Yesterday’s authors@theLibrary speaker was local journalist and mystery writer Jessica Speart. Her career path is an interesting one. She started out as a soap opera actress and when her character was killed off she turned to investigative journalism after a consciousness raising visit to Africa and then later to began writing mystery novels, in which she continues to champion the cause of environmental and wildlife exploitation through her character, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Agent Rachel Porter.
If you are thinking about starting to write mysteries or have some old manuscripts that you have been meaning to dust off and get back to, check out Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden, the 2007 Agatha winner for best nonfiction book. It promises “24 fiction writing techniques to save your manuscript from turning up D.O.A.”
You can get a sneak preview of the first three chapters on-line.
There is also some good advice available on-line for mystery writers from authors P.D. James and Gillian Roberts.
I was sitting in on a panel discussion at Malice Domestic where someone asked the authors what book they found most useful for developing their craft. When one author volunteered Stephen King’s On Writing every head up on the podium nodded in agreement, as did many in the audience.
Sara Paretsky’s recently released Writing in an Age of Silence may not impart actual writing tips, but you can expect to come away from it with an understanding of why she became a writer and how she uses her V.I. Warshawski novels as a soapbox for political and social issues.
Paretsky also expresses her concern for what she perceives as an unparalleled repression of free speech and thought in America today and concludes with a fragment from Sappho: “Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal.”
