The Cosy Knave, a Progress Report

[If you click on the Wordle tool, you can ´read´ my manuscript, or at least see which words I use most often. Thank you, Kerrie, for the inspiration]

Yesterday it was exactly two months ago that I wrote the first scene of “The Cosy Knave.” Tomorrow it is two months since I first told you about my new project. (If you want to check my posts, you can click the label “The Cosy Knave”)

I felt I had come up with a good idea with regard to the main characters, and I thought writing a cosy would be a good change from the Danish manuscript I had struggled with for ages. I was a bit apprehensive when it came to writing a whole novel in English, though.

I think you must have guessed from the glimpses I have given you of my writing process, my name games etc, that I am having so much fun with this. And what is just as fine, my writing process has gone unexpectedly smoothly, even after my holidays ended two weeks ago.

Tada: two months´ work = 45,000 words – or around two thirds of the first draft.


How to Cook up a Cozy:

Yesterday I returned to Elizabeth´s excellent recipé to see if I was on the right track.

Sleuth and sidekick: I feel fairly certain you´ll like Constable Primrose and his fiancé Rhapsody Gershwin. But who is the sleuth and who is the sidekick? Hard to say, and please don´t ask them; I am not sure they will agree.

The puzzle: far too early to judge that, but I have succeeded in making my first beta reader curious. Should be a good thing.

The setting: Knavesborough, tiny village with a grocer, a teahouse, Women´s Institute, a manor and a castle ruin – in Yorkshire. Should be okay, especially if I can manage to make the Yorkshire in my head anything like the real Yorkshire.

Offbeat characters: quirky characters aplenty – my only worry is if there can be too many? I do like those Kickinbottoms, though. Very easy to manipulate – or do you think they could be manipulating me into giving them all that attention? All I know is that my characters really surprise me now and then, especially when they are in a fix. Those people will say and do the most astonishing things to get away.

Elizabeth´s last words: “have fun and your enjoyment will shine through” – I wonder whether anyone else will ever laugh as much at the inhabitants of Knavesborough as I do – never mind, one of my projects in life is keeping this writer busy and happy!