Favourite Writers: MC Beaton/Marion Chesney

The writer who causes me the most lost time is British writer M.C. Beaton / Marion Chesney. Several things about her delight me:

1. She's prolific.

2. She's fun and silly.

3. She only really got revved up in her writing career when she was 43... like me! So there's hope I can be that prolific and beloved too. Working on it.

4. She's multi-genre.

5. My son and I both adore her Hamish MacBeth and Agatha Raisin series audio books, and we listen to them and my son has an amazing memory for them, so we discuss them a lot.

Agatha is salty and ... oh, so lovable.

MacBeth is... oh, so lovable too. Though at the same time both characters are so sort of naughty (or, well, irritatingly manly, in Hamish's case) that you don't mind when the author causes them all sorts of annoyance.

I started off loving ​her historical romances. Light, easy, delightful, quite silly, quite fun. I was SO happy when I went to the used book store in Bath, UK, and they had a big stack of her books. I bought all the ones they had. I'm happy that my library seems to have dozens of her books on downloadable audiobook. They're usually very well read and I often fall asleep to them.

(Of course... I would be more prolific if I was falling asleep at my own writing desk! So therein lies the problem. I wonder who MC Beaton listens to?)

I don't write mystery (yet), though there is one murder mystery I have to write -- it's the only possible genre appropriate for the mountain neighbourhood where I grew up!

 

I should add, this author's insights about human character in among all the silliness is deep and astute.

Sometimes my son complains about the behaviour or motivations of this character or that, and I usually say, well, yes, she's exaggerating a little in this case, but people really do base their lives on silly motivations like x, y, or z...

Hamish is a Scottish Highlands policeman and Agatha is a Cotswalds private detective -- kind of like Miss Marple but with much less awkward politeness. :)

It's sure fun having a smart teen to listen to audiobooks with!

 

And sure fun to have such a delightful writer to listen to.