January Blog 2025

It has been fun to welcome guest bloggers to my website. The answer to my question, "Why do writers write?" which I have posed to each of them has yielded a variety of answers, all of which personal. Every writer is motivated in their own way depending on their interests, their life experiences, and their creative minds. 

Our backgrounds give us a unique take on what we write, how we write our stories, and why we are drawn to writing in the first place. But one thing we all have in common is our inner urge to create and share stories with our readers. For writers, every day is a new story. 

My guest blogger for January is crime writer Geoff Marriott. He is a neighbour and a long-time friend. This is his reason for writing. Welcome to my website, Geoff Marriot. 

Why Geoff Marriott Writes 

Why do I write? It's a good question. I guess the initial reason I began to write can be broken down to something as simple as a 'Bucket List' scenario. I had read so many novels and biographies during my adult life, that there reached a point where I decided reading books just wasn't satisfying me any longer. I uncharacteristically, had a hunger to challenge myself beyond what I believed would be a reasonable endeavor, and that would be to write one myself. I was never what one would call an over-achieving scholastic, when going to school, so believing I could be so bold to think I could jump in and write a novel in the neighborhood of

100,000 words, sounded ludicrous, especially to me. However, for some reason, which I will explain further on in this synopsis, I knew I needed to test myself. Doing something so exceedingly far outside of my comfort zone was going to be that test. So, in my untrained literary mind, it was 'game on'.

Being a retired Ontario Provincial Police officer, I decided two things would have to take place if I was ever going to succeed. Talking to others in the writing world, each of them, to a person said, if I had any chance at all of pulling this off, the first hurdle I needed to cover was to write about something I knew instinctively, hence, detective novels became the genre. The second thing, which I alone concluded was, if I was going to write about crime, criminals, courts and police, then nothing could be held back. There would be no soft-peddling of the violence, language, internal issues with police departments or courts. This novel, if completed, would be all or nothing and would live or die on those terms.

Once started, it wasn't long before the true reason behind my writing sprang forth. When I left policing, I was not in a good place psychologically, and when I began the first novel, I decided the easiest way to cast the protagonist for this challenge would be to inject myself personally into the story by using myself as the template for the Detective John Cooper character. My personality, inter-personal skills, investigative techniques, along with all the demons I harbored, etc., would be on full display. This was going to be a symbiotic relationship whereby Detective John Cooper and myself would be one in the same person. This would include everything. The good, the bad and sometimes the ugly. Everything was in play. It turns out that by using this tactic, I began feeling the most relaxed I had ever been for a very long time. It became a therapeutic tool for me. Much of the psychological unrest began to slowly dissipate over the years, and even though some of it would never be gone, the worst of it, over time, subsided to a tolerable level.

Once 'A Dish Served Cold' was finished, I took the manuscript to a person I trusted who advised me that it was much too long. I did a re-write which reduced the novel by 20% and now it was ready to go. The published edition was now within the word count similar to most other detective novels. A cover and title was chosen. I then went to our local book store at the mall and advised the owner what I had done and would he be interested in placing it on his shelves. He was more than happy to help me out. I took a photograph of my novel alongside others who bore the names Grisham, Connelly, Crais among others. I truly believed my efforts of the past year were now complete. Seeing it among some of the greats on the shelf, I had achieved my goal of writing a book.

Astonishingly, the owner of the book store called me a couple of weeks later, requesting more books and again a couple of weeks later, asking for even more.

People were coming in daily and purchasing my novel, reading it and immediately sending me congratulations and most looking for a sequel.

This was crazy. A sequel had never been on the radar at all. This DISH was simply to be a one-off, a check mark on my 'Bucket List', as it were. After continued prodding, I decided to give it a go. I thought, why not? 'The Dealmaker' was to become the second John Cooper novel. Same protagonist, but new story-line, which involved the courts, judges and lawyers of the legal system. This was soon to be followed by two more novels. 'The Devil's Portrait', book # 3 in the series, now had Cooper involved with a macabre investigation within the North American Art world, specifically Los Angeles. The fourth, 'RAGE' is the latest entry. 'RAGE' was somewhat different in its' origin, in that I already had the title and possible cover in my head, long before I typed a single word. Since the title itself was quite ominous, I now had to write a story that would befit that title. RAGE was definitely more graphic in spots, but I had to remain loyal to my initial promise. That being, nothing could be held back. In everyday life, there is a dark side to the world in general and soft-peddling that particular aspect of life was never an option for me to consider. My followers would be the only true judge and accept things for what they were, good, bad or indifferent. Thus far, each of the novels have been received in a very positive manner and I have to graciously thank my readers for that.

Thank you all,

Geoff