Diane Saxon Blog Spot

    What comes first when I create a story? – Part 3 What She Saw was for me a different approach initially.  For some unknown reason, the unrest in the world must have affected me. Call it luck, call it intuition, but unusually for this story I plunged heart and soul into the research and background of a subject matter which fascinated me, but I never had enough information on to write in great depths before.  This time the story needed my research to centre around fires, the fire service, arson and the legal side of these together with a depth of knowledge regarding firearms that I’d never previously indulged in. To my utter good luck, I happened upon a fire officer, Charl ie Cartwright, through mutual connections and we met up, messaged, talked on the phone and I prised each and every morbid detail from him regarding fires, heat, the effect on bodies at different stages I also met up with Peter Wright, a retired police officer with a wealth of knowledge abou...

What comes first when I create a story? – Part 2   It’s a strange thing but when I write romance, no one ever asks me what my inspiration for writing the story is. I’m not sure if that’s because they’re frightened of the answer because it might involve … shhh … sex, but I can tell you far more people are interested in your desire to kill. So I gave some thought to my inspiration to write Someone’s There (originally titled Copycat) and I can honestly say that killing off nurses has absolutely no connection to the fact that my youngest daughter is in her final year of her nursing degree. No connection at all… Someone’s There is dedicated to my dad who would have been 100 years old in February 2020, the same month as the book’s release. My dad was a quiet hero. He fought in World War II and we grew up believing the stories he told us were just that. Stories of battles and hand to hand combat. Rescues in the dead of night. But it turned out they were all true. He’d actually b...

What comes first when I create a story? – Part 1 Find Her Alive (originally titled The Keeper) Book One in my DS Jenna Morgan series started with a long, lonely walk in woodland at twilight at the beginning of autumn with my beautiful Dalmatian, Skye. As we wound our way up the hillside with thick trees above and below us, I slipped and skidded along the narrow pathway, barely wide enough for me to pass through let alone move over if someone came in the opposite direction. A low mist had settled over the River Severn and the acoustics of the gorge below me had voices carrying up the hillside to swirl with ghostly echoes. With a vivid imagination, I believed at first it was only that that had my hackles on the back of my neck tingling with awareness, but three steps forward and I stopped while Skye snuffled in the autumn leaves with a delight only a dog would understand. Aware that I was being watched, I turned my head to stare up at the darkening woodland ...

Over the past few weeks we've had a wonderful event happen and we thought you'd like to share in our journey. I'll post a daily update in our chicken diaries each day. Blondie is my little silkie, we hatched her a couple of years ago ourselves and she's been hand reared. She's supremely friendly and our little darling. But she has an issue... she loves to brood. So a couple of months ago we decided that next time she started to brood, we would let her hatch her own babies. She laid two of her own and stole eggs from the other girls - eight in total. I marked eggs laid on day one and day two and removed all the rest that she continued to steal throughout her brooding period. She's a little tinker! And this is what happened. Tune in tomorrow to find out what happened next.

It’s a strange thing but when I write romance, no one ever asks me what my inspiration for writing the story is. I’m not sure if that’s because they’re frightened of the answer because it might involve … shhh … sex, but I can tell you far more people are interested in your desire to kill. So I gave some thought to my inspiration to write Copycat and I can honestly say that killing off nurses has absolutely no connection to the fact that my youngest daughter is in her final year of her nursing degree. No connection at all… Copycat is dedicated to my dad who would have been 100 years old today. Here's the sentimental bit first. I was only 28, my eldest daughter just one, when we lost him and I still miss him every day. To my dad, William John Saxon, who would have been 100 on 26th February 2020, the month Copycat is released. A master storyteller himself, it was only in the years after his death we discovered his tales were mainly true recollections of his ti...

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The fog this morning was really thick and the dogs and I took our normal lonely route alongside woodland and farmers' fields. Maybe this is why I'm an author, because not only do I have a wild imagination, but I think I also have good instincts. Skye is allowed to be off lead almost all of our walk because a) She's well trained and really obedient. b) If we see other dogs, she'll circumnavigate them so they don't come into conflict. c) She doesn't stray any further than 10 p aces away. Beau on the other hand, although 90% obedient, he will if he sees another dog a) act as though he's never been trained in his life b) charge over to say hello, even if its a mile in front c) forget all recall. So this morning on the walk where we never meet anyone and where Beau would normally be allowed free range, my instinct with the poor visibility was to put him on lead. First we met a man in the thick fog walking in the same direction as us with three dog...