Cause for Celebration!
I’ve reached the first milestone on my Journey to Casablanca. The first draft of my latest novel is now complete. Even though I’ve managed to finish it in much less time than usual (thanks to six weeks confined to sitting with my leg raised after my foot op), it seems to have been a long and often difficult journey fraught with a few occasions when I wasn’t sure if I’d lost my way. That’s the problem when you start off without a map, but I’m a pantser not a planner. It’s the only way I know how to write.
Journey to Casablanca is the second in my Murders at Sea series featuring Amanda Mitchell who accompanies her husband Graham who is a cruise lecturer on board the Sea Dream. In this story, the two leave Southampton for a two-week cruise to Morocco. Even before they reach their first port, The Great Ernesto, the ship’s guest magician, is brutally murdered. To make matters worse, Graham becomes a suspect. Amanda must identify the real culprit before Graham is arrested. Ernesto was not well liked and no one who had dealings with him appears to have a good word to say about him, but who would have cause to take the man’s life in such a vicious manner?
On reflection, it seems surprising that is has taken so long for me to consider a cruising holiday as the setting of one of my travel mysteries, especially as I have been a cruise lecturer for well over twenty years (and cruising long before that), almost as long as I’ve been writing my novels.
As in my earlier travel mysteries by coach with tour guide Fiona Mason and mysteries by air with ex-archaeologist and historian Aunt Jessica, Journey to Casablanca follows the same itinerary as one of our holidays.
If you are one of the regular readers of my blog you will already know that I have a passion for Islamic architecture (it was one of the things that prompted me to write two of my earlier Aunt Jessica novels). When I discovered that one of the cruise lines was asking for someone who could give a series of lectures on Moroccan architecture in January of this year, I jumped at the opportunity and was delighted to be offered the booking.
The manuscript is now winging its way to my editors and once I’ve completed the necessary rewrites they suggest, I shall be looking to put together a small group of beta readers to provide me with honest, objective feedback to help me make the book the best it can be. If you are interested, do get in touch and I’ll send you a more detailed plot summary and a list of the kind of things I’d like you to look at before you have to commit yourself.
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