CLAIRE LADDS

Author of character-driven psychological literary fiction and other darker books, all with an emotional pull

literary fiction

Backstory: plotting and planning vengeance

by Leave a Comment

Somewhere, hiding among the pages of every book, there is a backstory, a story that happened to the characters before the book you read actually begins on the page. It’s the characters’ personal histories, if you like: things that happened to them, memories they have, people they’ve met, events that shaped them into the person you see on the page.

I want to share with you a small piece of the backstory for The Secrets That Haunt Us. It occurs right at the beginning of the book, and takes the shape of five letters, sent to two different members of the same family – mother, Emmeline, and daughter, Julia. These letters, sent months before the book ‘proper’ begins, gives the reader an inkling that all is not only not well at home as the book gets started, but that clearly there have been events in the past which have led to the letter-writing of Alex, a man who is a most unpleasant man indeed. Vengeance has been plotted with malice and a great deal of forethought, and he intends to execute his plans for betrayals and secrets long since past.

But is he the only villain of the piece? The Secrets That Haunt Us blurs the lines between what we would automatically consider ‘good’ and ‘bad, or ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. When I wrote it, I often wondered what courses of action I would have taken, had I been in the various characters’ shoes. And the question will probably haunt me for a very long time.

I hope these five letters intrigue you into wanting to know what could have prompted Alex to plot and plan his own very particular type of vengeance – and what happens once his plans have been set in motion!

[A note on this book: The Secrets That Haunt Us is not a thriller, in any kind of genre-specific sense. It is literary fiction set predominantly on one day in the 1970s, and also going back to the 1950s and late 1930s. But there is a definite thread of malice running through one particular strand of the novel, and this is what I am focusing on here.]

~ ~ ~

Tuesday 29th September, 1970

My Emmeline,

I have been watching. Waiting. I know your face like I know my own. I know your heart like I know mine. I know everything about you. Did you truly believe you could escape my soul? We are entwined, you and I. You live within me. And I live within you.

Anything you ever wanted I gave to you. A perfect life. Everything was perfection. But you spoiled it. You spoiled everything.

Did you really believe that I would remain dead? To you, of all people? You are my obsession. My every waking thought.

Do you remember our games of chess? How you moved your pieces around the board? You have moved many pieces in the last 30 years. It’s my turn, don’t you think?

You wanted to destroy all you should have loved. It will happen. The time is nearing. We always have to pay our debts to love, don’t we?

I am coming. You are forever my Cathy; I am forever your Heathcliff. You can never escape me. And I will not rest until our torment is over.

A.

~

Friday 6th November, 1970

My lovely, dearest, darling Julia,

I have agonised over how to begin this letter. I have no idea how to explain, except to say that you have been in my thoughts since the second I last saw you. I watched your tears as I went away, and I need you to know that I have never got over that sight of you.

I wish more than anything that you can forgive the way I left. There were reasons, and they are very complex. I was unable to tell you about them then. I want to tell you everything now. The whole truth. But not in a letter.

I have never left you. I have kept watch over your life. Your troubles, which made me ache for you, my wonderful, darling girl; your marriage; your unhappiness. You ARE unhappy, aren’t you, my beautiful Julia?

I need you to know that the love I had for you then remains exactly as it was. It has never changed within me, not even through all the years we have been apart. Do you feel it? In the way you always said you could? I know you do. Every day when I awake, I reach out, only to find you are not there. Do you reach for me, too? For years, I have wanted to take your hand and stroke your face with my thumb – do you remember that?

I am back in the house. I had to. I know how much you loved it. And I want you here, beside me, in it once more.

Say you will return to me. Please. Even if it is just for one day, so that we can say goodbye. I don’t want to say goodbye ever again. Do you?

Please reply to me. And please destroy this letter. It is very important that you do, my darling girl.

You are in my dreams, always.

With all the love I have always had for you,

Alex.

x – x – x

~

Saturday 6th November, 1970

My sweetest Julia,

I knew you would not fail me. I knew the moment I told you where I was that you would write. And write you did. Over and over!

You will never know what it means to me that you wrote just how much you still love me. Your forgiveness makes everything all right. I did not expect such a torrent of letters. Every one is held against my heart as I struggle with my daily life.

Please, do not cry. There were tears on your letters, darling girl. Please do not feel that your circumstances now mean that I would not want you back in my arms once more. I have always wanted a perfect baby. You can give me the chance. Please say you will.

There are reasons that I am unable to explain more clearly why I left as I did. If anyone found this letter with that explanation, then I would be in extreme danger of needing to vanish once more. I know you do not want that, do you, not now? Did you do as I asked? Did you burn the letter? Please say that you did. I don’t want to ever have to leave you, ever again. Every moment spent without you has been torture. You know how much I adore you. You belong to me. I need you with me. Without you here, my life is worth nothing.

I dreamed of us last night, lying here, your head on my chest while I read you poetry and that passage of Jane Eyre you love so much. The one about the invisible cord that fastens two hearts. There is an invisible bond between us, Julia. You have always known it, haven’t you? It cannot be broken and it pulls us together again now.

Please, my angel, say you will come. I need to see you. To hold you. I want to feel your lips on mine.

Write to me. Say you’ll come. And please burn this letter. Do not fail me.

With every drop of love and passion I have within me for you,

Your very own,

Alex.

x – x – x

~

Sunday 28th February, 1971

Julia, my angel,

Such torrents of letters! You never need fear, I have not forgotten you, I have not changed my mind. I have been making preparations for your arrival, that is all.

It breaks my heart to know how much you have missed me. I am so, so sorry. I promise, I will tell you everything once we are together again. I think of you, and of that moment, endlessly.

Knowing you want to be with me is the greatest honour you could do me. You have no need to worry about money, my sweetest girl. The contents of the envelope inside this letter will cover all the costs of your travel. You will notice that the ticket is for next Saturday, and that it is one-way. Do not ever go back, my beautiful one. You will always be free to leave me, but I do not want you to. Oh, you have no idea how much I want you to end your days here.

My heart is ready to explode at the very thought of you on the train. Soon, my angel. Soon everything in our lives will fall into place. Only promise me you will be on the train. Promise me. If circumstances prevent me meeting you at the station, know that I am being very careful in case we are seen, and that I will not be far away. Ultimately, you know where to find me. I will be waiting. Tell no one you are coming. No one. Please. It is important.

Remember to destroy this letter.

I will see you on Saturday. I am counting the seconds until you are with me. Then I will truly show you what love means to me.

Until then, my darling girl,

Alex.

x – x – x

~

Monday 1st March, 1971

My Emmeline,

The time is almost upon us. Our final battle will soon commence. It will be checkmate. Our story will end the way it was always fated that it would.

You really believed you had escaped me, didn’t you? You should have made sure I was dead. It will be your biggest regret. I promise.

Forever yours, just as you have always been forever mine,

A.

~ ~ ~

If you’d like to know more about The Secrets That Haunt Us, you can visit my webpage for the book here.

Ready to buy? Get it on Amazon here, or on Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and many other good e-book stores here.

Finding a writing process: how I write my books

by Leave a Comment

When you read (or listen to) novels, novellas, short story collections and any other fiction or non-fiction, I wonder if you can possibly guess the processes the writer might have used to write the book you hold in your hand, or read, or listen to on your device?

I have been thinking a lot about my writing process, recently. I think this has been sparked by the realisation of just how many books I have on my computer that are in partial states of completion and that I’ve been saying I’m going to finish ‘this year’ or ‘next year’. For some of them, I’ve been saying it since 2014! I also have an absolute stack of story ideas and partial plots.

Some people have said to me that I should just write a non-fiction book for writers and put all these ideas in a ‘story prompts’ book, and actually, I would really like to write a series of books on this topic. I’m one of those people who find it extremely easy to begin projects, and I have fantastic starting energy. I also have extremely strong finishing energy. The issue comes once the first excitement of a new idea has passed and the ending is nowhere in sight. In talking to other writers, I know I’m not the only one who, left to my own devices, would have nothing but a string of story starters!

But I’m now a full-time author. ‘Oooh, I’ve got a great idea for a story,’ followed by eating a Twirl and making three cups of tea, and forgetting the book I’m meant to be working on because I want to play around with new places someone could find a corpse, or a whole new setting, or (and I’ve been known to do this numerous times) think that I can write a whole load of books in a completely different genre and play around with that for a while – none of this is going to get novels in any reader’s hands.

I heard someone say recently that if you have all the time in the world to write a book, then that book will take all the time in the world. For me, this couldn’t be more true. It took me ten years to put together The Reason for Everything, even though many of the stories in it had been written several years before I finally published it in 2019. Likewise, it took a similar length of time to write and publish the book that finally became The Secrets That Haunt Us. I put this down to all sorts of factors. I said that it was because I was nervous of the publishing process and I had to figure it out. Publishing is, in fact, very straightforward, so I had to rule this out as an excuse.

I also had to rule out the other ‘reason’ that I had been using to tell myself that any book I write is going to take me a decade. I write out of order, so that must mean that I have no idea what is happening in the book and it takes forever to try and piece the scenes and ideas together. Okay, this is true to a certain extent, but the main conclusion I came to was that I was just plain scared to get the books finished. Because being finished means it can be published, which means it can be judged. And this can be a very scary thing when you’ve poured your heart and soul into your book.

Being a full-time author doesn’t mean I’m not scared anymore. It doesn’t mean that the fear of judgement has miraculously gone away. I’m still the same person I was before, but I’ve experimented with lots and lots of different ways of working and I’ve finally found some processes that work for me. Some work for longer writing projects, some for short ones. But for me, they all start in the same place(s): character, and the ending.

Characters develop in my head long before I write about them. Eventually they have enough ‘life’ about them for me to start thinking about what might happen to them in a story. Whatever that turns out to be, I always know how I want the story to end. So I get paper and I scribble. A lot. I put the story title (a working one will do) in a circle in the centre, then I spider out from there. I put the ending in an adjoining circle and join them together. Then I look for the main plot points: the inciting incident that sets the story in motion, the high points, the twists and turns, the point of no return, and any others that I can see are important. This mind mapping is great if I’m writing a short story, but it gets pretty confusing on one sheet of paper when I want to add in all the extras that you get in a novel. So I use two things: Scrivener, which is a fabulous piece of writing software and allows you to move chapters about easily, and a pen, strips of paper and blu tac.

I love the tactile nature of pen and paper, so with a novel, I write each of my plot points on a strip of paper, and then I stick them on a board (or in my case, currently, my fridge door) and move them around until I’m happy with the order they are in. I also have markers to ensure I have the inciting incident, the point of no return, the highs, the lows, and the other points that make up a crime or suspense novel – discovery of clues, the aha moments, the showdown. That’s the point I turn them into chapters in my writing software.

So far, so good. But then what? I’ve got a story idea, yes, but no book. And I’ve got enough story ideas already, without another one falling by the wayside! Well, because I now know what each of my sections are about, I can start filling in with details. Some people will write a complete story outline, like a summary of the entire book, covering one or two sheets of paper. For some reason this doesn’t work very well for me, so I now do a ‘skinny draft’ to start off. This involves writing each section of the book if I can at this stage, and if not, then I write notes about what will happen.

Once I’ve got a complete skinny draft, I can begin the process I love best: the rewriting. This is where I can throw everything at the book that I want to include, and make it as detailed as I want. I have fun with the book, which keeps the middle part of the process alive for me – an important motivation trick for this author! I can still do this in any order I like, which suits my mentality, and because I edit the book into shape after this step anyway, filling in any plot holes and anachronisms – and hopefully eradicating plainly stupid mistakes.

So finally, this gets me to the point at which the book can have its final edit, picking up on word choices and grammatical errors, and then it gets a proofread, before I format it for e-book or paperback, or other formats. For me, too, the most important thing is that this whole process gets the book written in weeks, for the first full draft, and a few months from start to finish. That’s definitely better (for me) than a decade.

It’s taken me since 2007 to discover that this process works for me, every time. That’s a long time, and has involved a lot of trial and error, and a lot of giving up on one way or doing something and trying a new one. It may or may not work for you. Everyone has to find their own writing processes. There is an awful lot of help and advice for new writers and experienced ones alike, and some of the advice may be useful to you. And some may not. The thing is, you have no way of knowing what kind of processes work for you until you try them out. It may even be that the process you discover works for one kind of story or book but doesn’t work for another, especially if the story is in a different genre to the previous one, or it’s a novel instead of a short story, or a play instead of a novella.

All a writer can really do is take note of all the good advice out there and sift through it, trying out different ways of working until one, or a few, work for you. From personal experience, too, I would have to say listen to your instincts. If you know you’re the kind of writer who likes mind maps instead of lists, then use them. If you know you like being clear on the end of the story and then figuring out how the characters get to that point, do so. Everyone works differently, everyone has different demands on their time. Writing is a creative process; if you’re a writer, let yourself be creative in ways that you discover work best for you.

Joy is a bubble: complete short story

by 1 Comment

When a reader wants to try out a new author, or a new series by an author, I’ve often wondered what it is that makes someone want to give that book they’ve found online or in a bookstore a whirl. I know that, for me, it’s sometimes the cover that attracts me, and sometimes it’s the book title. The blurb on the back, or on the online store page, can be the factor that intrigues me, too. It’s also possible (because I’m human without an indefinite depth to my wallet, like many people) that I might well be intrigued by a price that seems reasonable to try out the book I’ve found. It may even be that I’ve managed to find a snippet of the book posted by the author and decided I really fancy giving the rest of it a go. I have to say that I’ve made a number of audiobook purchases by listening to the free sample first.

Like any author, I love people to want to read my books. I love to be able to tempt new readers to try out my series. Most of all, I love to find the right readers – those who feel that my books resonate with them. If you’ve never come across my short story collection, The Reason for Everything and other short stories, then I thought today’s blog post would be a good place to share a complete short story with you from this collection. So here you go…

***

Joy is a bubble

There’s a man sitting on the riverbank, gnome-like, with a fishing rod in his hand. All he needs, she thinks, is a pointy red hat and he’ll look just like the ugly little statue in next-door’s garden. She hadn’t noticed him as she went down to the newsagent, muttering her list of things-to-do to herself. She stands now, holding the newspaper, the packet of cigarettes she was expected to fetch hidden in her handbag, and a mental note to ask for the money this time, watching the little fairytale action taking place right below her.

The human gnome stranger casts his line then sits in silence, with a Tupperware box of sandwiches waiting their turn on top of the wicker fishing basket, not to be confused with the second tub containing a Dolly Mixture assortment of maggots. She hadn’t realised they came in so many colours. She can see them, wriggling en-mass in the tub, their sense of desperate urgency mimicking the squirming that’s going on just below the surface algae in the deep green secret land of ‘keep net’, while the white float with the psychedelic orange tip bobs half way across the water.

Suddenly the white vanishes, and the man proves he’s better, cleverer than the fish; she watches, gripping tightly onto the newspaper as the scaly sliver whirls past her vision and into the man’s hand. She watches him remove the hook from the fish’s face then hurl the creature into the keep net to join the rest of the mystery in the green pool. Catching sight of a big stone, she has the urge to throw it and hit the man on the head – see how he likes being bashed about, having his skin damaged, cast aside to keep for later – but she knows she won’t.

Her fingers hurt and she realises how tightly she’s holding the newspaper that’s not for her, either. The sweat has seeped into the print and left grubby smears in regular oval patches on the front page. Something for him to have a go at her about over breakfast, and he won’t even need to look hard this morning. She starts to feel ever so slightly sick; it’s the empty belly, she tells herself. She needs to get some breakfast. She needs to go home. She sighs, but it’s an inaudible one because she’s used to making them that way. Her face adopts its invariable impassive ghostly expression, ready for the kitchen and the multitude of sins she’ll commit at breakfast.

But then, just briefly, she catches sight of something on the water. There, in the keep net, expanding on the river’s surface, a series of penny-sized bubbles catch the early morning shards of sunlight. They wink back up at her in a glorious rainbow of colour, and she smiles back at the sign of life under the water. As a kid she used to sit on the bank and watch the bubbles rise to the surface when the fish came up to gobble the air. Little bubbles; she’d had to concentrate to see them. Once she sat there for over an hour, waiting. She spotted one. It sat, alone on the surface, and a wet tear surprised her cheek as she smiled at it. Then he came along with his school shirt rolled up to his elbows and scudded a stone across the surface, and the bubble was gone. He shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t even notice she was there at first. Then he grinned, and scooted off on his bike. She didn’t see any more bubbles on the surface that afternoon.

Without warning, the fisher gnome gathers in his line, and grabs the keep net, hurling his captives back into the algae. All at once the bubbles are forced into the algae, too, and they burst on contact. And she thinks how sad it is that the bubbles must burst and that things must end.

She leaves the gnomish sadist and makes her way back along the dirt track where the grass bank stretches beyond her vision, then round the curbing pathway in front of the cul-de-sac of Council bungalows and its artificially planted beech trees, that grow haphazardly on the patches of grass in between the parking bays. The milkman is still out on his rounds, such as they are now, and she stops to listen, eyes closed momentarily, to the chink of glass against hard plastic as he lifts the bottles from the deep ocean blue crate and takes them to number 27. He catches her eye and smiles, waves, and she returns the gesture. He’ll have been to her house already and the milk will still be sitting in the doorway, already in the sun, by the time she gets home. It’s already heating up outside. Another scorcher due. She sighs. She hopes it won’t taste funny. He’ll let her know in no uncertain terms if it is. It’ll be her fault. And her job to clear up the cereal running down the wall, and the bits of broken bowl. She should have got home quicker. He’ll tell her that it’s not worth having the milkman, that they can get their milk from the supermarket. No one relies on the milkman anymore. But she does. He brings her what she needs every day. Just like the postman. Just for a moment she glances up and down the street, wondering whether he is already on his rounds, too.

[Read more…] about Joy is a bubble: complete short story

The Secrets That Haunt Us: a lovely 5-star review

by Leave a Comment

I was absolutely thrilled to see this 5-star review pop up on Amazon from a reader who clearly loved The Secrets That Haunt Us. I have no idea which lovely reader wrote the review, but it’s extremely kind and means a great deal.

I find it very humbling when I know someone has read and enjoyed my books. In my heart of hearts, all I really want to do is write stories that people find fascinating, thought-provoking, terrifying at times, occasionally heart-wrenching, and satisfying. And crime-filled, of course!

The Secrets That Haunt Us will probably always be the book I have the softest spot for. It means many things to me.

If you would like to take a look at the book (including that first 5-star review since I re-released the novel with its new title), then you can find it on Amazon here:

Buy The Secrets That Haunt Us on Amazon

If you read on another device and buy your books from Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble and others, you can find the novel here:

Buy The Secrets That Haunt Us on your favourite ebook store

If you do read, or have, read it, or any of my work, I’d love to know what you think. Hearing from readers is always lovely. 😊 Please do consider leaving a review – or my books or on any author’s books that you enjoy. It really helps other people who might also enjoy them to find them more easily.

Happy reading!

Sneak peek at new book cover for my short story collection

by Leave a Comment

The Reason for Everything by Claire Ladds

I’m very excited today because I have been waiting for ages to give you a sneak peek at the new cover for my short story collection, The Reason for Everything. Finally, I’m able to do it!

This new version, dominated by black and red (two colours which I happen to love, especially together), is much more in keeping with the dark, emotional noir and suspenseful feeling that I’ve incorporated into all of the stories, be they actual physical crimes, emotional deviance and difficulties or murky memories and experiences.

The Reason for Everything will be getting its new look very soon. I’ll also be offering the collection for a VERY limited time, at a special price, to celebrate the new cover. Watch this space! 😊

Release Day for Baby up the Chimney!

by Leave a Comment

It’s release day – finally – for Baby up the Chimney, and I couldn’t be more excited!

This novel has been a long time coming, beginning as a short story in 2010, developing into an unwieldy monster of a first draft by the end of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) by 2014, and eventually turning into the book I am incredibly proud of today.

My ARC (Advance Reader Copy) readers gave me some fabulous feedback, which was enough to make me realise I’d done the right thing in completing this book. Then people started pre-ordering, and today readers have already purchased. Thank you SO much to anyone who has. I find it an immense honour and extremely humbling that someone wants to part with their cash to read my work, and I know that my feelings about that will never change!

In case you don’t know what the book is about, here’s the blurb:

Baby up the Chimney - an historical novel by Claire Ladds
Baby up the Chimney by Claire Ladds

One day. That’s all it takes for four lives to be changed forever.

London, 6th March 1971. Women pour into London to take to the streets in solidarity for equal pay and equal rights. But while public spectacle and a friendly call to arms pervades the day, in private, one family is about to find that everything they thought was the truth about their loved ones has the potential to blow their world apart. And one man, back from the dead, has unfinished business with them…

A novel of dark secrets, lies, betrayal and vengeance, in which the shadows of history, haunting memories and the truths they dare not tell come back to try and destroy them.

When the truth is not what you thought it was, do you ignore it? Do you try to rewrite history to protect those you love? Or do you seek revenge?

You can purchase Baby up the Chimney from the following stores:

[Post edit: links removed – see below]

If you’d like to read more about my inspiration for this book, the writing processes, and all sorts of other little revelations – including how the Brontës made their way into the novel, I visited the Auto.erraticism blog earlier today to discuss it. You can read the post here.

[POST EDIT: This book has now been re-released as The Secrets That Haunt Us. You can find out more about the book here.]