Today I'm stopping here on my blog tour, which is winding down, but there are still chances to win prizes and see what's going on with Seamus.
Schedule: Peg Herring’s Blog Tour for May (and
one post in June) consists of a mix of interviews with Seamus, the Dead
Detective, and posts on writing. The previous stop was on May 16 at http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.comThe
next stop on the tour will be on May 25th at http://www.preciousmonsters.com/ A complete schedule is posted at
Peg’s blog, http://itsamysterytomepegherring.blogspot.com/
When the tour is over
(June 11th) the complete Seamus interview will be posted there.
Prizes: People who comment on any
blog post on the tour will be entered in drawings for several prizes: Dead
Detective T-shirts, copies of THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY and DEAD FOR THE MONEY
(paperback or e-books available), and the chance to be a character in the third
of the series DEAD FOR THE SHOW. Multiple winners will be drawn.
Peg’s website:
http://pegherring.com
Taking Stock
There’s a line of commercials lately that traces minor
events in life that snowball and lead to disaster. In one, a guy frustrated by
his cable service ends up beaten bloody in a ditch. I’m not sure that’s true
for mystery writing, but the life of a mystery writer goes a little like this.
When you start writing a mystery novel, you want to know
more about crime. When you want to know more about crime, you begin paying too
much attention to television. When you pay too much attention to television,
you begin to think that every action has a secret motive. When you think every
action has a secret motive, you suspect everyone. When you suspect everyone,
scenarios form in your brain. When scenarios form in your brain, you write them
down. When you write them down, you have a mystery novel!
When I take stock of who I am today and who I was before
I started writing, I see major growth in the area of in-brain storytelling.
Passing a person on the street who’s fumbling through his clothes brings up the
idea that he’s the victim of pickpockets, when it’s likely he just forgot where
he stashed his keys. A sighting of an armored car brings up visions of armed
gunmen pulling the driver to the ground and driving it away before anyone can
stop them. A story in a newspaper of an unidentified body found in the woods of
northern Michigan creates a whole list of possibilities, none of them as
mundane as the truth, that it’s some pitiful Alzheimer’s victim who wandered
away from home and couldn’t get back.
It isn’t life that’s changed; it’s me. Mystery writing is
an addiction, and like all addictions, we can recognize it, admit to it, and
struggle against it, but it’s always there. It’s partly the fault of others,
those who say, “Oh, that was such a clever twist in your last book!”
“Oh,” I say to myself, “they think THAT was clever—wait till
they see what I do next time!”
Friends in the mystery-writing community confess to the
same thoughts. We start viewing the world in terms of plot-lines, people in
terms of character possibilities, and even aspects of nature in terms of a
great line for the next book. We don’t look at the world the way others do, or
maybe even the way we used to: it isn’t just life anymore: it’s all fodder for
the next book or the one after that.
I sometimes feel that I should warn my friends. Like a
karate expert who must register his hands as lethal weapons, maybe all mystery writers
should be made to wear that T-shirt you see at conventions that says: Be
careful or you’ll end up in my next novel.
