Setting | Alison Morton Author

Characters in setting

Rounded, multi-layered characters are essential if you want people to be engaged in your story. Reading is an emotional trip and we want to gasp, shiver, feel rolls of warmth, resentment, sympathy, fear, loss, and triumph as we turn the pages.

Superwomen are fine in some contexts – we like a bit of pushing over […]

Evie Hawtrey - From history to mystery

Evie Hawtrey – woman of mystery – describes herself as a Yank by birth but a sister-in-spirit to her fierce and feminist London detective, DI Nigella Parker. Evie splits her time between Washington DC, where she lives with her husband, and York, UK, where she enjoys living in history, lingering over teas, and knocking around […]

Louise Mangos: Location, location, location – Swiss style

I’m delighted to welcome a second ‘writer abroad’ from Switzerland and another crime fiction writer – see JJ Marsh, my first guest in this series. (What do they put in the chocolate there?)

Louise Mangos grew up in rural Hertfordshire in the UK but travelled extensively in her twenties, eventually settling in Switzerland where […]

Alison Morton: A writer in la belle France

This week in ‘writers abroad’, it’s all about me. When I conceived this series about people living away from their native country or having spent significant chunks of time outside it, I thought it would be amusing and entertaining. But I’ve had so many emails and comments on social media about how inspiring the posts […]

Jane Harlond: An Englishwoman in Andalucía

This week’s writer abroad is Jane Harlond, writing as J.G. Harlond. An award-winning author of page-turning historical crime novels set in the 17th and early 20th centuries, Jane weaves fictional characters into real events. Creator of the wily charismatic rogue Ludo da Portovenere and the aging wartime detective Bob Robbins, her stories feature wicked wrongdoing […]