PINTEREST
BLOGLOVIN
GOODREADS
Published by Bloodhound Books
Ebook and Paperback : 9 December 2016
For my turn on the blog tour for Death and the Good Son, I’d like to welcome B A Steadman to the blog, with a guest post. I think we can all benefit from a good mull at times!
The Power of a Good Mull
Sometimes, writers, you need to take a bit of time. I don’t know about you, but my mind is like a butter churn when I’m writing. It goes over and over stuff re-hashing, trying it another way, going back to the beginning. Round and round, over and over. Sadly, my brain likes to do this at three in the morning…
Sometimes, I’ll write and re-write a scene or a character, attempting to bully a better bit of writing out of my brain. But such ‘busywork’ is about satisfying the need to be writing, whereas what you should do at stuck times, is less writing. You need to mull.
It’s hard to mull when you’re sitting at the computer. Walking is good for mulling, or knitting, or painting, or sitting with your eyes closed in the sun (add suitable activity which works for you). Anything which absorbs the conscious mind and stills it, will enable mulling.
Sometimes, mulling is all you need to unlock a storyline, release a constipated scene, or breathe life into a comatose stereotype.
Recently, mid second book, I needed to get away from the desk. So I gave myself permission to mull all the way to the beach in the car (fear not, I wasn’t driving – Devon is still safe- if you don’t count the mad OAPs). I mulled up and down the beach for a couple of bracing miles, stretching my legs and breathing deeply. Then I mulled all the way back home. It was on the way home that the vital next scene came to me as a whole. I played it out in my head, held on to it and wrote it down as fast as I could once I got home. It seemed obvious when I read it back. Without the mulling, though, I don’t think I’d have got there.
Because that’s the thing about mulling, the muse only hangs around long enough to give you the lightbulb moment. She doesn’t handle the busywork. There are other bits of you that can take over at that point, and push the writing onwards.
Sometimes, taking a bit of time is all you need.
About the book:
Life is good for DI Dan Hellier. He has made several successful drugs’ busts and even the Assistant Chief Constable is smiling. But the discovery of two headless, handless corpses buried in the bog on Dartmoor will test his team to their limits. How are they expected to identify the bodies when nobody has reported them missing?
The pressure mounts when the death of a teenager from an overdose of Mephedrone plunges Dan into the murky world of the Garrett family. Could the peaceful, family-run Animal Rescue Centre really be a cover for murder and drug-dealing?
Just how far will people go to get what they want?
And what links death to the good son?
This investigation will challenge Dan’s decisions and beliefs as he races to catch a criminal before another child dies.
About the author:
Bernie taug
ht English for many years and completed her debut novel, Death and Deception, when she escaped the classroom and could finally stop marking essays.
She lives in Devon with her husband and two marauding cats which do not help her concentration at all.
In her spare time, apart from walking and yoga, Bernie is a Trustee for an animal sanctuary in Somerset, a role she finds rewarding, except for the moment when she brought home the cats, at which point she questioned her sanity.
She has just completed book 2 in the series, Death and The Good Son, which will be published on 9th December, just in time for Christmas. What a nice idea for a present…
In book 2, we learn more about Dan Hellier and his life, and get caught up in a bizarre set of murders involving bodies in the bog on Dartmoor. All in a day’s work for Devon police.
Author Links: Website | Twitter | Amazon UK | Goodreads
