The Inspiration Behind Cora Baxter

 

I always loved writing in English class at school, but after that it didn’t really figure in my life until I was well into my thirties. By then I was working as a TV news reporter, always travelling, permanently exhausted and not enjoying any of it anymore, and I found myself looking for an escape, a way to switch off and relax.

I suddenly remembered how very happy writing had made me as a child, and began to wonder if I could somehow use the huge wealth of experience I’d gathered during my years as a roving reporter for GMTV (as ITV’s breakfast show was then called) to write a book.

I’d spent a decade covering stories around the world, some terribly sad, some fascinating, some utterly bizarre, and I’d kept notes and diaries as I’d gone along – could I now actually do something with them? So one day, I sat down in a hotel room in some far-flung country and started writing a novel.

Initially, it was going to be a sort of rom-com, a one-off, standalone book about a TV news reporter called Cora Baxter and her struggle to balance her chaotic love-life with her hectic work schedule. But I soon realised the plot wasn’t really working so, always having loved covering crime stories, I decided to open the book with a murder instead.

That was when Cora Baxter became a TV reporter who got involved with solving murder cases, and when I eventually signed a publishing deal with Accent Press they offered a three-book deal and told me they wanted a series. I panicked – how on earth was I going to write two more whole books? – but said yes anyway, and I’m so glad I did, because I’ve absolutely loved creating Cora’s world and giving her more and more complicated cases to work on, and luckily have had no shortage of material to draw on.

Now, as my third novel The Development is released, I feel incredibly lucky to have built up a solid readership of people who love Cora and are always excited when a new book comes out. Many have got in touch to tell me how fond they are of the characters, and the relationships between them, and have asked me if they are based on people I’ve worked with during my television career.

The answer is definitely yes, although obviously I’ve changed lots of details. But Cora’s rather eccentric camera crew – the camera man, sound man and satellite truck engineer she spends most of her time with – are definitely a mix of various crews I worked with over the years. As a journalist you forge very close friendships with your colleagues – I travelled the world with crew members who became some of my best friends, and with whom I spent far, far more time than I did with my husband and family during those years.

Sharing intense experiences is incredibly bonding, and the characters in my novels have that close, almost family-like relationship too. When you have slept in a cockroach-infested shed in Ethiopia together, spent days in waders chest-deep in stinking flood water or cowered in your car while somebody attacked it with a baseball bat, all in the line of duty, you become more than just work colleagues, and I’m glad that I’ve been able to share that through my writing, and also show that working in TV is more often than not very, very far from glamorous, something else which my readers tell me they find fascinating.

Television news is a strange beast – you can be reporting on an horrific murder in the morning, and the same evening be standing on the red carpet at a glitzy film premiere. The style of my Cora Baxter books reflects that too – light and shade, swinging from very sombre moments to episodes of utter hilarity. It’s what life is all about really, isn’t it? Even in the darkest of times there is always a way to find some joy, sometimes in the tiniest of things.

As much as I have loved writing the Cora Baxter series, as the third book comes out I’m taking a break. I mentioned that as a reporter I always loved covering crime stories, and in my next book I wanted to explore a crime story in a different way. My Cora books very much reflected life in a television newsroom as I knew it, and although a crime is at the centre of each novel there is humour and romance and relationship drama there too.

I’m not totally ruling out more Cora books in the future, but I’m now working on something a lot darker, more of a psychological suspense novel. It’s a gamble – it’s a very different style for me – but I’m very much enjoying bringing another world and a new set of characters to life, and I’m still drawing on the knowledge and experience I gained as a news reporter. I’m now a presenter on TV shopping channel QVC – just the most fun job in the world – and I have left my news reporting days behind me, and very happily too. I have more time now, time for my husband and friends and family, and for me. But my former career continues to inspire my beloved writing, and for that I will be forever grateful.

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Jackie Kabler is the author of the Cora Baxter Mysteries, a series of murder mysteries set in a television newsroom. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then in television news for twenty years, including nearly a decade on GMTV. She later appeared on BBC and ITV news, presented a property show for Sky, hosted sports shows on Setanta Sports News and worked as a media trainer for the Armed Forces. She is now a presenter on shopping channel QVC. Jackie lives in Gloucestershire with her husband, who is a GP.

Twitter – @jackiekabler

Facebook – www.facebook.com/jackiekablerauthor/

Website – http://www.jackiekabler.com/

THE DEVELOPMENT

After a stressful week, TV reporter Cora Baxter is ready for a quiet weekend. What she isn’t counting on is witnessing the shocking death of a young woman on her way home. Cora discovers that seventeen-year-old Leanne has been protesting against a new housing development, angering the powerful establishment.

Leanne s death is ruled a suicide but, when puzzling information comes to light, Cora decides to investigate further. She might not know what an unscrupulous businessman, a suspended police officer and hate-mail sending neighbours have to do with the case but she does know there is a news story there.

With her eccentric camera crew on hand to help, can Cora work out what happened in the days before Leanne s death? And was it really suicide after all?

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Category: On Writing