Friday 28 May 2010

Lesley Cookman ...

... on the creation of the Libby Sargeant Murder series.

Libby Sarjeant is a middle aged ex-actress living in a small Kent village, where she paints pictures for sale in a nearby seaside town and helps to run the local Oast House Theatre. So far, so predictable.

You just know, reading that mini biography, that she’s about to fall over body after body in, as someone described it, a “Vicar of Dibley meets Midsummer Murders” series of adventures. And she does.

Envisaged in the first place for the now defunct “World One Day Novel Cup”, held over two twelve hour sessions at the Groucho Club over ten years ago, I based her initial premise on the highly formatted US “cosy” - or “cozy” - market. I was told by many in the publishing industry here in the UK that this type of crime/mystery was completely out of favour and I would never get published. So Libby, or her first few chapters anyway, languished on the computer for several years, until I resurrected her as my dissertation for my MA in Creative Writing. Then a surprising thing happened ...

Read the full article in the June issue of Words with JAM. Out Soon!

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