Speculative Submission for “Salmonweird”

I did it, I bit the bullet. Despite that my supernatural-crime-comedy novel/la is not yet complete (21,000 words strong though despite only starting a few months ago), I submitted a speculative application to a literary agent calling for submissions through Facebook.My best friend’s girlfriend posted the link to my wall a couple of weeks ago, but I decided to hold off at the time purely and only because the text is incomplete. But this weekend I decided that there is no time like the present and sent the first three chapters along with this brief synopsis.

DI Karl Blackman thought retirement to the sleepy little Cornish village of Salmonweir was a dream come true, and it was until the day the ghosts of long-dead people started popping up in the village.

On day one, a pirate ship pulls into the harbour and DI Blackman’s wife is startled by the sudden appearance of a monk waving a thurible that he said would drive away the miasma and rid the village of plague. Instead, it drives away DI Blackman’s wife.

Soon, the retired detective is the only human left in the village that now includes a Celtic Warrior Queen, a Puritan preacher and a teenage girl who died during the cholera epidemic who is finding that the 21^st century is a much cooler place to be than the 19^th.

All is well until young Eddie (The Cabin Boy of the pirate ship) inexplicably disappears. Trying to figure out how a person who has been dead for 300 years could be murdered, it leads to another crime for DI Blackman to solve. Without help or assistance from the local Police Force, DI Blackman must solve the murder just as the village is starting to put itself on the tourist map as a real living/dead history destination.

That was a hastily put together synopsis that doesn’t really scratch the surface of the humour in the text (arguably there is more humour in this than there is in Dead Heat) but I am pleased with the description of the story as it stands at the present time.

I’m quite nervous about this, mostly because this has all happened so quickly. It wasn’t even the seed of an idea when the words just gushed from my fingers less than 3 months ago. No first chapter was ever so easy for me to write, no other work has come so effortlessly. So, this will be the first test – of people outside my immediate circle evaluating the potential of this work in progress.

I will keep you updated.