Marianne Wheelaghan's Blog

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Delighted to see my latest piece in The Leither Magazine  (issue 116)

 The 10-year old Master Criminal

It was June 1969. Late afternoon sun flooded the living room. The piano stood by the window. I plonked on it while glancing up and down the street. I was on the horns of a dilemma. Should I pinch a biscuit or make myself a jam piece? The biscuit tin was in the kitchen on top of the dresser, tricky to get to quickly, unlike the bread and jam which were on the sideboard next to the sink....

Tweet The paperback of The Shoeshine Killer is out now and the lovely people at Pilrig Press are offering anyone who buys a copy from them any second book (by yours truly) half price – and free postage in the UK!  Just follow this  BUY NOW  link!

 

What some of the reviewers are saying about The Shoeshine Killer An immersive, deceptively gritty mystery novel   Killing Time There is something very special about the Scottish Lady Detective   The Book Trail 5 stars for the second ‘Scottish Lady...

Tweet Buy the paperback of the Shoeshine Killer and get a second book half price The paperback of The Shoeshine Killer is out now and the lovely people at Pilrig Press are offering anyone who buys a copy from them any second book (by yours truly) half price – and free postage in the UK! Just follow this BUY NOW link!

What some of the reviewers are saying about The Shoeshine Killer An immersive, deceptively gritty mystery novel Killing Time There is something very special about the Scotti...

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Online lifestyle magazine Lothian Life in conjunction withthe online creative writing school Writingclasses.co.uk are running a brand new writing competition open to all writers.

All youhave to do is write a short story (500 words maximum) on the theme of ‘Home’. You may interpret this in any way you wish, but you MUST include the line ‘There’s no place like home’ somewhere in your story.

Closing date is Friday 13th November 2015.

Winners will be announced on Friday 17th December 2015....

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Clink here to buyyour copy ofThe Shoeshine Killer!

DS Louisa Townsend has moved from Edinburgh to work for the Kiribati Police Service on Tarawa, a remote coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific. Locally she is known as the Scottish Detective Lady.

Louisa is in Fiji for a money laundering conference. From the moment she arrives in the country things go wrong, including some weird perv breaking into her room while she sleeps and mucking about with her underwear. But that pales into i...

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I’ve just come across an excellentreview in Lothian Life of crime novelBlack Woodby SJI Holliday,a new author to me. The review is by writerKendra Olsenand calledHaunted by Haddington.

I liked what Kendrasaid so much, I bought the book and am looking forward to reading it. If you like crime fiction, do check out the review. It’s worth a read

Anyone else read Black Wood – apart from Kendra, of course?

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Some of you may or may not know that I sometimes write for The Leither Magazine. Here is thebeginningfrom my latest pieceAt Home on Disappearing Islands. It’s my thoughts on living on Tarawa, a remoteisland in the middle of the Pacific. I lived there for fiveyears. Toread the full piececlick on the link. I’d love to hear your thoughts and to know where,or what,home means to you?

When I was growing up rock band Mott The Hoople said ‘home’ was ‘where they wanna be’, for Dorothy in The Wiz...

You may already know Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for great writing but they are worth repeating:

1: Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way — although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a potho...

In the olden days

In another life I was a successful marketing manager – I even have a degree on the subject. So, when my first book,The Blue Suitcase, was published a couple of years ago,I was not daunted by the thought of marketing it. Far from it. It seemed as easy as floating on water. And I certainly didn’t think I needed to use social media to help me – I’m sort of old school when it comes to technology.This is still my phone today. You get the picture?

However

I only realised how wrong I...

When I want a break from writing I like to go for a walk. I especially love “luxuriating” in the smells and sounds of woods. Some people call this “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku.”I talk about “shinrin-yoku” andthe importance of getting away from it all – especially our keyboards – in this week’s Crime Readers’ Association blog:(Move Away From The Keyboard!). Please do go have a look

However, there is one thing I forgot to mention in my CRA post, so I’ll do so now. Remember in May, I told...