MONDAY

Snapping bits off.

August Bank Holiday.  Traditionally when all English people cancel the ambitious outdoor plans they’ve made for their last cheeky weekday off before Christmas, and instead sit indoors watching it rain for ten hours.  Either that, or they sally optimistically forth regardless, upper lips ramrod stiff, to spend an afternoon sheltering in the doorway of a soggy beer tent pitched in a storm-lashed field, watching the rain drip off the bunting.

This year, what a difference!  (And they say there’s no such thing as global warming…)  England is roasting hot – on August Bank Holiday!  Unheard-of!  The topsy-turvy weather of the last month – one minute freezing cold and pouring, the next a sweltering 30-something ˚C – has only served to more-starkly-highlight my preference for warm climes over cold.  A probable dose of New England winter is therefore going to prove quite a test of endurance for me.  The pluses will be a Christmas as white as any Disney film (something you never get in Old England…can’t imagine Bing Crosby crooning, ‘I’m dreaming of a light drizzle…’) and the chance to try snowboarding for the first time ever.  I don’t care that I’m possibly already too old and brittle to embark on such a crackpot new hobby; I’ve been dying to have a go at it since I went skydiving at the Milton Keynes snowdome a few years ago and watched everyone ‘back side 360-ing’ (or whatever it is they do) on the artificial slopes there.  Finally, a chance to try it on the genuine stuff, right on my doorstep!  That’ll cheer me up despite the cold.  The Norwegians say there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.  As I’m intending to be sewn into my fleecy salopettes in November and not surgically-removed until March, I’m not anticipating a problem.  They will also serve to catch all the bits of myself I’m likely to snap off on the piste.

TUESDAY

Plot knots.

Spent the whole afternoon going in circles over the Miss Calculation plot, AGAIN.  This is most unlike me, as usually I don’t stress or struggle over novel plotting at all.  I’m not a big and thorough planner down to the nth detail.  I tend to give myself a broad brush outline of who does what and when, and work loosely to that.  The books pretty much write themselves if I just step aside and let my imagination crack on.    This time, however, I’m feeling the pressure to comprehensively answer all the tantalising questions I’ve asked.  Hoisted by my own petard.  I created the chaos that’s unfolded across the first two books, so surely I should be able to tidy up my own mess?

Mercifully, just when I was beginning to succumb to the undermining sensations of anxiety and defeat, the wind got up and blew my paperwork all round the garden, providing a welcome distraction.  I decided to decamp indoors and make a cuppa – a change (from lounger to sofa) being as good as a rest etc, etc.  It was no better.  I ended up prowling twitchily around the house like I was suffering from constipation, praying for a sort-of ‘mental enema’ to get everything moving again.  I find the whole situation a bit embarrassing, as I genuinely don’t believe in writer’s block.  I think it’s just an excuse not to sit down and get on with your job – but something is definitely in the way of clear thinking at the moment.  I’m not sure if it’s truly the complexities of this novel, or whether there’s so much other stuff crowding my head that the book stuck inside hasn’t got a cat in hells chance of getting out.  I’m convinced if I trick my brain into looking the other way, inspiration can wriggle out into the open unchallenged.  Perhaps I just need to stop agonising, get writing, and trust to my instinct to show the way like it’s always done before? 

WEDNESDAY

Miss Taken Identity.

With Miss Calculation (the final book in the Miss crime trilogy) occupying my thoughts at the moment, I thought I’d take you back to where it all started; Miss Taken Identity, in which a seemingly-foolproof con goes spectacularly wrong, leaving the protagonists scrabbling for their very survival.

 

“One final grift to set him up for life – and it’s a peach.  The Marks are fools, the double-cross pure poetry, and it’ll net him millions.  What career con-man Ricky McAllister hasn’t bargained for is ending up a corpse in a rich man’s mansion, unwittingly setting in motion a rollercoaster of backstabbing and betrayal.  How did Ricky wind up dead, and who will pay the ultimate price for his avarice? 

Murderous gangsters, bent coppers, cheating wives, greed and lies – in Miss Taken Identity, no one is quite what they seem.”

 

www.annieholder.com/miss-taken-identity/

THURSDAY

Risk repaid.

#ThrowbackThursday to wonderful Wyoming in 2017 – the stunning location that inspired First Sight. 

To marry at first sight is certainly unusual, possibly insane, definitely reckless – but what if it turns out to be the most rewarding risk you’ve ever taken?

Halfway through your life, when every goal you’ve striven so hard to attain remains elusively out of reach, have you the will and courage to pick yourself up and begin again? 

 

“Can a stranger fix your broken heart? 

Everett McCann is a survivor.  Raised on the road, beaten to within an inch of his life, there’s no one harder to knock down than this cowboy.  Now a self-made man, healthy and wealthy on his Wyoming ranch, only one thing can bring Everett to his knees – loneliness. 

Hope Howarth is hanging by a thread.  Her husband divorced her after nineteen years because she failed to have a baby.  The doctors say there’s nothing wrong, but it must be her, because now her ex has a child with someone else.  Penniless, humiliated, depressed – how can she be called Hope when none exists? 

When a chance to escape the daily drudgery presents itself, will Hope rise to the challenge?  Is she daring enough to abandon everything she knows to marry a stranger on US Reality TV?  

Does she believe in love at first sight?”

 

www.annieholder.com/first-sight/

FRIDAY

Money for nothing.

Actually bothered to read the meters.  I hardly ever do this, as the electricity meter is in the back of a cupboard in the kitchen, behind a precariously-stacked assortment of pans, and through a film of spider’s webs that would not disgrace a haunted house.  You need a torch and 20/20 vision just to see it, let alone read the minute numbers.  The gas meter’s actually less of performance, despite being outside and half-buried in the ground.  The upshot of making the effort was that I submitted my readings online (instead of paying an estimated bill like I usually do), and discovered I’m in significant credit!  Very satisfying.  It feels like money for nothing, even though they’ll never give it back to me, of course.  They’ll just keep it in their account, earning them interest, until I’ve had sufficient hot showers and warming cuppas to owe it all to them again.  Oh well, it’s either that or live off-grid on the Mongolian Steppes with nothing but a yak dung stove and the inadequate flaps of a grubby yurt between dainty little me and the harsh elements. I think we all know how unlikely this is, given my toes go blue in the height of summer if I don’t wear my slippers…

Annie Holder writes pacey thrillers, twist-filled crime novels, and unconventional romances – set all over the world.

You can find out more about her books at www.annieholder.com, and follow her on Instagram www.instagram.com/alhwriter/