Pat McDonald is a British author known for her crime thriller series and her humorous and a bit naughty Penny series.

Although Pat is thousands of miles away, if there is one author I would invite to join our little local group, Old Ladies on the Loose, she would be my first choice. She has a big heart and a razor sharp tongue. (Just telling it like it is, Pat.)

I love her books. I love her wit. I love her style. I love her personal story.

Pat’s story is inspiring. Despite health issues Pat has displayed strength and perseverance. She is one of those special people who inspires and gives hope to other women in the face of adversity.

I would say that Pat is a survivor, but that would be diminishing of her accomplishments and her character. Pat is a winner, one who faced death and stared it down. She is a fighter, an author, and an inspiration to me both in life and in my desire to write and be published.

When chatting with Pat, I mentioned that so many readers somehow overlook the notion that authors are real people, too. I asked her to write about herself, obviously the last thing she wanted to do.

Let me say how privileged I feel that she is willing to share her personal story and her books with me — and you. Seldom does this lady talk about herself. I had to twist both her arms and threaten to pull her teeth, but alas, she relented.

Rather than asking questions and scribbling down Pat’s answers, I asked her to share her personal story in her own words. So, let me introduce the author, lady, and my friend, Patricia McDonald.

The Years Leading Up to a Writing Career

Written by Pat McDonald

I believe most writers would admit that they are influenced in their writing by their early lives especially by childhood memories; it isn’t something that I have considered or a subject I have put pen to paper about before.

Writing about myself is somewhat outside of my comfort zone. I do remember my first publications as a fifteen year old, when my poetry included in a couple of anthologies led to the local newspaper featuring me in an article. As I recall they likened me to Thomas Hardy, his poetry not his novels, which are mostly about graveyards and really quite reflective and depressing. I recently found an early photograph of me as a very young girl and even then I looked like the whole experience of having my photograph taken was distasteful.

Is this the face of a future satirist or serious crime writer? I would like to say it was all uphill after that was taken, but alas no such luck. My ‘graveyard’ phase as I like to think of it as stemmed mainly from the early death of my father when I was barely eight years old and perhaps marks the end of my childhood and the beginnings of a somewhat dysfunctional family life. I like to think that frown reflects a contemplative inquisitive gaze that would lead me into a career in research and analysis both in the medical world and in law enforcement.

I took a detour into education along the way that was to last far too long. I had the belief that to be a writer, which is pretty much all I ever really wanted to be, I had to ‘learn’ the art or acquire the means to achieve it. After having my daughters I began again, just night classes at first to pick off all those subjects I didn’t get the chance to take first time out, like history, biology, sociology; it was addictive and of course showed me new horizons, college, university including sociology, psychology, economics, criminology and before I knew it I had a B.A honours in social sciences. I remember the results day standing in front of the notice board at the University looking to see if I passed and the absolute deflation when I saw I had and knowing I would never be able to tell my father about it.

It should have been sufficient, but the addiction was too advanced and the part time PhD led me into working in research in heart disease and then the suicide of my mother-in-law directed me towards studying mental illness and writing academic publications, books and papers. My final and lengthy experience in law enforcement lasted for seventeen years and a variety of research, project management and programme management roles which proved to be a good grounding for the crime author I am today.

Pat’s Crime Thrillers

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My Obsession with Writing Crime Novels

by Pat McDonald

I began writing my first novel Getting Even: Revenge is Best Served Cold believing the old myth that everyone has a book in them somewhere. My problem was once I began doing what I really believe I was meant to do, write fiction, I couldn’t stop.

I’m not a planner; I left that back in the days of report writing where you had a fixed template that you stuck to and planned to. I had little idea where to start writing fiction. Then one morning on Breakfast TV I heard a novelist say that there was a difference between being a writer and being a storyteller. The first plans out what they intend to write (been there done that, got the writer’s cramp I thought), a start, a middle, a conclusion. He said a storyteller sits down in front of a blank screen or page and just writes. There it was the answer to a life time’s search for the holy grail of writing fiction!

Then shortly after my writing seemed to be flowing, I was helping someone at a Christmas Fair to sell their handmade greetings cards. I saw a man two tables away with his wife and son and I looked at him and thought what a great character he would make for a Major Crime Unit detective. Yes, I did go home, sat down in front of my screen and I created Luke Wariner my very first detective. The plots just flowed I found myself with a trilogy (The Blue Woods Trilogy) as my introduction to crime fiction writing.

People who have read them, Getting Even, Rogue Seed, and Boxed Off tell me they are gritty. There aren’t many families that aren’t dysfunctional in them (I wonder where that comes from?) and my characters aren’t superheroes. They are ordinary, realistic and often very strange people. I had become a storyteller.

The way I write is I love to begin a new book before I have published the last one, so that I can edit one and write another. My fourth book, Breaking Free, is a spin off from Getting Even where one of the characters disappeared having escaped from a ruthless violent cop. He had held her as his mistress from the age of fourteen. She escapes to United Arab Emirates having sold all his ill-gotten possessions from years of corruption.

I picked UAE because I had the opportunity to go there to stay with my daughter’s family for a while and wrote a lot of Getting Even while there. I sat in a Bedouin tent on a beach in Fujairah on the Indian Ocean and lived a lot of the experiences for some of my later novels in the Penny series.

In Breaking Free Livia Morrison eventually comes back to the UK and ends up in North Wales where she buys an old forge cottage. She tries to hide in plain sight from the likelihood of being discovered only to find herself being stalked. The cottage seems to have a life of its own, the garden stays at the height of summer when autumn begins everywhere else. She finds an old chest in the attic that captures her attention.

Livia gets telephone calls in the middle of the night at 03.33 from the plaintive voice of a woman calling for her help. She meets Nathan who helps her to unravel the happenings. It is a book (probably my favourite) where crime, paranormal, romance and ghostly WW1 historical elements are combined.

It was about this time I first knew I was ill after having an accident trying to head butt a railway platform, landing on my face and knocking myself out. It gave me the impetus to seek to find out why.

It was another one of those experiences, having burst a blood vessel just under one eye I looked like a battered woman. Travelling on a train in that condition was something else entirely, people just look at your face and look away. I had already written about a woman in that condition in Getting Even and now I had the real life experience to go with it.

The discovery of Hamish (my brain tumour) gave me the motivation to begin to write humour in order to keep up my spirits and not to lose my own sense of humour.

Moving from Crime Thrillers to Humour

by Pat McDonald

After the discovery of my brain tumour, I began writing humour to help keep my spirits up.

A Penny for Them is the thoughts of Benjamin Matthews and his unfortunate journey of discovery about his real origins. It starts out with a little white lie to impress a girl because he is wearing a shirt with the monogram PB on the pocket. The shirt was from a time when he sold petrol. He exclaims his name is Benjamin Pollock.

After my brain operation I used Breaking Free editing and writing the first in the Penny book series to learn to write and type again. Writing, typing and social media were ways to help me recover from the many physical problems I was left with i.e. mostly one-eyed as I had double vision.

I began Echoes of Doubt when I was woken up at midnight New Year when my mobile alarm went off; I hadn’t set it, needless to say. It was one of many strange things that happen in my house. I wrote them into a book around another character Bart Bridges who went into the Witness Protection Programme in Boxed Off the final book in my trilogy.

I believe everything you do in life is research for a book and will find its way in one somewhere. The choice of a small seaside town was inspired by the photographs by Ian Hutson. His pictures of a deserted Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire and a row of beach huts spurred me on.

The character, Bart, is now Cyrus Bartholomew owner of Time and Tide, a clockmaker’s shop. He is two years into the programme when the man at the Art Gallery next door is violently murdered. He thinks they may have got the wrong shop. He teams up with a CSI Jason Vingoe. Cyrus has a secret past as a Scene’s of Crime Officer and Private Investigator.

My inspiration for humour came from two Facebook friends Aaron David and Ian Hutson (both amazing and different humour authors). They helped me enormously in that they ragged and insulted me unmercifully (both knowing what I was going through). They are damned fine human beings!

The Penny Series (Humor)

A Penny for Her Thoughts

by Pat McDonald

Often the cure for a condition is far worse than the actual condition even where eventually it could be fatal. It was hard and it was long and without my writing would have been impossible. When I thought Hamish had disappeared completely he came back again a year later. I went through Gamma Knife Surgery just over a year ago. The horrendous side effects I didn’t expect and the past year has been extremely difficult.

Saying that, I have been confined to my house for all sorts of reasons and my Penny series has grown Book 2, The Penny Drops, sees Ben trying to escape the unfortunate unwanted attentions of Sergeant Daphne Johnson and trying to join his wife and children out in UAE.

In Book 3, A Bad Penny, he is ‘living the dream’ in UAE and as most things do, his past life catches up with him as do a lot of unwanted visitors.

I have just finished the first draft on my ninth book, The Ravages of Time. It was inspired by an elderly lady I met years ago. She was one of those young underage girls who were admitted to long stay Mental Asylums because they got pregnant and therefore considered to be mentally deficient.

In my book Mary Mundy (I never knew the real name of the actual lady) is settled back into the community having spent the majority of her life institutionalised. This book is a crime book and starts with a baby snatched from a pram left outside a shop by her nanny. The only witness at the time is potentially Mary Mundy. This is the first book where I have tapped into my days spent working in an old Asylum. The theme of this one is all of us undergo the effects of time and sometimes the consequences are great.

I am now editing it whilst finishing writing Book 4, Pennies from Heaven, where Ben’s life takes a different turn. He is now established in UAE and just discovered Rebecah his wife and her twin sister are both pregnant. His continued attempts to avoid being pulled into a life of crime is once again tested.

I have tried to slow down a bit and often promise myself a day off. When I do I’m very much a film fanatic and also love crime drama and thriller series. It gets me away from my computer.

I have been unable to drive my car much over the last four years but still have it; the back country roads around here must miss me bombing along like a ‘Bat Out of Hell’ with Meat Loaf!

Every Penny Counts (My review)

Benjamin Pollock, formerly and sometimes still known as Benjamin Matthews, finds himself and his ever-growing family counting more than pennies in Every Penny Counts.

The fifth installment in the Penny series is sure to delight. For those of us who have followed Ben and Rebecah on the odyssey that landed them in the United Arab Emirates, we know that where Ben goes trouble is sure to follow, sometimes in the form of Uncle Terry, or Stan, or in this case Austin Prentiss.

Benjamin Pollock (or Matthews) and Austin Prentiss have been at odds since the days when Ben stacked shelves in the Safeway Supermarket back in the UK. Lots of adventures have filled Ben’s life since the day he dropped the savoy cabbage in the grocery store and began a chain reaction of damages. Poor Austin was the person who had to explain the deductions from Ben’s paycheck due to the breakages that began with one cabbage rolling across the Safeway store.

Lucky for Ben, or so it seemed initially, the lady in HR was able to get his paycheck back to full measure, but it required Ben to invest a little time with the woman. What was her name? Ben wasn’t even sure if he remembered it. But, he soon realized that Austin Prentiss had designs on her. Not to give anything up to Austin, Ben dated the woman, listened to her mindless drivel, and occasionally shared her bed. Those were the days before Rebecah, of course.

Austin was totally put out by Ben’s courtship with the woman and Ben played on it to the max until she began the steady talk of marriage and wedding dresses and children. Ben darted, leaving Austin with the woman. It wasn’t worth getting too involved with the simple woman who had but one thing on her mind — marriage.

By the time Austin has tracked Ben down in the UAE, Ben and Rebecah are happily married with two sets of twins. (It’s in the genes.) But, Austin carries a grudge and is determined to get even — all because of the savoy cabbage incident?

The usual characters are up to no good. Uncle Terry is conning his way through life as a security consultant, and a good one at that. Then there is Cynthia, Rebecah’s twin sister, who grew up thinking she was Ben’s sister. Well, if you want a laugh try to figure out who is who and how they are related.

Anyway, the villa where Ben, Rebecah, Luke and Lucy, Leo and Lily, a staff of nannies and an assortment of characters live seems to have a revolving door. One uncle arrives and Stan (aka JoJo the Clown) runs away from the circus to come to UAE to help Dave with his new business venture, entertaining children.

Let me just say, there is no shortage of crazy characters who always pop up to entertain the reader. And, then there is Austin Prentiss, with his grudge against Ben, determined to do anything he can to get even.

For those who have followed Ben and Rebecah, and the rest of the family and friends from UK to UAE, you know there is never a dull moment or a dull page in one of the ‘Penny’ books.

Personally, I believe this to be Pat McDonald’s best book to date, and there have been some good ones. I have been quite partial to the crime series over the years. (Who doesn’t love Hugo Bott?) But, this latest work of humor has solidified Pat as, not only a versatile writer but one who is accomplished whether following clues in her crime stories or making us laugh out loud.

And, let me make a prediction. There is more to come!