Book Launch Guest Post: Run to Earth (Maisie Frobisher Mysteries Book 6) by Liz Hedgecock

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

A journey into the unknown… When Maisie and Fraser Hamilton pursue a suspect onto the Orient Express, they find their journey far from smooth. The train’s staff are distinctly suspicious of them. The newlyweds find themselves separated and sharing compartments with strangers – and Maisie’s cabinmate is infallibly curious. And of course, they must make sure their quarry doesn’t spot them…

My latest book is Run to Earth, which is book 6 in the Maisie Frobisher historical mystery series, set in the early 1890s. Maisie begins the series as a spoilt socialite who's grown tired of London and men and has gone travelling for a change of scene. By book 6, she's still travelling, newly married, and has managed to wangle herself and her police-officer husband onto the Orient Express while in pursuit of a suspect.

I’ve often found that the Maisie series encourages me to make innovations in the way I write. When I was thinking about the first book, All at Sea, I wondered if it would be possible to dictate the book while out on walks, as Maisie, who is on board a cruise ship, is constantly moving. I gave it a try, and as it turned out, I much preferred telling myself a story on a walk to sitting at a desk and bashing out words on a keyboard. So that's how I write the first draft of every book now.

Book 6 is no exception to this innovation rule. Normally, I have a fairly detailed outline before I begin writing a book. When I came to the point of thinking about writing Run to Earth, though, I realised that I had a fairly short window to get the first draft done. Basically, I’d committed to writing another book with my good friend and partner in crime, Paula Harmon, so the timeline for drafting Maisie book 6 was squished. I have no problem writing one book and editing another at the same time, because that uses different bits of my brain (in my opinion). However, writing two books simultaneously felt like a stretch too far!

My hastily-contrived solution was to plot to the end of what I knew (basically, the first quarter), and from there, plot more or less as I went along.

The first part of the book went very smoothly, and as I was drawing to the end of the known plot (eek!) I managed to plot as far as the next main event. However, as the my protagonists got themselves embroiled in all sorts of trouble, my writing process started to feel rather like the scene in The Wrong Trousers where Gromit has to lay train track just in time for their runaway train to keep going.

It was terrifying. But it was also exhilarating and thrilling. I was seriously worried for my poor characters on several occasions, and the plot sprung a few surprises on me that I'd had no idea would happen. 

I was slightly worried as to how my beta readers would receive the incident-packed rollercoaster ride I'd somehow managed to produce (think Wallace and Gromit on steroids), but luckily they all loved it. So maybe that's a lesson to me to let my inner pantser do the plotting more of the time!

Something unexpected which I discovered during my research for the book was that the Orient Express was seriously short of social spaces. Basically, it had sleeping compartments, bathrooms, and a dining car. There was no saloon or lounge for a bit of handy gossiping. How annoying! One of the more pleasurable aspects of researching for my book was that I spent time rereading Murder on the Orient Express - and there's no lounge in that, either.

What am I planning to write next? At the moment I'm almost at the end of drafting a book in a new (I hope) series. It’s a spinoff from the Magical Bookshop cozy mystery series, which is set in contemporary London. In this book, provisionally titled Northern Soul, Luke and Maddy, two secondary characters from the Magical Bookshop series, get a case of their own: they travel to Manchester to investigate strange goings-on at the John Rylands Library. The John Rylands is a stunning Gothic building about an hour away from where I live, and I’m already planning several visits to do a bit of fact-checking - you can’t be too careful in these matters!

I’m also in the process of editing the latest book I’ve written with my co-author Paula, which is the first book in a new contemporary fantasy romcom series. We've called it A Tale of Tea and Dragons, and we've had tremendous fun writing it. We’re hoping to launch that book at the end of the summer, and start work on book 2 in early autumn. And after that, who knows? It could be Maisie Frobisher book 7, Magical Bookshop North book 2, or something completely different! 

Liz Hedgecock

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About the Author

Liz Hedgecock grew up in London, England, did an English degree, and then took forever to start writing. After several years working in the National Health Service, some short stories crept into the world. A few even won prizes. Then the stories started to grow longer Now Liz travels between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, murdering people. To be fair, she does usually clean up after herself. Liz’s reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes and her Victorian and contemporary mystery series (two written with Paula Harmon) are available in ebook and paperback Liz lives in Cheshire with her husband and two sons, and when she’s not writing you can usually find her reading, painting, messing about on social media, or cooing over stuff in museums and art galleries. That’s her story, anyway, and she’s sticking to it. Find out more from http://lizhedgecock.wordpress.com and find Liz on Facebook and Bluesky @lizhedgecock.bsky.social‬