Carolyn Writes a Mystery -- Starting Out, and Why Mystery?

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After several years of mulling over this possibility, and dealing with a lot of personal crap and challenges, I've at last realized all the stars have aligned. I've started work on a new mystery, and have come home. This isn't my first, but just the first in oh, about seven years.

Brief writerly history of C: I started writing at 33, having fallen into a Star Trek board on Prodigy, all original characters. My first character was a Trill... :) After about a year of that, during which time I was a stay-at-home-mom but ran a daycare in my house and transcribed depositions for a lawyer I used to work for, I realized this wasn't enough anymore. I craved complete control, to plot and create all on my own, with no interference from anyone else. (hmmm...my long-lived dislike of writing to canon might've had its roots here).

I met someone in the romance genre boards who happened to live here, we became friends and I tried my hand at that genre for awhile, realizing it wasn't for me but also learning a hell of a lot. If anything, romance folks are very generous with their knowledge. I wrote a book, a paranormal, Elizabeth's Candle, that I no longer have. Sad about that. Paranormals were few and far between back then...hard to believe now! Got a few agent bites, but am glad now that nothing came of romance.

Discontent with the genre at least as far as my own writing was concerned, I decided to write a mystery. I always loved mysteries...my dad regularly passed off mysteries and science fiction and fantasy to me. I was always a voracious reader--preferring books to kids--but he definitely shaped my interests. Mom read romances and I distinctly remembering thinking her books were a waste of time...sorry Mom, I feel bad about that now, but she loved historicals and they always had those covers on them. Those covers. (When involved with romance, I came to understand how romance authors feel about them...and why...so I no longer scoffed. Heck I ended up with a version, albeit male, of a romance novel myself, eventually...)

Not telling any of my friends...or my spouse, I wrote that book. It was a traditional mystery--first person POV (and this is where my love affair with first began), set in the Big Bend area of Texas, which I loved, about an injured cop (female) and her teen daughter. I put my character, Rachael Grant, on crutches. I'd just completed a long round of physical therapy and LOL had a blast--so much so I wanted to work it into my fic. So, I did!

It was during the writing of this story that I came to understand that my husband hated my writing, hated every aspect of it because it did not involve him. I knew he hated the online stuff but I generally did that when he was at work, wrote when he was at work. Already, I was starting to hide my passion from him because I knew he would resent it. I was right, of course. Very right. The kids were very supportive (which also, I am sure, annoyed him) of my writing, and knew all about my story, whereas he took a peculiar pride in knowing nothing about it (which actually made him look the ass when his boss read and loved my book and told me she was horrified Kel hadn't read it). Not that I required him to read what I wrote...but being supportive? That would've been kinda nice. Forget that though. Never happened.

I went to a mystery con with my friend Tammie (spouse was not a happy camper, btw, about my going to cons) and met an author there who had sold to a new imprint of a small press, called Silver Dagger Mysteries. She suggested if we had anything to submit, we should. I did have something--my secret mystery--so I sent it in, and damn if I didn't sell that thing. My spouse was not impressed. Thank heavens for my daughter as her excitement was the balm to that wound.

It was about then that he got sick--aortic aneurysm, and, to top that off, he suffered a heart attack and severely damaged his left ventricle. My pursuit of a mystery career ended, just like that. He was gone just under three years later...three very, very tough years where I couldn't leave him, just in case, or leave my kids, just in case. We knew the prognosis wasn't good, we just didn't know the when. He did not like to talk about it, and would not investigate other options...my opinion didn't matter, so I dealt like I had learned to deal with everything else. It was during this time, in order to cope with living under the strain of being Superwoman (which shot my weight up to 222 lbs., I am now 162), I wrote Red. Also a mystery, really...but a romance. Romantic suspense, right.

In the meantime, Silver Dagger's owners--who also ran a far more successful company called Overmountain Press--nuked almost all of us. I just checked and they finally nuked the website. Very disappointing...but, that's water gurgling beneath the bridge. I learned a great, great deal from my editor--she made me work HARD and also to learn not to fear working hard.

So, now it's been 4.5 years since he died, and I am not the person I used to be. That is a very good thing. But, it also threw me for a writerly loop. I no longer had the same reasons to write...I'd needed that escape from reality so badly, that by the time Kel fell asleep at 8:30 every night in his chair because he couldn't sleep easily in our bed, I was practically crawling the walls with the need to get upstairs to my internet-less computer, plunk my headphones on and disappear from the world. (Thankfully, my kids, though young, were quite happy to do their own things for the hour or so I had every night before their bedtime). I still remember that insane craving to get up there to the loft. It gnawed on me, ate on me, like nothing I ever imagined could. I sold Red shortly after he died, and haven't completed a book since.

I have written a little the past few years, but mostly? No. It's taken me longer than I ever imagined to get back on my feet again, find myself again (yes I know that sounds corny, but...I was truly in a very deep, very difficult place), and learn to love myself again. It has come in stages. First, the dealing with the guilt that came with the overwhelming relief that I was free. Then, same time, came the dealing with myself and the person I'd become...and did not like, at all. I was getting to know Nick better by then (we met on lj the day before Kel died), and starting to panic about what I looked like in the mirror. The first step was to get rid of the boobs--had a breast reduction--then the long process of losing that weight and getting my health back was set in motion. Also during this time of course, I had to learn how to be a partner again...or rather, for the first time...because I sure wasn't living it before.

Finding Nick has been amazing, but he couldn't do this for me. Only I could do this for me...and a huge load was lifted the day I landed in Hamburg, saw Nick for the first time in 9 months, and the person who approached him was the real me. Happy, confident, the ravaging extra weight gone, the self-esteem no longer shot, the 'why would he want me?' diminished to nothing, free from medical problems that had plagued me for years and years including sleep apnea, severe high blood pressure, etc. Since January, I have shaved years off of me. Years. By finally hitting my personal goal, I feel like I've saved my life--my future. This is just everything to me. I do not want to end up like my mom, I do not want to deny myself the years I could have with Nick. I have done it, and will keep working at it because I never ever want to go back to the person I was before. Ever.

So now it is time for the next stage of C...returning to serious writing. Not writing like I should, but writing like I want. Yes, I tried my hand a tiny bit at fanfiction but I have to be honest, I prefer being Nick's sounding board, support, champion and cheerleader and right-hand woman to anything. It makes me happy, and I've come to love this crazy fandom. Such amazing people, incredible writers...and, I love that I've been embraced so wonderfully even though I'm only in it through my association with Nick.

Here we go then, setting down the bones to a return to the genre I have always loved--how I've missed talking murder! Mayhem! Poisons! Serial killers, motive, modus operandi, police procedures, methods! I want to use LJ to write some of the process down, but have had all the above bouncing in my head for awhile so decided to plunk it down first. Kind of clear the deck, so to speak...and now it is cleared, and I can start pulling all my wonderfully messy hand-written pages of plotting and characterization together. Everything is falling into place so rapidly it makes me marvel, and know that this is going to be good.

Now...over the years, Nick has seen me stop and start aplenty (as he and I both know, I have LOTS of great ideas, but do not follow through on most), and in fact, I am stopping work on yet another project, ballet boy, right now...but I am not going to worry about that, the past years' stops and starts in writing, the ideas barely formed and discarded, Loose-Id and the fic that I didn't want to write as I was told I have to write it...growl... I am not worrying about that. Right now, all I want to worry about is getting all the past week's work pulled together into a cohesive unit, so I can get started on the writing phase. Mystery requires a wee bit more planning ahead than I like so I've had to be very careful not to overplan. The fact that I have been this enormously productive and on fire despite jet lag, missing Nick, and wishing I was back in Wales really makes me appreciate what I have going here. I think its going to be good.

So wish me luck if you will, that's all I need.

Comments

[blue-fjords.livejournal.com]

I overslept and have to go to work early -- really want to read this carefully. Thanks for posting your thoughts; I'm going to come back and read more later. Til then -- here is my wish of good luck!