Saturday 14 March 2015

Welcome back, Flora!

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A new(ish) Jan Jones mystery!

Once upon a time, I wrote a 2000 word very clever short mystery story. So clever, in fact, that no one but me understood it.

It languished.

Then People's Friend wanted the occasional long mystery story. I resurrected Curtains (as it was titled then) and made it much longer. Too long, as it turned out, and still too complicated.

I rolled up my sleeves and got out the chain saw.

The 10K story was published in a People's Friend Fiction Special after MUCH sweating-of-blood on my part, now titled Behind Closed Doors.

Reader, I brooded.

The thing is - and I have this problem a lot - writers have a gut feeling for how long a story should be. If you try to stretch a story or squash it to fit someone else's column inches, it might still be a competent piece of work, but to my mind it suffers.

I brooded some more.

Then, along came Self-Publishing! And suddenly I could take my work and make everything the length it was always supposed to be all along!

So I went back to my several originals and reworked them and added a LOT more, and the result is What the Eye Doesn't See, a satisfying (to me, at any rate) 20K mystery featuring village shopkeeper Flora Swift.

Hope you like it!
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8 comments:

Unknown said...

Excellent...will be adding it to the TBR pile...love your stories!!
lx

Jan Jones said...

Thank you, Liz. Hope you enjoy it!

Christina Jones said...

Excited! Will keep me going until the next Penny Plain :) Love your mystery stories :) Cxxx

Jan Jones said...

Thanks, Chris!

*gets back up off laurels...*

Lesley said...

On the Kindle to take away with me next week! Still waiting for the Ely one. x

Jan Jones said...

It's on the list, Lesley. Hope you enjoy Flora-the-long!

Jane said...

This gives me hope for my Silk for Susannah story - now at 2K and waiting to be expanded to about 15K or more. I was thinking, can I really manage to do that? But clearly the answer is YES!! Looking forward to this. Jane x

Jan Jones said...

Excellent title, Victoria! These things can be done :)