The Barn Door: I have new neighbors

Well, not literal new neighbors, but I was invited to be part of the blog team at a great Blogger site called The Barn Door.  It features posts about living in the Midwest by people who live in and/or love the Midwest. I can already tell it will serve as an inspiration for many of my future stories.

I will be posting a new article there on the 28th of every month, but promise to continue adding tidbits and fun stuff here as well.  If you are interested in what I wrote for my inaugeral blog post, here’s a glimpse below.  Click through to read the whole post and visit the Midwest through the eyes of the wonderful team there.

Can you ever have too many friends? Well, maybe if they expect to be invited to your house for dinner all at once and your dining room table only holds ten. But real friends would surely be willing to wait their turn, don’t you think? And the more friends you have, the more opportunities crop up to be invited to their house for dinner. Yum!

via The Barn Door, Making New Friends

The Mystery of Writing a Mystery

I love reading mysteries almost as much as I love writing them. But the process of creating a believable and surprising mystery novel is often as shifty and elusive as the criminal your protagonist is trying to reveal.  Here’s what some famous authors found out about the subject:

At least half the  mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Raymond Chandler
American novelist and screenwriter

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The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

Mary Roberts Rinehart
Often called the American Agatha Christie

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There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

Dorothy Sayers
English crime writer, poet, playwright, and essayist

 

I hope not, Dorothy, I hope not!