Chess tournament! Fun, excitement, people explaining things! This is where the foreshadowing will go, because if you write foreshadowing in advance you are an idiot.

YES! First chapter done. Really enjoying this – like a blast of fresh air after the morass that the last one sank into. Great to be back in 1930s Dublin.

Okay – setting and plan for opening begun. Writing soon.

Another day, another character. Nearly time to start into it.

Four compelling motives for murder. Show three, hide the real one. That’s how we do crime.

Yesterday I defined the victim, today I defined his death. Tomorrow I think I’ll plan out the why of the affair.

The most important person in a murder mystery is the victim. Everyone should hate him, or no-one should hate him. The former is more fun, of course.

First novel suffered from a glaring lack of female characters – mostly due to it being set in the 1920s, and most of the characters being university lecturers. Still. Starting to fix that.

Today I caught up with the other protagonist from my first novel, who is having far too good a time to be the hero in the sequel. Tomorrow, someone new!

Planning to start into the sequel to my first novel while I’m back in Donegal, so today I wrote a sketch of my protagonist, five years later. He’s a bit bored.