Artistic Adventures with Victoria

The second month has passed, and time has flown. So, how did I begin?

I started with people. I needed someone to live in my neighbourhood. I tried to create characters with secrets — secrets they might even kill for. At first, I didn’t know who would die. After writing one character, I wrote another, with even more reasons. Then another. I removed one person and added someone new. I added people who seemed to have no reason to kill anyone at all. Or do they? Could something push even the sweetest granny toward murder?

It turns out I was able to come up with quite a few motives.

But motive alone is not enough. One also needs a chance to commit the deed. And so, after working on my cast for a while, I realised I needed a place — my own version of St. Mary’s Mead. The community must feel enclosed for this kind of story to work.

With a few tweaks and some careful naming, welcome to Mapleford: a calm, slightly sleepy village somewhere out there. People know everyone, and everyone is known. There are no secrets — at least not for long. Or are there?

But how do you build a village?

I cannot say how others do it, but I borrowed from a real village and simply rearranged a few locations. Now I can easily check how long it takes to travel from A to B, whether on foot or by car. Very convenient.

I had another name in mind at first: St. Alder’s Mead. But that felt too close to the original inspiration. Instead, the name came to my rescue when I needed a nearby city for the police station. So Mapleford now sits not far from the city of Alderwick.

And indeed: Murder — she wrote.