Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow by Colin Garrow (guest post)

I'm thrilled to invite Colin Garrow to my blog today!

 Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow (book 3 in the Rosie Robson series).

A dead body. A hoard of forged banknotes. A gangster out for blood.

Newcastle, December 1955. Returning home after a weekend away, singer and amateur sleuth Rosie Robson discovers a man lying on a baggage trolley with his throat cut. After the police get involved, an attack on Rosie and her boss prompts Inspector Vic Walton to find a safe house for the pair. But the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of them and Rosie is forced to track down a possible witness to the murder in a bid to learn the truth. Can the canny crooner solve the mystery before a Newcastle gang boss catches up with her? 

Set on Tyneside, Blood on the Tyne: Red Snow is book #3 in the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries series.

Purchase Link - https://geni.us/3PKXkN

Author Bio:

True-born Geordie Colin Garrow grew up in a former mining town in Northumberland and has worked in a plethora of professions including taxi driver, antiques dealer, drama facilitator, theatre director and fish processor. He has also occasionally masqueraded as a pirate. Colin’s published books include the Watson Letters series, the Terry Bell Mysteries and the Rosie Robson Murder Mysteries. His short stories have appeared in several literary mags, including: SN Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Grind, A3 Review, Inkapture and Scribble Magazine. These days he lives in a humble cottage in Northeast Scotland.

 

Social Media Links –

Website (Adults) https://colingarrow.org/

Website (Children) https://colingarrowbooks.com/

Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B014Z5DZD4

Twitter https://twitter.com/colingarrow

Smashwords https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/colingarrow

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/colingarrowthewriter

Bookbub https://www.bookbub.com/profile/colin-garrow

It's alwayas fascinating to have a glimpse on the writing process, and today Colin Garrow talks about his writing methods, and what he thinks of the concept of the first draft.

Guest Post – What’s All This First Draft Nonsense?

 

Whenever I read blogs or Twitter posts by an author who’s just finished the first draft of their WIP (work in progress), I always wonder if I’m the only person in the world who thinks first drafts are just another way of saying, ‘what I’ve written is crap so I’m going to do it all again.’

First of all, I’m aware that many writers create a first draft to get the basic story down on paper and develop ideas. It’s also likely that this first version of the book hasn’t undergone any kind of editing and will be stuffed full of clunky dialogue, rambling sentences, grammatical gaffs and hundreds of typos. So, then they write the second draft, working on the structure and sorting out stuff like conflict and resolution and fixing any plot holes. Those who write murder mysteries, for example, might want to make sure they’ve given the reader enough clues to allow them to work out who the killer is while creating a puzzle that will still leave a surprise at the end.

But I don’t do any of that.

Why? Because I practice my craft with a slightly obsessive attention to detail.

In the past, I’ve tried those techniques where you start writing and ignore typos, gaffs and anything else that might distract from the story, and power on to the end of the book. And yes, that would be great if I could do it. But I can’t. My need to correct my work as I go comes from the same place that screams at me when I read an email or a text message with misspelled words or missing capital letters. Instead of concentrating on the message, I want to respond to the writer with suggestions on how to improve their grammar.

In place of writing a first and second draft, I write the final draft, correcting and rewriting as I go along. Admittedly, there will still be typos and grammatical blunders that depart from what is true, right, or proper. But luckily those will usually be picked up by my editor. I don’t seem to suffer from problems with the plot, which I suspect is due to my habit of rereading everything from the beginning before I start each writing session (obviously I don’t this this so much when the book has reached thirty or forty-thousand words).

Being a pantser (an author who writes with no plan or outline), I detest any hint at knowing how the story will end. Sometimes, of course, I have a sense of how a particular character or scenario might work out, but often the ending is as much a surprise to me as to my readers.

The only problem with this method is that sometimes my lack of planning ties me up in knots, such as with Terminal Black, the first book in my Relic Black Thriller series, where I became totally confused by the plot and the ridiculous number of characters I’d created. But usually, it works out fine. If there comes a time when it doesn’t, I might have to reconsider, but being a control freak, I probably won’t.