Moreton Bay: Glamour, Catamaran Sailing, and Dark Secrets in Raby Bay

Money. A super-catamaran. Sex. This is material for my next novel — just looking for a gorgeous woman and the perfect address in Raby Bay, Cleveland. This is where my next murder story will start. Come, take a look with me.

I can see the ingredients, but I don’t know what they make yet. That is the exciting bit.

I know the bay. It is beautiful, expensive and clean—paradise with enough water to hide things. A place like Moreton Bay can look inviting while giving a murderer room to work.

I don’t have the murder. Not yet.

I have the mood.

Boom! I think I’ve located the ideal place and woman!

The home must be on the water—on a canal estate with easy access to Moreton Bay. It also needs a berth large enough to moor a luxurious catamaran.

Not a modest cruising boat either. I am thinking sixty feet. White hulls. Wide decks. Polished timber. More floating mansion than yacht—the kind of boat that makes people stop when they see it moored behind a palatial home.

What would she call it?

Perhaps something French. Mon Homme. My Man. That might work. It sounds affectionate at first, but there is something possessive in it too. Is the yacht her man? Does it replace one? Does the name tell us something about her before she says a word?

This is why the right name matters. A name can push a character or an object in a direction before the story has decided where it is going.

I need a hot lady skipper to captain this hideously expensive yacht. She must be a doctor and have the credentials to perform surgery, if needed, inside the boat.

She cannot merely pose beside the helm. She must know how to use it. She should understand wind, tide, engines, anchors and the great deal of confidence required to bring sixty feet of catamaran into a tight marina berth. I’m writing a novel about sailing, but the sailing must serve the story. Her competence is more important than a lesson about ropes.

I see her as tall. Very tall. Perhaps six feet. Slender, blonde and impossible to miss. Put her in a lime-green bikini and sarong and let the wind work on her hair. She can stand at the bow with one hand around the forestay as though the entire yacht belongs beneath her feet.

But beauty is not a character.

If I leave her there, she will become a cardboard character: an attractive woman decorating an expensive boat. She needs intelligence, habits, contradictions and something she will not tell me immediately.

Maybe she is warm and funny. Perhaps she makes strangers feel as though they have known her for years. She may be the sort of woman who remembers what everyone drinks and notices when a husband and wife have stopped touching each other. That would make her dangerous in a room before she ever becomes dangerous on the water.

Does she own the canal house? Did she earn the money, marry it or inherit it? There could be a husband somewhere in this story. He might adore her. He might fear her. He might cook dinner while she entertains the guests. Perhaps they are devoted to one another—or perhaps they have simply developed a convincing performance.

I don’t know him yet.

She’ll be a stunning woman, a fertility specialist with an exemplary record of turning childless couples into parents, but she has a dark secret about how that happens.

That is where she begins to breathe.

A fertility specialist occupies an unusually intimate place in other people’s lives. Couples arrive hopeful, frightened and willing to trust. She could become their hero. She could also know exactly how far their desperation will let her go.

What is the secret?

Perhaps she changes something in a file. Perhaps she keeps something that should have been destroyed. Perhaps a child belongs to someone other than the people raising it. Maybe her success rate is not a miracle at all. I can feel several doors opening, and I don’t yet know which one leads to the novel.

The surgery inside the yacht interests me. Why would anyone need an operating space at sea? Is it there for an emergency, or has she arranged the boat for another purpose? A large catamaran offers privacy. It can leave the berth quietly, travel beyond the lights and return before anyone ashore knows it was gone.

Then again, perhaps the murder has nothing to do with medicine. It may grow from jealousy, sex, money or a marriage already cracked before this woman enters it. Someone must step across her gangplank. A photographer, perhaps. A couple invited to dinner. A man who understands boats and thinks that gives him something in common with her.

On land, he may behave himself. At sea, the normal markers disappear. The horizon moves, the shore falls away and the sea does something to people. A yacht can feel liberating in daylight and claustrophobic after dark. There are no neighbours over the fence. No easy way to leave. Water surrounds every decision.

That could be where the story changes.

For now, I have a woman without a settled name, although Felicity Snow has begun circling in my mind. It sounds bright and cool. Innocent, perhaps. Too innocent. I have a yacht that may be called Mon Homme, a canal home in Raby Bay and a doctor whose patients believe she creates families.

I also have the feeling that someone will trust her too much.

That is enough to begin.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)