Prologues, epilogues, and a time for reading...

When I first sat down and started writing my debut crime novel, my fingers typed the following eight letters.

Prologue.

I didn’t think twice. It happened automatically.

I wanted to give my story…my crime, if you like…a bit of background. I wanted to take you, the reader, back in time and give you the tools to understand what went on before I put some meat on the bones.

I didn’t screw up the prologue and throw it away.

I didn’t rename it Chapter One, and get stuck in to the action right from the first line of the first paragraph on the first page.

I viewed it as the appetiser.

The starter followed by a delicious main course.

The shape of things to come

In the same way that no story has an end, life just keeps on going after the tale has been told…so the same is true of the beginning.

Life happens leading up to the events that form the body of the story.

A crime has to have a ‘before’ as well as an ‘after’. Whether you include them in the telling or not.

I like to include, rather than leave out.

That’s why you’ll find both a prologue and an epilogue in my debut crime novel A Time for Dying. Published by Northodox Press and available now from www.northodox.co.uk, Amazon, and all good bricks and mortar book shops.

I am, by nature, curious.

Some would say too damned nosy for my own good.

But I suppose that’s a prerequisite for an author.

I also love an intelligent tale about dark crime, with a sprinkling of humour.

Two more prerequisites…