This Mystery Needs More Unicorns

When I was younger, I wrote strictly to entertain myself and I preferred action-oriented fantasies with an amazing heroine. I loved to read those books, so that’s what I set out to write. And if I pictured myself writing a novel it was going to be the next Lord of the Rings, but with a way higher estrogen factor. Which, although I love LoTR, would not be hard to do considering that it has a total chick quantity of four (Sam’s Girlfriend, Eowyn, Galadriel and Arwen aka Strider’s Girlfriend). Anyway, that’s what I thought I’d write: fantasy’s where chick’s in chain mail prod buttock and take nomenclature.

You know what I write now? Mysteries.

I never thought I’d write mysteries. Sure, I read lots of them growing up, but at the end of the day, all that business with clues and alibis and clever methods of death, well, it seemed like a lot of work for the writer. And it turns out, that it is in fact a lot of work. Admittedly, my heroines still apply foot to backsides on a regular basis. And my most popular series the Carrie Mae Mysteries have an element of fantasy (What if door-to-door make-up sales ladies were also top notch spies?), but usually my plots run along to the lines of “Someone’s been murdered! We need to find out who killed them and stop them from doing it again!” Which is… a mystery.

A few years ago, I decided to return to my fantasy roots and self-published a collection of short stories under the heading of Tales from the City of Destiny. These paranormal tales featured vampires, a dragon, werewolves, the devil a Native American shaman, and a half-faerie heroine. Can’t get much more fantasy than that, right? Except my shaman was also a police detective and my half-faerie heroine was your pretty typical private citizen investigator and the rest of the stories are populated by lawyers, strippers, college students, and a 15-year old runaway. Apparently, I can’t leave mysteries behind even when I try.

So at long last, I have decided to embrace my inner mystery writer. My most recent release, An Unseen Current, is a straight mystery with a cantankerous ex-CIA agent and his granddaughter solving crime in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. (Digital edition on sale for $1.99 through 7/8!) This book was a joy to write, mostly because I simply HAD to research the location, which meant driving around Orcas Island and eating really good food. The lesson here? Maybe writing a mystery isn’t so bad after all.