About the Book
You may remember back in 2023 I was thinking about a contemporary murder mystery / second chance romance with protagonists in their late 40s. I wrote a number of chapters and scenes for this, and ended up with about 51K of a continuous draft, and a number of other versions in other documents. All of this was shelved, and I completely forgot all about it.
I think the issue mainly was (and still is) that it was conceived as a queer m/f romance, but the MMC (Bobby, 48M) is an ex-rockstar, now alcoholic recluse and virtually unrecognisable, with a wife (Izzy, 31F) who is blackmailing him. The FMC (Sarah, 48F, his soulmate whom he hasn’t seen for 12 years) returns to his life, has an affair with him, and Izzy is found dead. Because, apparently, I can’t write anything nice.
This was meant to be contemporary, but it has ended up being set in 2010, with legendary rockstar Bas Troy disappearing in 1998, a year after the death of Princess Di. I wanted a time of peak paparazzi frenzy, but also before the days of prevalent face-recognition software, the internet in everyone’s pocket, people glued to their phones, and all the things that would make disappearing off the face of the earth much harder now.
The whole novel has become a melodramatic rock opera, in which there are multiple secret identities, hidden lives, and family drama, in a small rural Surrey village called Oxstone.
I think it was originally conceived as Midsomer Murders meets Rock of Ages, with a sobriety journey that’s rockier than the central relationship. It has become another narrative of drawing an isolated person back into community, with the added complexities of old friends closing ranks to protect the secrets binding them together.
The driving force of the novel is Sarah, who is not a people-pleaser, she is a frustrated fixer, who cannot ‘fix’ her partner’s sudden death 6 years ago. When she unexpectedly reconnects with Bobby, her soulmate since Primary School with 40+ years of history between them, his life is an absolute mess. For a start, she knew him as Kyle Lambert at school, before he picked Bas Troy as a stage name – and now she finds out he’s hiding as ‘Bobby Scully’ in a small rural village down south, after vanishing from the face of the earth for the last 12 years. Worse; he is not in a good way.
This is all fairly devastating for her, as she realises she has to resist trying to ‘fix’ him, but she also has to open herself up a bit more and create that space for him to come back into her life. Sarah also hates cheating, but they end up having an affair, and Sarah wants to help him get sober, but that’s not going to happen with Izzy still in the picture.
However – when Izzy turns up dead and it looks like he did it (and Sarah also has means, motive and opportunity), Sarah has to go into fixing mode, or all the secrets will come tumbling out, and she enlists their old school friends into helping her hide Izzy’s body and make it look like she left him – so they are the only ones who know she’s even dead.
This is further complicated by the discovery of some bones near Bobby’s house, which turn out to be Alice Fry, a local woman who disappeared five years before.
My main difficulty in writing it as a murder mystery is that I found I had less interest in whodunnit, and more in the group of people of go to great lengths to hide the body they find, and cover up the murder to protect people they love, when they don’t actually know for sure who the murderer is.
Writing a story from that perspective was more challenging, because it leaves things open and the characters were resisting their own investigation, instead focusing on how to cover up the crime. But it’s also far more fun to play with, so I hope the situation is satisfactorily resolved by the end, with some answers. I’m not sure how people who enjoy murder mysteries will like that ending, as, in order for there to be a HEA/HFN, someone has to get away with murder.
I will be interested to see how this goes down with beta readers.
Queer and Polyam Rep in Best Friends Bury Bodies
Why queer if m/f, you ask?
Both MCs are, of course, bisexual, and in this case, allosexual and alloromantic, and also polyamorous. All polyam people in this story date separately and there are no throuples etc; the polycules are a series of interlocking Vs, for the most part.
It’s time to get out the post-its and string, and do some polycule mapping!
Sarah (48F) had an anchor-partner Julia, whom everyone called Jules, (who would have been 47F in 2010), and a girlfriend Sammie (45F) (Jules and Sammie were not seeing each other).
Jules died 6 years before the book begins, back in 2004. Most of Sarah’s arc revolves around how she is dealing and not dealing with Jules’s death, which was more central in other drafts and I’m worried has got a bit lost in this one. That’s something to put a pin in for the next round of revisions.
Sarah and Sammie are still going strong by the end of the book and beyond.
Sammie is married to Mike, and dating Vicky, neither of whom are dating Sarah, but Mike and Sarah are casual-level friends. It isn’t clear how well Sarah and Vicky know one another, if at all, but this is implied to be a more distant connection, and it is likely that they only hear about one another second-hand via Sammie.
Sammie is splitting her time between her partners. This is currently working for all of them, and Sarah especially, as she needs her own alone-time, and time with her very close-knit group of old friends. She’s in a very comfortable rut, which Sammie doesn’t think is very good for her, and that’s causing some friction between them as Sammie tries to help her do something new, while Sarah actively resists any kind of change to her routine.
When we meet her, Sarah is not willing to move out of the house she and Jules bought together, and doesn’t want to move in with Sammie and Sammie’s husband, although that offer is on the table. She is also not dating anyone else.
Sammie remains with Sarah for the whole book and beyond as her existing, loving and supportive, long-term partner, and doesn’t also hook up with Bobby. If she did, she would first have to clear that with both Mike and Vicky, whom we don’t meet on-page.
Bobby (48M) is with Izzy (31F), which is a sham relationship, because she’s blackmailing him and undermining his sobriety to keep him isolated from the world. Izzy is cheating on him (but arguably it’s not cheating if the relationship is over, and/or never really existed in the first place beyond outward appearances). He, however, is not allowed to see anyone else in any capacity. When he starts to break out of this, bad things happen to him and around him.
Behind Izzy’s back, he starts a casual relationship with older, closeted, single dad Jim (60M), who runs the florists in the village, and starts teaching Jim’s daughter Bella to play the guitar. Jim and Bobby have been casual acquaintances for a few years, and Jim rents greenhouse space from him, which has given them opportunities to talk.
This relationship continues to the end of the book and presumably runs beyond it – they don’t stop seeing each other in any capacity just because Bobby is also staying with Sarah at the end.
Jim had a lavender marriage with his wife Alice, and their daughter Bella (13F) is the result of IVF. Alice disappeared 5 years ago, and Jim is convinced something has happened to her, but the police are satisfied she just left him and nothing is being done to find her.
Bobby and Jim’s relationship is a friendship with unspoken benefits – Jim is highly private, and remains both closeted and unlabelled. He is most likely romance-averse aromantic (his reactions to Bobby trying to kiss him, e.g., certainly give this impression, and while this could also be read as internalised homophobia, that reading of it doesn’t quite gel with the on-page platonic affection he is comfortable showing), and gay rather than bi.
Jim is fine with Bobby seeing Sarah, who is fine with Bobby seeing Jim. They never openly discuss this all together as a three, because Jim makes it clear he’s not interested in talking about it, and Sarah doesn’t feel like there’s anything to talk about, as long as it’s working for everyone.
There are also gay side characters, some of whom are out.
David (48M), is an ex-drag queen turned sales manager, who has undergone his own battles with addiction and is now sober. This makes him a very good old friend for Bobby to reconnect with, and a good support for Sarah.
David is in an on/off relationship with another of Sarah’s close friends, Cillian (42M), who lives platonically with High School-sweetheart couple Lindsey & Tom, and their 13yo daughter Amber, who sees Cillian and David as her uncles.
David, Sarah, Lindsey, Tom and Bobby were all best friends at school, and Cillian, Jules, and Sammie are later additions to the group.
Finally, there is Marcia (63F) who runs the tearooms at Oxstone, and is a lesbian, who considers this none of her neighbours’ business. She knows Jim is gay, Jim knows she is gay too, and they both do each other the courtesy of simply never mentioning it.
What Now?
I re-discovered this novel about 4 weeks ago, and it has been my hyperfixation ever since. I worked on it and built it up to a 78K draft about 2-3 times in those 4 weeks, each time not being able to finish it, going back re-outlining and trying again.
Finally, I stripped it back to 40K, tried one more time with a better ending in mind, and now it is complete at 85.5K words.
While there is still a lot more work to be done, I desperately need a short break from it. I have some eyes on it, but I’ve also gone over the whole thing and left myself comments on what I’m going to change in the revisions, what sections I’m moving, scrapping, reworking, and completely re-writing again.
The title is still a moveable feast; I sent out some teasers on this book in my newsletter where it was featured under the working title, A Guitar Called Magnolia, but I’m flipping back and fore on this, and currently we’re back to Best Friends Bury Bodies.
We’ll see what happens next, but this might be a late 2025/early 2026 release, if anyone is interested!
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