my sorrows in a bottle of vodka...hic!
Natalia Dropoff
Where did that Russian tart come from! I feel a cat fight coming on! Lovely post Kate and BM - I for one only delve into the past if and when it can make things truly horrendous for my H and h in the present. Imagine that said with a witchy cackle.
xx Daisy/Abby Green
What a lovely post.
I'm definitely living in the past now. Seeing that handsome face I'm transported back to Fishguard where I had the pleasure of meeting you both and enjoying good company, good food, and good wine.
Raising a glass to you Kate, congrat's on your 50th book and looking forward to the next 50.
Chris.
I must be schizophrenic. Half of me loves the contemporary world, whilst the other half of me loves the murky lamplit streets of yesteryear. (1800s onwards)
Congratulations to you both on your books. Well deserved.
It sounds to me like you are a very happy pair. Each content in their own world but also able to blend your lives together in this one :D Keep up the good work on the writing front and stay happy in the marriage :)
Nice to see you here, Steve! So glad The Prof and I have had the joy of spending so many great times with you and the elegant, Kate!
love, Anne
ps: someone better video the Daisy/Abby battle with Natalia Dropoff. It would be a treat on YouTube!
And someone should tell Natalia that she's really Natalia Dropova!!
If she does just Drop over here and squares up to Daisy - handbags at dawn - I'll try to video it, I promise! ;-)
Kate
Right, here's the tug well behind the liner, entering this goodly blog of literary ladies just to say how wonderful it feels to have Dropoff and other dishy women talking about handbags at dawn over me.
Michelle. yes I can dream of Leeds when they played football rather than kick and run.
Da stedanya i spasseba Natalia. Let's meet somewhere when Daisy's not looking.
Daisy, of course I'm faithful to you - just kidding.
Hi Chris, I remember you from Fishguard - I'm blushing as I'm not normally called handsome, just the literacy geezer.
Nicolette, yes I'll linger in the contemporary world just to please all you ladies for a blog or two.
Ilona 0h yes, we're blended. I'm Yorkshire tea and she's Irish whisky!
Barbara - still thinking wistfully of Lismore and Ballyvolane. Even a grouch like me relaxed a bit
Kate - butt out of my blog while I'm flirting with all these women!
Go Steve Best writing Prof ever! Lovely Post, catch you next semester.
Hollie (Hull uni)
P.s Kate love the new book just started it yesterday (sneakily reading it behind the till at work!)
The only place that Natalia one will be dropova-ing will be a very high height, with her Russian melancholy and tortured soul poetics, doesn't she know that we have that here in Ireland too?!!!
Abby (sniff) Green
My head (phlegmy h) is killing me this morning, as I vake to another day vithout my little tug boat. I vould challenge this Abby/Daisy (is she split personality or vat?) but she bores me. She has nothing to offer except to come from a vet country where all they do is eat potatoes.
At least...my little tug boat, ve vould hev the steppes...and (hic) vodka...
Natalia Dropoff
Okay you guys - sorry - gals, now stop this bickering or I'll take you both on a one-way ticket by tugboat to Vladivostok. Actually that sounds damned good.
But thanks Hollie, for your kind words. We lecturers rarely get any feedback that's not on an official form.
Her indoors - yes, I reckon two Irish lasses and a Russian tart would be the ideal cast for my B movie. I'll call it Dirty British Coaster and it'll be set in a gulag where the captain of the boat meets the Russian lass in a vodka bar, then two Irish women dropova in and the three women scrap over the captain, who nonchalantly eats a Mars Bar and smiles to camera with 'See, writing murder attracts the worst sort of women... brilliant!'
Just popping in to say hi to my lovely friend!!
Holly
Loved your informative and fascinating post. I live in the contemporary world but as often as possible I pretend to live in the past since I tend to wax nostalgic lately. This has occurred regularly and no doubt due to being a boomer and having strong feelings about that era and how much change has occurred.
Sometimes living in the past has an appeal that I cannot resist. It seems to calm me and comforts me in ways that I need. I feel that I belong there much more so than in this 21st century world. Time machine travel would cure that I am sure.
Your post has given me much to ponder. The decided advantages of living in the contemporary world are being accustomed to life here and now. But I do pine for the past with age creeping up and thinking about those good ole days.
HOLD IT LADIES.
If there's any handbags at dawn business I thought we'd established I'd be swinging the first blow. Am confident of victory given the heavy-duty landfill overspill nature of my handbag (though I have to try to get up in time first-- any chance of making it handbags at lunchtime?)
Abby, India, Natalia...
May I point out that you lot may have youth and beauty on my side. But some of us also write historical psychopath stuff (bit further down on the East Coast) and, ahem, can swap resources with the BM...
You just try getting a word in edgeways when I've got my other hat on :o)
(Then again, if you're forcing me to go and drink wine/talk heroes with Kate...)
Thanks again ye bloggers for these reflections and rather forthright approaches to my romantic side (it's there, hidden under the betting slips and wine corks) but most of all I like the responses to my past-wallowing ramblings. So yes Diane, I agree with your perspective. And Pam, well, I reckon we don't care if all these ladies know that we're a couple of obsessives with one foot in the bloody past of our fair English shires.
I've had a gentle introduction to blogging thanks to you lot. I don't think it's for me as a regular thing but it's been fun. Now get writing instead of keeping Her Indoors occupied with all this.I understand I have to pick a winner so the tugboat will steam off into harbour and have a think.
Metaphors be with you!
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