YOU MIGHT BE A WRITER, IF . . . By KIMBERLY THORN

If you ever start out on Google or Bing researching a topic for your book but hours later you wound up watching talking dog videos on YouTube, you might be a writer.

 

If you have ever fallen asleep with a wonderful, fully plotted novel, but you wake up with you only remembering your dream of riding on a unicorn while saving the world from miniature robots, you might be a writer.

If you have had writer’s block for a week, but get into the shower and come up with that one scene that you’ve been working on for a week, you might be a writer.

 

If you keep a notebook and pencil by your bed to write great story ideas from dreams that you have had when you wake up at 3am, but can’t read your own writing, you might be a writer.

 

If you are working on a murder mystery and have to clear your search history because your scared you may be on the FBI watch list, you might be a writer.

If out in public you find yourself listening to peoples conversations and think to yourself, oh my goodness, that is so funny, that gives me a fantastic idea, you might be a writer.

 

If you are working on a story, only have three hours left in your deadline, debating with yourself if you should or should not submit it, you might be a writer.

 

 

 

WOMEN IN WARTIME: BETSY DOWDY’S RIDE by Yvonne Saxon

December 6, 1775: The awful news comes to the Dowdy’s from a neighbor who’d just returned from Virginia: Lord Dunmore is burning homes and slaughtering the colonists’ livestock and horses. He’s now threatening the Great Bridge, the only trade route and post road the Dowdy’s and their neighbors have from their home in Corolla, on the Outer Banks of  North Carolina. Their livelihood is at stake. Sixteen year old Betsy Dowdy fears for her family, the farm animals, and even the Banker ponies, the wild horses that roam the Outer Banks. Betsy knows that there is a militia strong enough to help stop Dunmore in Perquimans County. But it’s fifty miles away.

A CLOSED CIRCLE OF SUSPECTS by Maria Hudgins

One of the most popular schemes employed by mystery writers can be described as "A Closed Circle of Suspects." This fairly well describes the story I'm working on right now. The setting for my story is a Health Spa Resort in a foreign country. But this isn't a truly closed circle because the characters can come and go if they want to. They aren't captives. I'm fully expecting someone to level this charge at me at some point. But I've learned something important about this business of categorizing fiction, especially mystery fiction. It doesn't matter! There are no rules that can't be broken; this isn't a matter of rules anyway. At most this is simply a way of looking at a story and seeing its possibilities and limitations before you start writing. 

The "Closed Circle of Suspects" category is surprisingly flexible, and successful stories certainly number in the hundreds, if not thousands. All you need is a setting that encloses a definite group of people so that, when a crime (usually murder) occurs, you know the perpetrator has to be one of that group. It would be cheating, I think, to bring in a long-lost heir to the victim's fortune in the last chapter. "Hi! I'm Malaria von Hatchet. Am I too late for Grandfather's funeral?" The suspects are well defined and don't usually number more than about eight. That's another reason my story is not a true closed circle. There are more than a hundred residents at the resort at any one time. They can't all be suspects.

A common Closed Circle mystery is the English Country House Mystery. Examples include The Mysterious Affair at Styles, The Mousetrap, both by Agatha Christie, and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins. But it doesn't have to be English. How about Knives Out? It's in a country house, but it's set in the USA

A Closed Circle mystery can also be set in many places other than a country house.

    A ship- Death on the Nile, The Woman in Cabin 10.

    An Island - And then there were None, The Lost Island

    A Plane - Death in the Clouds, The 12:30 from Croydon.

    A Train - Murder on the Orient Express, Strangers on a Train

You get the idea. The advantage of mystery stories with closed circles is that the list of possible perps is limited. This gets one variable under control and simplifies things a bit. So the story is usually concerned with opportunity, (Who had access to the gun cabinet? Who left the dining room before dessert?) or motive (money, jealousy, fear, etc.)

The kind of mystery I most like to read is the police procedural. I enjoy reading them because they are so different from what I write, I don't connect them with my own work. If I did, I would be constantly comparing the book with my own. In police procedurals you almost always have a a huge area, like a city, in which to find and trap your killer. It takes the skill and training of a professional sleuth to deal with the possibilities.

Many cozies are, to some extent, Closed Circle stories, like the village of St. Mary Mead. Donna Andrews's bird-themed books are set in Yorktown, VA.  Rita Mae Brown's Mrs.Murphy books are set in Crozet, VA. Crozet is such a small town, it almost qualifies as a Closed Circle. 

So. Whereas my current WIP is not strictly a Closed Circle, the story does concentrate on one particular group of guests at the spa resort. I guess that makes it An Almost Closed Circle of Suspects.

MYSTERY AUTHORS’ PETS by Catty Doggens, Guest Blogger

 

James Patterson's cat

Many of our favorite mysteries include pets, and in homage to May being National Pet Month, here are some mystery authors' pets!

I can't say whether it helps James Patterson crank out yet another bestseller, but his cat Redboy sits on his head. Patterson says "He's a head cat, not a lap cat."

Janet Evanovich has a Havanese named Ollie and also has a "Readers' Pets" column on her website.

We know that long walks in nature can inspire writers, but David Baldacci quipped that "our dogs hid their leashes because we were walking them too much."

Val McDermid was adopted by a cat who followed her home one night and yowled at her door until she opened it. The cat strode right in and soon became a fat, curry-loving member of the family.