Liz Fielding

That’s such a great question and it goes way to my childhood. I always had the itch to write and was constantly starting stories, but never finishing anything. Starting stories is the easy part! Then, when my children were small we listened to the children’s radio programme, Listen With Mother. Songs, rhymes and always a story. Having listening to a lot of them I decided to have a go myself. Believe me, writing a 600 word story for children is a lot harder than it seems. I persisted and did have the joy of hearing some of my stories on the programme. I was also writing picture stories for a little girl’s picture paper called Twinkle when I read an article about a couple of Mills and Boon writers. It took me a while, but after a few attempts I had my first M&B romance, An Image of You, accepted. I didn’t look back and had seventy stories published by them.

This goes back quite a few years. I was watching a television programme made in conjunction with the Open University about young women who were locked up in mental institutions for “moral delinquency”. They were mainly uneducated young women with no one who cared enough to protect them from being taken advantage or abused. Many of them were locked away for many years.

I was instantly drawn to the idea of writing a story with this background. I even started it, but I was writing a lot of books for Mills and Boon at the time and it remained in my bottom drawer until the Covid pandemic.

The story had never left me and I knew that if I didn’t write it then, I never would. I took a six month sabbatical from M&B and wrote the book just for me and was absolutely thrilled when Joffe not only wanted to publish it, but offered me a three book contract.

I think the character of Abby Finch is relatable. Her concern for her children, an unsatisfactory marriage, her struggles to hold everything together. We know women like her. Understand what she’s going through. She is deeply shocked by the discovery of the infant’s bones but her initial reaction is to stand back and leave it to the police to deal with. It’s her teenage daughter. Lucy, who pushes her into trying to find out what happened.

It’s always thrilling to have a book singled out and validated in this way. Writers are live in a constant state of uncertainty. We should be reassured when a book is published by professionals who presumably know what they’re doing.

There is a moment of elation, but then our words are sent out in the world and it’s only when readers leave a review or send a message, or our peers or readers decide that it’s worthy of an award that we are reassured.

Just a little bit.

It does encourage us to carry on and, in my case, offer Abby another mystery to solve.

Living in Africa and the Middle East have really helped with my romance novels. You can learn a lot by reading and watching videos on somewhere like YouTube, but there’s nothing like being there to get a feel of a place. The sounds, the scent of hot earth, that moment before the rain arrives.

And obvious, a quick Eurostar trip to see what Paris looks like at Christmas is just one of the joys of being a romance writer.

Oh, the temptation to set a cozy mystery series set in this location! My small home town has such a reputation for oddness and I’m sure the owner of our very special indie bookshop would love me to find a body upstairs in the room where the chess club meets.

There are so many pretty villages that would make a perfect setting.. And there are promotional advantages in setting a series in a real place. Especially one so photogenic. Much more opportunity for library talks, and interviews on the local media.

So far, I haven’t had the nerve!

My books are actually set in a small town inspired by a place near Bath, close to where I used to live. I see it in my head, which is really helpful, but all the places I write about are fictional.

I don’t find that a challenge. Someone said that what you get with the Maybridge Mystery series is a “…Liz Fielding but with murder…” The voice hasn’t changed, but the stories have got bigger – with added bodies!

Gardening and the countryside are at the heart of the Maybridge books. You don’t need a “poison” garden. There are so many ways to kill someone with what you have in a perfectly ordinary garden. It’s actually quite scary!

Knitting has appeared as a clue in Murder Under the Mistletoe, although the knitter involved is a lot more skilled than me. But knitting needles… That’s one for the ideas file!

I now have a well-developed cast of characters who turn up regularly. In my first book it was the bones that were the start of the story and the characters grew from that. The gardener, the police, her family and someone from her past. Since then it has been the crime. The victim. He or she is the starting point.

Then it’s the how and, more importantly, the why. The tricky part is feeding in just enough of the backstory (and hopefully tempt them to go back and read the earlier books) so that new readers understand the family dynamics without boring readers who’ve read the previous books.

That’s tricky. There areendless ways to kill someone, from the basic whack on the head with a blunt object, to tricky poisoning. Coming up with something new and believable is not easy.

The ideal routine is to be at my desk by 9 am with the internet turned off and 1000 words a day. My family are all working or at school so my days are – mostly – free. So, no excuses. Whistles innocently….

Having written romance for so long, there’s a strong element of emotion in my Maybridge Mysteries. And there is a little romance, but nothing to frighten the horses!

For Maybridge I wanted a small country town with a long history. It’s nestled in a cup of the hills with a river running through it and a quay that served the wool trade. I used Bradford on Avon in Wiltshire as a template – I used to live in a nearby town – but everything is fictionalised.

In my latest book, I used a visit to a vineyard to help with the setting.

I’m delighted to be able to share the news that I’ve just signed a contract with Joffe for two more Maybridge Murder Mysteries. Murder in the Vineyard in in production and I’m just started writing Murder at the Holly Bush Inn. I have my victim and I’m at the stage of figuring out the when and the why and searching the internet for images for my “crime board”.

I’ve very much enjoyed working with AllAuthot.. I love the descriptions of my books in the social media posts – they really seem to get to the heart of the story – and the lovely graphics. I’ve recommended them to a friend who will soon be publishing her own crime series.