With four Gwen Andrews mysteries published, I’ve been struggling to create Gwen’s story #5.
The location determined, multiple characters introduced, and victim discovered, I was hard-pressed to choose one of them as the culprit. The names have been tumbling over each other in an attempt to convince me of their reason for the crime.
When I awoke from dreamland this morning, the culprit was revealed! I now have a clear path and can write with abandon as I incorporate the innocent suspects into the chapters, dropping clues as I go like Hansel and Gretel.
The other half of this story involves the romantic… or non-romantic… subplot between my Gwen and her hopeful love interest. And let’s not forget the ghost of her deceased husband!
As always since my retirement, I enjoy creating a story that my readers will enjoy. Now get to work!
To all the writers out there… whether you write fiction or non-fiction, regardless of your genre… have you been more productive during our self-isolation?
Every fiction writer knows the frustration of plotting their story. Especially with a mystery, such as I create, the plot not only needs to proceed logically toward the climax, but the characters, dialogue, and actions within each scene need to be believable to the reader as the clues are subtly inserted into the story.
As I settle into my third year of snow-birding in Florida, I continue to work with my writing group back in Massachusetts by emailing chapters back and forth, soliciting comments and suggestions. Our system seems to work very well, and in fact, I think we’re more productive!
So excited to open my inbox yesterday and find an email from my editor/publisher Stephanie Blackman, owner of Riverhaven Books in Whitman, MA! As scheduled in our contract, yesterday was the due date for her to provide me with suggestions to fine-tune ‘Bed, Breakfast, & Blackmail’.
As I approached the final edit of ‘Bed, Bath, & Blackmail’, I loaded my manuscript into a website called ‘Wordcounter.com’, a most useful tool.
There is nothing more satisfying than to walk into a bookstore and see both of my mysteries displayed on the shelf in the local author section.
As I’ve been penning the third story in my four-book mystery series, it occured to me that the first two stories were told strictly from the viewpoint of my amature sleuth Gwen Andrews. I wondered if transforming certain scenes to the viewpoint of another major character might add texture and depth to the story-telling.
For the past two years, I’ve been presenting my Author Talk centered around how I learned to write a mystery. I was thrilled recently to receive an invitation from the Friends group for my local senior center to speak to them again this April with an update on my writing career and my work in progress.
Debi Graham-Leard 