From Little (Academic) Acorns… - Guest Post!

Elizabeth Ducie, author of thrillers, cozy mysteries, and short stories.

Happy day! Elizabeth Ducie contributed a guest post and I'm so glad she did. She shares her personal story about returning to University to study creative writing after a break of nearly 40 years. As daunting as that sounds, her experience was richly rewarding and served as the creative kick-off to her Jones Sisters Thrillers. She also forged connections with her fellow students that have endured to the present. She's happy to chat with readers and writers through Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

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A year ago this month, I published Retribution! the fourth (and very definitely) final part in my Jones Sisters series of thrillers. It was as much a surprise to me as to my readers, since when I published the previous three parts nearly a decade ago, I was convinced I’d written a trilogy. But even before that, I thought all I’d written was a short story.

Trained as a scientist and with a thirty-year career in the international pharmaceutical industry behind me, I decided to give it all up to tell lies for a living in my late fifties. I enrolled on a part-time Masters in Creative Writing to unlearn my technical non-fiction writing habits and make a move to fiction.

Returning to University after a break of nearly forty years was a traumatic experience. I was sometimes taken for a lecturer rather than a student (which was helpful when searching for a parking space) and the question “what to wear to lectures” took up far more time in my brain than I would have expected. As an experienced lecturer and public speaker, I was amazed to find myself staring at my lap whispering “don’t pick me, please don’t pick me” when our tutor was looking for a volunteer to read their work out to the rest of the class.

One of the assignments led to my writing Caveat Emptor, a 6K-word story about fake drugs in Southern Africa and how sometimes people do bad things for good reasons. I don’t remember what mark I got, but as our tutor didn’t seem to like me or my writing very much, I doubt it was particularly high.

I do remember, however, the moment when I realised my story had ‘legs’ and could be converted into a full-length novel. Triggered by a couple of incidents I’d witnessed during my previous career, although most of the story was fictional, Counterfeit! led my best friend from schooldays to say: “I knew I was right to be worried about you when you were travelling to all those places!”

I tend to write in a haphazard way and fit my scenes together like a jigsaw at the end. I was still in the early stages of Counterfeit! when the closing line came to me. And once it was written, I knew this wasn’t just one book, but a series. With a nod to Patterson’s The Women’s Murder Club, I created a group of strong female protagonists: Suzanne and Charlie Jones plus their old schoolfriend, Francine Matheson. Suzanne is the principal character in Counterfeit!; Charlie takes over in Deception! which is set in Latin America; and Francine takes the stage in Corruption!, where the action mostly occurs in Russia and Ukraine.

Corruption! was published in 2018, and I thought I was done. I’d lived with these women in my head for eight years. I also wanted a change of pace after the complexity of three internationally-based thrillers. I began writing cozy crime set in an English village; although Charlie Jones refused to be evicted from my brain, so I retired her to Devon and allowed her to become one of my amateur sleuths.

Fast forward to 2023. Sitting by the pool in Greece, I was six chapters into a new novel when I realised it wasn’t cozy #4; it was thriller #4. Set thirteen years after the events of the previous books, Retribution! brings Charlie’s story to a conclusion, ties up a number of loose ends and features cameo appearances by some of the characters from the first three books.

Going back to University as a (very) mature student was an unsettling experience, but one I don’t regret for one minute. Without it, the Jones Sisters would not have existed. And last week, I had lunch with three of my fellow students. We meet periodically, swap notes on how our writing’s going, critique each other’s work and revel in shared memories. Support networks are important for writers, and I am grateful for our time in the Queen’s Building at Exeter University back in 2010 and everything it led to.

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When Elizabeth Ducie had been working in the international pharmaceutical industry for nearly thirty years, she decided to take a break from technical writing—text books, articles, and training modules—and write about some of her travel experiences instead. She took courses in creative writing and discovered she was happier, and more successful, writing fiction than memoirs or life-writing. In 2012, she gave up the day job, and started writing full-time. She believes passionately that self-publishing is a legitimate alternative to the traditional route. Under her own imprint, Chudleigh Phoenix Publications, she has published nine novels, six collections of short stories and a series of manuals on business skills for writers.

The Jones Sisters series are thrillers set in the sometimes-murky world of international pharmaceuticals. Suzanne and Charlie Jones travel the world investigating crime and corruption, saving lives – often at great risk to themselves. You can get the full set of Jones Sisters Thrillers here:

Elizabeth Ducie's complete set of Jones Sisters Thrillers.

(Books are also available via Amazon.)