I just sent in the first 5 chapters of Blood Moon to Tris (agent). I hope he likes them.
The end is near!
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I just came across a great quote from Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton's clever private detective, from the alphabet series.
Kinsey: "I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record. I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even." So much of crime fiction deals with vengeance. It's all part of balancing things out. Someone does something bad to someone you love--or even to you!--and you want to get even. I think it's part of human nature, even though we learn as kids that we should "turn the other cheek" and even though we have also heard the flip side of that statement: "an eye for an eye." So which is it? I began to read Sue Grafton's latest this morning-- Vengeance. Maybe I'll find out there. I'll let you know. Connie One of the great things about writing mysteries is that there is so much material in real life to choose from. Take for instance the mysterious disappearance of Natalee Holloway. An Alabama judge declared her legally dead in January of this year (2012). But her body has never been found. The mystery of her death and of her killer goes on. A good topic for a murder mystery, isn't it!
The question is, do fictional murder mysteries (most of them) have some basis in real life? My guess is, they do. We write best about things that we know about. Besides, truth truly is stranger than fiction. After all we have yet another Aruba Mystery, don't we! Robyn Gardner. Though I shouldn't say she was murdered. She's missing. The same as Natalee Holloway. A good name for a murder mystery might be "The Aruba Murders." Sound good? You heard it here first. Try it out. It might sell. Connie Cooper is closing in on the bad guys now. So the end is near and I am once again realizing how difficult it is to write an ending. I try to dream about it to get some ideas. Usually that doesn't work--but it's fun trying.
I would love to hear from you, if you are a writer. How do you come to your ending? Is it there in your mind all along. Or do you let your instincts take you there. When I try to formulate the ending too early, it takes some of the excitement of writing out of the process. I want to be as surprised by the ending as the reader. Do you agree? Let me know. Connie I'm almost done with Blood Moon now. It's always exciting to come to the end of a book. I've been working on it now for almost a year and it's been a great ride--except when I dumped about 20,000 words--that's always hard to do. I didn't save much of those pages either. Maybe they'll appear in a later book.
While I am finishing one book, I'm always thinking about the next one. What will the story line be? Believe it or not, that's an exciting process. It's intriguing to think of new characters who will emerge in the book, of the new relationships that will develop between them. I'm reminded once again of the fictional characters that lined the driveway of Karin Fossum's home. Karin is one of Norway's most revered crime writers. She devotes one of her recent books to a dream she has (perhaps it's a nightmare) wherein fictional people line her driveway at night, waiting patiently for her to select one of them for her next book. A crazy thought, isn't it! Connie |
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