The Reality of Murder Mysteries
I am both a writer and reader of murder mysteries. I love the puzzle. I love watching the pieces come together in the detective’s mind, usually in ways I know I’m missing because the detective is smarter than I am. I love the low-stakes satisfaction of justice done as I veg on the couch, my […]
On murder mysteries and 19th century novels
It’s hard to find the nerve to write a novel when you’ve studied literature in graduate school. A lot of us do it, of course – professors of English writing novels are a well-worn cliché. But when you’ve spent all those years reading the world’s best writing, marveling at exquisite sentences that have haunted readers […]
On reading novels
One of the strange things about publishing a novel is that suddenly strangers will be reading it. That should be obvious, but it isn’t something that had ever occurred to me. The books I had published previously were academic tomes concerning the theory and practice of adult learning, and, while I didn’t know the readers […]
My thoughts on Murder Mysteries
Prompted by my wonderful publishers, I’ve been setting up what they call “author pages” on various book-lovers’ platforms. Signing onto them for the first time, I’ve been surprised to find Part of the Solution, not on its own, but tucked down at the bottom under the respectable academic titles I’ve produced over the years. Writing […]
The Journey Behind Writing Part Of The Solution
What a strange, strange moment to be publishing a murder mystery that takes us Boomers back to our twenties and records, in some small way, moments of idealism and disillusionment. What did I know at 28, when the first version of this novel was written? That the world was complicated? That the good guys didn’t […]