A Visit to Will Poole's Island

Based in Vermont, author Tim Weed teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and in the MFA Creative & Professional Writing program at Western Connecticut State University. He is the winner of a Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Award and a Solas Best Travel Writing Award and also has published many short stories and essays. In addition to his writing work he has more than two decades’ experience developing and directing educational travel programs around the world and is currently a featured expert for National Geographic Expeditions on traveling programs to Cuba, Spain, and Patagonia/Tierra del Fuego.

Tim Weed’s first novel, Will Poole’s Island is set in New England, 1643. A meeting in the forest between a rebellious young Englishman and a visionary Wampanoag leads to a dangerous collision of societies, an epic sea journey, and the making of an unforgettable friendship. Will Poole's Island is a tale of adventure, wonder, and mystery in which a young man discovers that he is destined for more than his narrow upbringing led him to expect.

Tim Weed stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about how his interest in family history led him to research that inspired the events of this novel:

 

Several years ago I got interested in family history. Tracing the Weeds back through the decades and the centuries, I found that the first Weed, Jonas, had come to America in 1630, on the ship Arbella, with Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Another ancestor was a young widower named Thomas Trowbridge, who crossed the Atlantic with three young sons and a household servant in 1637 to become one of the founders of New Haven, Connecticut. In 1645, Thomas Trowbridge sailed back to England to help Oliver Cromwell fight against king Charles in the English Civil War. He was killed in battle, leaving the three young Trowbridge orphans in the trust of their father’s servant, Henry Gibbons. Gibbons turned out to be corrupt, and basically swindled the boys out of their fortune.

Left on their own to survive in the wilds of America, the boys became merchant sea captains. One, William Trowbridge, was captured by the French and later became the subject of a sermon by the famous Puritan cleric Cotton Mather. Anyway, all of this was fascinating to me, and those who have read the book may recognize echoes of these ancestral histories in the story of my protagonist, Will Poole, his brother Zeke, and their legal guardian, the servant James Overlock.

I also have Native American ancestors – my great grandmother was half Cherokee – and I was fascinated by that heritage. So I wanted to find out more about the New England Indians too. I started reading a lot of primary resources, mostly accounts written by early English travelers and colonists. These books were very interesting, but they were of course written purely from the English perspective. Most of the observations of Indians by these early English described them as tall, handsome, healthy, with exceptionally good teeth. And then there was the fact that English captives, especially young ones, were often reluctant to return to the settlements after they’d been ransomed or rescued – because the freedom and ease they found in Indian society compared favorably to the strictness and repression of Puritan society. I found this most provocative, and it gave me an important insight into the character of my protagonist, Will Poole.

In 1614, six years before Plymouth Rock, an English sea captain named Thomas Hunt kidnapped twenty-seven Algonkian-speaking Indians from different spots along the New England coast and sold them as slaves to the Spanish. Among this group was a Patuxet Wampanoag who called himself Tisquantum, a name that was later shortened to “Squanto.” Tisquantum managed to escape slavery in Spain and made his way to England, where he was taken up by a group of investors interested in colonizing the New World. Tisquantum spent five years in England and found his way home in 1619, only to discover that his entire band had perished in a devastating plague. There is a character in my book, Squamiset, who has a very similar story.

Anyway, in the course of all this research I was beginning to develop a mental picture of New England in the 17^th century. The thing was, the picture wasn’t complete. It wasn’t vivid or alive in my mind. And so in a sense the novel came to me because I passionately wanted to know more about the time and place, and I was only getting a dry and limited vision from my research.

And when it came time to transition from the research phase to the novel-writing phase, I began to get a feeling of accumulating energy, as if the story were telling itself. It was as if my early American characters had an important message they wanted to communicate - a new way of thinking, perhaps, or a reminder of a very old way of thinking. Novels are obviously limited in what they can achieve, of course, and in the end this is just a story. It’s a story about the friendship between a young man and an old man, their adventures and struggles and the landscapes they travel through, and the people and beings they interact with. I hope you enjoy it!

 

You can find out more about Tim and the book via the author's website. Will Poole's Island is available via Amazon US and Amazon UK in digital and print formats.

Progeny of a Killer

Today's guest post is from British author JM Shorney, author of Progeny of a Killer.

Undercover agent and assassin, Aidan McRaney, is sent to infiltrate the lair of fellow Irishman, Daniel Corrigan, by his boss, wheelchair-bound Sir George Treveleyan. Only Corrigan and Treveleyan know of McRaney’s secret past. Aidan has no idea of his mother’s affair with wanted I.R.A man, Connor McMartland, who was also Corrigan’s father. This shocking news triggers a chain of unprecedented events that sends Aidan into the world of white slave trafficking and puts Aidan's own son in harm's way.

Shorney stops by In Reference to Murder today to share her inspiration for her books and some insights into her research:

 

As three of my novels Stalking Aidan, The Devil in Soho and Staying Out are related to gangsters, what better way of recounting my experiences in the area of research, than to actually revisit  the early years when I once dated a man actively involved in gangland. This was before marriage and children, but it was an experience I have drawn upon for my novels.

As I was about to become engaged to him, he had gone from being penniless and unemployed, to throwing his money around. It turned out that he, and other members of his hoodlum fraternity, had held up and robbed a post office in Chesterfield. It was this incident that perhaps led me to immerse myself in the gangster/crime genre. Watching countless movies and reading non-fiction crime books has also acquainted me with this twilight world of nightclubs, drugs and prostitution.

Of course, visiting the places has added more feeling and sensation to my writing. Nothing is more powerful and atmospheric than to visit the places you write about. I have to admit I've worn out much shoe leather walking the streets of London, particularly the East End and South London, where my stories are set.

For Progeny of a Killer I had researched Irish history extensively for many years, and gone through many Kleenex tissues due to being upset by this bloody history. I have been able to construct this story of revenge and desperate sorrow, experienced by one man, Danny Corrigan, for what he sees as acts of insurgency against the Irish nation.

In Dublin, prior to writing the novel, I visited Kilmainham gaol. I saw that small, lonely black cross over the mound of earth and knew I had to write about it. Particularly the death of James Connolly, the last of the rebel leaders of the1916 Easter Uprising. Connolly was propped up by a chair and shot, which is referred to by Danny Corrigan in Progeny. Corrigan's hatred of the British is such, that he has a plan is to bring them down, not with bombings or assassinations, but paedophilia and white slave trafficking. In the murder and torture of children lies the machinations of this man. Visiting Kilmainham and seeing the small barred cells, gave me the first hand experience no Wikipedia entry or Google search could ever offer.

To get to real grips with your story, write what you know, what you feel and what you see.

 

For more information about Storney and Progeny, check out her AuthorAmp website.

 

 

A Look at "The Rightful Owner"

Hemmie Martin has spent most of her professional life as a nurse, including being a Community Nurse for people with learning disabilities and a Forensic Nurse working with young offenders. She spent six years living in the south of France, and currently lives in Essex in the U.K. She writes crime fiction with a dark edge, including a series with D.I Eva Wednesday novel, second of which, Rightful Owner, was published this week.

When a murder occurs in an exclusive swingers’ club, D.I. Wednesday and D.S. Lennox find themselves immersed in a murky world of sex and secrets. It doesn’t take long for the members to turn on one another, and for their clandestine affairs to come crashing into their everyday lives. As Wednesday experiences the pressures of work and caring for her mother’s mental illness, and Lennox’s ex-wife has him worrying about the sustainability of his role as a father, their case brings about questions of personal freedom and they begin to wonder if we are all, in fact, owned in one way or another.

Martin stops by In Reference to Murder today to talk about "Being Close to Crime":

 

I had always wanted to be a policewoman, but life took me down the nursing route, after a volunteering placement. Years down the line, I found myself working as a Forensic Nurse with young people between ten and eighteen, who had committed crimes. Their offences ranged from theft, drug or alcohol use, assault, to murder. I visited the young people in their homes, schools, hostels, or young offender institutes (prison). I was finally working alongside the police.

My experiences of visiting prisons, police cells and courts, add some (I hope) realism to my novels. I remember vividly the pressure of the job, the claustrophobic feeling of the cells, and the general malaise clinging to the atmosphere in the prisons. I was visiting an offender once, when the prison alarm rang. A fight had broken out, and lock-down was being enforced. Although I was completely safe, adrenaline riddled by body. I also remember taking a group of male adolescents to a male adult prison, with the idea of dissuading them from a life of crime. Walking within the grounds, men were hurling obscenities at myself and my female colleague, which was an uncomfortable experience.

I obviously do not use real people or their actual crimes in my novels, but I do liaise with a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police Force, who advises me on procedural issues, which is a great help. As he is the same rank as my female DI, he is able to see things as she would. However, I reserve the right to use artistic licence, as sometimes the police procedure is quite a drawn-out process, which could be quite boring to read. I want an element of realism in my work, but not an out-and-out- procedural novel. I like to study the human aspects of crime, and the people behind the Detective Inspector and Detective Sergeant badges.

I am due to attend jury service in a week, which I hope will add another dimension to my writing. I’m used to being in Court with an offender, but never on the side of a jury, so I’m excited to see what that is like.

I have a plethora of books on policing, forensics, poisoning, true crime, and criminal psychology, to name but a few. I read a variety of male and female authors of crime fiction, such as Ian Rankin and P.D. James, but nothing beats human intervention, in my opinion.

When I write, I have the idea of the crime in mind, but sometimes the perpetrator changes from who I originally intended it to be, as once I start, things I could not see before writing suddenly develop. It is then I see who else would be better suited as the perpetrator, which often affords me the twist in the denouement, which hopefully thrills the reader.

This has taught me that over-planning a novel could stifle such hidden gems. I will write a mind-map as I move through the story, to check where people were when the crime took place, but I only use this overview as a guide, not a testament to follow religiously, as things always have a potential to change. But that makes a story interesting for me to write, and for a reader to devour.

 

Rightful Owner is available via Amazon. For more information about the author, check out her website, Twitter account, and Facebook page.

Ready for Some Influence

Chris Parker is a specialist in Communication and Influence, a Licensed Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and instructor, an experienced martial artist, and columnist and features writer. He's also written, or contributed to, over 20 fiction and nonfiction books.

His new thriller, titled Influence, centers on internationally-renowned consultant, Marcus Kline, who shares his expertise with world leaders, corporate giants and global media stars. Arrrogant, self-assured and controlling, Marcus revels in his unparalleled skill. Yet when a series of murder victims bear the horrific hallmarks of an intelligent and remorseless serial killer, Detective Inspector Peter Jones turns to Marcus for help – and everything changes. As the killer sets a deadly pace, the invisible, irresistible and terrifying power of influence threatens friendships, reputations, and lives. When events appear to implicate the great Marcus Kline himself, everyone learns that the worst pain isn’t physical.

Parker stops by In Reference to Murder today to discuss the power of influence:

 

Influence...It’s inevitable

by Chris Parker, author of Influence

 

We are all subject to influence. That’s what the research tells us. People, places, memories, expectations and a whole host of other stimuli influence us. In the main they influence us subconsciously. In other words they get into our heads and into our psyche, they affect the ways we feel, the things we say and the decisions we make without us even realising it.

This isn’t a one-way street, though. We influence others, too. Whether we mean to or not. Sometimes we create influence – either positive or negative - and we are oblivious to the fact. Sometimes we set out to create a specific type of influence and we achieve the exact opposite. Just because we influence inevitably doesn’t mean that are particularly good at it. Just because we are influenced inevitably doesn’t mean that we recognise and/or manage those influences well.

I decided to write my crime thriller series based on a Master of Influence. His name is Marcus Kline. I don’t know why that is his name. It just is. I do know why I chose to create him. It’s because I have been studying communication and influence since the mid 1970s. When I returned to writing fiction I took the easy and obvious option. I based it on what I know. I teach people in all walks of life how to use language to influence deliberately and positively. So when I began the process of creating Marcus Kline and his world I was pretty sure that there was only one thing I didn’t know. That was just who precisely my killer was and what precisely his motive was.

I figured – guessed, hoped – that it would all become clear as I developed Marcus’s world and immersed myself in it fully. Thankfully that is what happened. Eventually the killer just stepped out from the shadows and gave me a knowing look. I recognised precisely what that look meant because, well, because I have been studying and teaching this stuff for decades. The killer knew that I would read between the lines. The killer was right.

From that moment on I felt in complete control of my novel. The feeling lasted less than a week. Why? Because influence is inevitable. Because Marcus Kline had had enough life breathed into him to start making his own decisions. Now it was time for him to take the lead. All I could do was create the situations and let him work his way through them. He led. I followed. To be honest, I found it quite frightening at first. This wasn’t at all how I had planned to write the book. I adapted, though. After all, if you create a Master of Influence what do you expect them to do? I, of all people, should have worked that out. I cope with it by telling myself that we are a team.

So, right now, we are working together on the second book in the trilogy. I’m doing my best to recognise all the different ways Marcus Kline is influencing me. Part of me – the competitive part – feels tested by him. I’d like to show him that I know at least some things that he doesn’t. I suspect that I am doomed to failure. There is one thing, however, that I do know for sure.

He hasn’t finished with me yet. 

Influence is published by Urbane Publications (http://urbanepublications.com) and is available from Amazon and lots of other lovely booky places http://georiot.co/21DG

Marcus Kline has his own website at http://marcuskline.co.uk

Head there if you dare!

Blood of the Rose

Kevin Murray began his writing career 40 years ago, working on the Star, Johannesburg's biggest daily newspaper. He soon became chief crime reporter in what was considered to be the crime capital of the world. He once achieved a record of more than 30 consecutive days of front page crime stories, including an aircraft hijacking, several murders, numerous armed robberies and even drug-related gang wars. Since then, his successful career has spanned magazine publishing, public relations, and strategic communications.

His new novel Blood on the Rose is set in London, 1986, where a newspaper editor is horrifically murdered, his death quickly followed by a series of more brutal, and often bizarre, slayings. The police are baffled, the only clear link between the murders being a single blood red rose left at the scene of every killing. Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey. As the body count rises, Jennifer Chapman, renowned investigative journalist and daughter of the murdered newspaper editor, sets out on a personal quest for revenge. Drawn together in their pursuit of a deadly quarry, Winters and Jennifer unwittingly face a fatal surprise, for the killer is closer than they think.  

Murray stopped by In Reference to Murder to talk about where he finds his inspiration:

 

Inspiration? It’s criminal!

Writers are often advised to write what they know. This in itself could be a rather troubling piece of advice when you’re embarking on a novel about a remorseless, barbaric serial killer. But much of the world’s greatest fiction, particularly crime fiction, is driven by fact, and the real crimes perpetrated by others, the mysteries that haunt and challenge us. Perhaps that’s the thrill of crime fiction, the relationship with the darker side of the world.

My own fascination stems from earlier in my career when I was the crime reporter for the The Star newspaper in Johannesburg. In the mid-80s violent crime was rife in South Africa and there was no shortage of material to feed the imagination of a crime writer. Yet it wasn’t the more lurid or sensational aspects of the criminal act that fascinated me, but the forensic analysis – the careful accumulation and examination of even the most trivial of physical evidence to build, and ultimately solve, a case. You have to remember techniques and technology were far removed from the slick, almost mercurial, presentation of forensics we see now, particularly through popular shows such as CSI. You couldn’t perform a tissue analysis with a smartphone, or find DNA traces with a tablet. But this was the fascination for me, that a case could turn on tracing a partial fingerprint, discovering the relevance of an item of clothing, or matching ballistics to tie a weapon to the person who fired it.

There was one compelling mystery in particular that became the genesis for Blood of the Rose. The case? The Boksburg Suitcase Murder of the mid-late Sixties. A suitcase containing a middle-aged woman’s decapitated torso was fished from Boksburg Lake. Further badly decomposed body parts, including the unrecognisable head, were found in other suitcases. But the body could not be identified, even after pathologists worked with artists to painstakingly produce a likeness of the victim’s features. I won’t go into all the details here – they can easily be found on the internet – but it eventually took four years to formally identify the body as that of Catherine Burch. The final piece of proof? An expert in the police fingerprinting bureau found a fingerprint on a letter written by Catherine that matched those of her corpse.  

As a journalist this case was vital in sparking my interest in forensics, and how the most trivial or innocuous of items can hold the key to unlocking a seemingly indecipherable mystery. Forensic investigation was progressing rapidly and more and more cases, like this one, were being solved thanks to the unique combination of progressive science and human ingenuity. Throw in a large dose of intuition and curiosity and any crime could be solved…eventually. I simply felt compelled to take my interest from the pages of the newspaper into a fictional world – a world where a faceless, remorseless and brutal killer is pursued doggedly by a police team using every clue, no matter how small, to try and break the case. But I didn’t leave any bodies in a suitcase. Or did I? You’ll have to read Blood of the Rose to discover that for yourself….

 

Blood of the Rose by Kevin Murray, June 2014, 320 pages, Urbane Publications, ISBN: 1909273120 is available via Amazon and Urbane