Research: But I Don't Know Any Reporters!

Last time I gave a review of Writing Mysteries, edited by Sue Grafton. This post will be the first of what I expect to be many postings on research I've needed to do to successfully write my first murder mystery.

Review: Writing Mysteries, A Handbook by the Mystery Writers of Amerca

Last time I wrote about how I selected the point of view for my murder mystery, and why I did not use the first-person point of view loved by many mystery writers and their readers. This time, I'm providing a book review relevant to mystery writing.

Point of View, or Through Whose Eyes Do I Present My Murder Mystery?

Last time I reviewed the writing guide Don't Murder Your Mystery. The time before that I wrote about the advice to "write what you know" and why I found the advice less limiting than it first sounded. This time, I'm going to talk about point of view options for a murder mystery and how I settled on the one I would use in writing my first murder mystery.

Review: Don't Murder Your Mystery

I like to read books on writing craft, so it was an instinct of mine to find some books on writing mysteries since I am new to writing the genre. One of them I just read was excellent but, I think, misnamed. The Agatha award-winning Don't Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden could have been titled Don't Murder Your Prose. (Roerden went on to publish Don't Sabotage Your Submission, which has much the same content but is written for fiction writers of any genre. Roerden advises people to not bother buying both books.)

Why Writing What You Know is Not the Same as Playing it Safe

I last wrote about deciding the sub-genre of my story and deciding whether my sleuth had a Watson. In this post, I will talk a bit on what it means to "Write what you know."

Picking the Sub-genre of My Mystery and Do I Have a Watson?

Last time I wrote about the importance of working out the solution to a mystery before beginning to write the story. This time, I'm going to write about the following two things:

• picking the sub-genre of the mystery I am about to write .
• deciding if my sleuth has a Watson, and how to make their relationship interesting.

Knowing Whodunnit before Writing the Story

In the last article, I wrote about coming up with a protagonist. Now I'm going to write about what I knew I had to know next before beginning to write the story.

Where to Start When Writing a Murder Mystery?

One night at the Thursday Night Writers' Group my partner, Elisabeth, and I host, one member, Erik, proposed that we each write a Sherlock Holmes story. We all muttered weak assent, but only Erik wrote something.

I resisted writing my story for a couple of reasons. One was that I was not a practiced hand at writing short fiction. I prefer long-form, novel length. Another was that even though I'm a bit of a Sherlockian, I didn't believe I understood Victorian England (or Victorian anywhere, for that matter) well enough to write a credible story. But it did get me thinking.

It's About Time...

I've been blogging infrequently as a publisher, but I never started a blog for my identity as an author in my own right.

I don't have an author website, or even a facebook page. How smart is that since just about every book and maven for book marketing says an author needs an online presence to held build that all important "author platform"? And the big advice is for an author to blog. What has it taken me so long?