Reality vs perception

Difficult book = happier reader?

Welcome to the free newsletter of D. V. Bishop, author of the Cesare Aldo historical thrillers set in Renaissance Italy. This time I am musing on how a hard time writing a book can colour an author’s feelings toward it…

But first: free events next week

I’m crossing Scotland next week for two events, both free to attend. On Tuesday November 18 I’ll be in Stewarton at The Book Nook bookshop from 7pm for Renaissance Revelations: An Evening With D. V. Bishop. You can book tickets here.

The following night on Wednesday November 20 I’m at Paisley Central Library from 7pm for Future Cops to Renaissance Killers: An Evening with D. V. Bishop. Again, it’s a free event and you can book tickets here. At both places I’ll have bookmarks to give away and will be signing copies of my Cesare Aldo novels. Come along and say hello!

Writing pains linger

I read lots of great Substacks and one particular post by author Keris Fox about having to let go of a novel too soon struck a chord. As a writer, you are never fully satisfied with your work. There is always a more perfect version of a novel which didn’t make itself manifest, a syndrome I call ‘Cathedral in your head, outhouse on the page’.

But there’s another situation you can encounter as an author whereby your experience of writing a book imprints itself on that novel, forever colouring your judgement of it. The best example of this for me is The Darkest Sin. I wrote the first draft of that book between February 2020 and January 2021 – during the first year of the pandemic.

Life was incredibly stressful for everyone. Nobody knew how bad Covid-19 would be, how long the lockdowns would last, nor when vaccines might become available. No one could travel, the world shrunk to the walls around you, and it was unclear when we might be able to reclaim some version of the lives we had known. I suspect a lot of people were struggling to be creative and productive while that was happening.

I run creative writing programmes at Edinburgh Napier University and those did not stop during the pandemic. Instead, we had to take all our teaching online and adjust to a whole new way of delivering classes. Of course, teaching postgrad programmes was a lot easier than trying to teach primary school children online, but it still took huge amounts of additional work and seemed to occupy every waking moment.

Other factors made The Darkest Sin challenging to write. It is a closed circle mystery set inside the confined setting of a Renaissance Florentine convent with a restricted cast of characters. I chose to write draft the book without knowing who was cukpable for the crimes inside it, believing this would make the resolution a surprise for me as well as for readers. My logic: I couldn’t drop inadvertent hints if I didn’t know. That was a sound theory but it made the first draft a high wire act without any net. (There are lots of great crime writers who use this as their habitual first draft method.)

The other factor adding to my discomfit was wondering if The Darkest Sin could end up being the last Cesare Aldo novel. The first book in the series, City of Vengeance, wouldn’t be published until February 2021 so I was writing The Darkest Sin blind, not knowing how readers would respond to Aldo. That did mean there were no outside voices to distract me or say what I’d done wrong, which can unnerve some authors.

Authorial paralysis

But that lack of knowledge was somewhat paralysing. For a start, I don’t need outside voices; as a writer, I have plenty in my head already. I knew The Darkest Sin was a very different novel from City of Vengeance, being smaller in scale, quieter in style. The first book is a conspiracy thriller racing around Florence and beyond; The Darkest Sin stays in a convent with much lower stakes. Would readers pick up The Darkest Sin expecting City of Vengeance II: This Time It’s Vengeancier, only to be disappointed?

The first draft of The Darkest Sin, with a working title provided by my writer friend Liz King

When I delivered The Darkest Sin to my editor Alex Saunders at Pan Macmillan, I feared he would reject it or be underwhelmed. I deliberately wrote the manuscript to be different from City of Vengeance, to expand the possibilities of what a Cesare Aldo historical thriller would be – but that didn’t mean everyone else would appreciate that. Happily, Alex was very positive and the book got published in early 2022.

My fears were unfounded. The Darkest Sin didn’t match City of Vengeance for sales, but then few second books in a series outmatch their predecessor. More surprising to me, The Darkest Sin went on to win the Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger, the first major award given to one of my Aldo novels. Conclusion: it wasn’t too small scale or too quiet a book, nor was it too different from City of Vengeance for readers.

Yet the experience of writing through lockdown while online teaching and stressed to the eyeballs has imprinted itself on The Darkest Sin for me. I owe a lot to that book – winning the Historical Dagger has been a boon for my crime writing – but I doubt it will ever be my favourite Aldo novel. I appreciate it, but the shadow of the times in which I wrote The Darkest Sin will always be there too.

By way of comparison, I had a blast writing next year’s Cesare Aldo novel Carnival of Lies! Hopefully my enjoyment of that experience doesn’t mean the novel will be less successful than The Darkest Sin – time will tell…

Reminder: 99p bargain for UK Kindle readers

My second Cesare Aldo novel The Darkest Sin is part of a Kindle UK monthly deal so it’s just 99p in November. Get the novel which won the 2023 CWA Historical Dagger for less than the cost of a coffee, tea or pretty much anything else. Download it here.

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