Branching out into another genre

Branching out into another genre

One of my closest friends loves crime fiction. She tried reading one of my erotic romances but couldn’t get past the first page! So I’ve been trying to come up with an idea for a crime story, just for her, but I’ve always felt that I don’t have the mind for devious plots. I’m much too upfront a person.

However, an idea did occur to me as I am a genealogist of many decades and have researched many people’s family histories and there have been some fabulous stories.

So I have started writing an anthology of short crime stories (short so they don’t have to have complex plots!) following one family over the generations (in reality they are all from different families but based on real life people) and the crimes they commit.

Title – something like ‘Honour Amongst Thieves – and Family’.

Some of the stories will be exactly as they happened (such as the bigamist and the person who set fire to an outhouse), some will be embellished. Therefore I was researching different types of crime in order to see if I could mesh them into the existing stories. Crimes could include theft, murder, assault, embezzlement, fraud, bigamy, poisoning, smuggling, piracy, burglary, trespass, malicious damage, kidnap, extortion, blackmail, arson, bribery, disorderly conduct, forgery – I’ve ignored rape and molestation as they are heinous crimes. There is a fine line to using a crime to interest and excite the reader and putting them off altogether.

The real life stories involve amassing a vast amount of money (but how – was it gambling, stealing or embezzlement); being arrested for theft (but he was found not guilty so was he in the wrong place at the wrong time, was he framed or did he get away with it?); a husband who disappears suddenly (did he run away having committed a crime or was he murdered?), a man who keeps moving his family around the country (was he have a secret past?).

Watch this space (but I’m afraid there is absolutely no sex whatsoever!)