Oh dear. I have a huge apology to give to writer Steve Orme. Steve contacted me last October and I promised a feature on Linda’s Book Bag to celebrate Steve’s most recent novel, Storm Bodies. Steve kindly wrote a guest post for me and I promptly forgot all about it!
I do have a good excuse – I had just returned from a family funeral at the time and four deaths of family and friends in January alone this year have been very distracting, but I do feel awful. I’m hoping to make amends to Steve today by finally getting round to sharing his excellent piece on another fascinating aspect of his writing – the irony being it has distraction at its heart too!
First though, let’s find out more about Steve’s thrillers:
Storm Deaths
A reporter is murdered, a television weather presenter inexplicably disappears. Are the cases linked? Detective Inspector Miles Davies has to find out.
His attempts are continually thwarted by his boss who seems intent on ensuring that Davies doesn’t discover the truth.
But why is Davies reluctant to investigate whether any members of a local basketball team are involved?
Davies knows he has to weather the storm and find answers – before more bodies are discovered.
Storm Deaths is available for purchase here.
Storm Bodies
A grisly discovery by binmen on their round. A woman leaves her place of work but fails to arrive home.
Is there a serial killer on the loose? Detective Inspector Miles Davies and his team need to find out.
But with the Chief Constable urging Davies to come up with a way to get bored youngsters off the streets and the media eager for headline news, time is running out.
Does a local basketball club hold the key? And how many more lives will be lost before Davies can make an arrest? The answers will leave you on the edge of your seat.
Storm Deaths is available for purchase here.
From Page to Stage
A Guest Post by Steve Orme
When I started to write my second crime novel Storm Bodies – a standalone thriller although it wraps up a couple of situations unresolved in its predecessor Storm Deaths – I couldn’t have envisaged how long it would take.
It would be about three years before book number two landed on the shelves. That was because an offer landed in my inbox that both staggered and excited me.
For more than a decade I’ve been trying to tell the story of a Victorian doctor, William Palmer, who was suspected of poisoning up to 14 people including his wife, mother-in-law and four of his children. I’d teamed up with a couple of colleagues I’d worked with in regional television to make a short taster programme about the man known as the Rugeley Poisoner because of where he came from in Staffordshire.
But getting a documentary commissioned can be more difficult than securing a publishing deal. We took the programme to the History channel who said it was crime. So we took it to the Crime channel who said it was history!
I’d been thinking for some time about writing a play but was struggling to come up with a suitable subject. Then I realised it was staring me in the face: a stage play about the Rugeley Poisoner.
I wrote the first draft of What’s Your Poison? and sent it to a friend of mine, John Goodrum, who runs a touring theatre company, Rumpus.
His verdict? “It’s okay but I can’t do anything with it. It would need too many actors. Rewrite it for three actors and I’ll have another look at it.”
What started off as a major production with eight actors sharing 20 roles between them had to take on another life.
The main consideration when writing a play nowadays is cost: it’s no good coming up with the most amazing play ever if a theatre or producer can’t afford to stage it.
So how could only three actors tell the story of William Palmer convincingly? I decided to have a couple discussing Palmer in the present day, one believing he was a serial killer, the other expressing the view that Palmer could have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Palmer would appear in flashbacks along with characters who were integral to the story.
I sent off the next draft and forgot about it while I continued to write Storm Bodies.
Then, in November 2022 I received an email out of the blue from John: he wanted to tour What’s Your Poison?
My elation and exhilaration were tempered by fear about how the play would look when it actually appeared on stage during its 14-date tour of England and Wales.
When I attended the first rehearsal, I was blown away. John Goodrum who directed the play decided to play Palmer himself. He cast two actors, Pavan Maru and Jodie Garnish, as the couple debating Palmer in the present. Pav also played John Parsons Cook, the man Palmer was convicted of murdering, while Jodie also took the role of Palmer’s wife Annie.
Right from the start all three bought into the play and got the characters spot-on. It was so much better than I’d imagined.
The play premièred at the Rose Theatre, Kidderminster. It went down amazingly well; it was one of the most exciting nights of my career.
Had I gone down the traditional route of writing a play and sending it to a theatre, I doubt whether it would have got into production, even though I have a number of contacts in regional theatres.
What’s Your Poison? is now available for amateur as well as professional companies to produce. It has also led to the directors from a different theatre company contacting me about writing a play for them to stage in 2026.
The first one I’m offering them is a stage version of Storm Deaths. Theatre audiences love a crime story; take Peter James, for instance. Six of his books have been turned into stage shows and have grossed more than £17 million at the box office. So I’m endeavouring to introduce theatregoers to my main character, basketball-playing Detective Inspector Miles Davies.
Of course there are major differences between writing for the page and writing for the stage: apart from again reducing the number of characters, the basketball scenes have had to be changed because I don’t know any 6ft 10in actors!
If this new company doesn’t want to produce Storm Deaths, I should be able to bounce back with another idea we’re discussing.
There’s an old saying which states if you want to be a writer, you have to be a reader first. I obviously agree. And if you want to write for the theatre, you need to see as many plays as possible so you know what will work on stage and what won’t. I’ve got an advantage there: I’m the Midlands editor of the British Theatre Guide website, so I get to review all sorts of shows on my patch.
There’s little doubt that the main challenge facing writers today is getting their work out to a wide audience. I feel blessed that I’ve been able to write not only two novels which are available to the public but also a play which has been on a national tour. That’s driving me on each day to tell more stories no matter what the medium.
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Thanks so much Steve and apologies once again for taking so long to share this. At least it only took three months and not three years!
About Steve Orme
Steve Orme is an award-winning journalist who has written for television, radio, newspapers, magazines and online websites.
He has written for national, international and local publications as well as becoming a valued member of the production teams for television and radio shows’ news and sports programmes. He has been writing about basketball for more than 35 years.
Steve is a fan of crime writing and has published Storm Deaths, and Storm Bodies in a series about basketball-playing police detective Miles Davies.
For further information about Steve, visit his website , follow Steve on Twitter/X @SteveOrmewriter and find him on Facebook and Instagram.
