mystery « Natasha Alexander

If you can't write a story from this prompt, it's time to take up crocheting...

I’ve seen this picture everywhere online since last night – It was taken by Rich Lam of Getty Images and I copied it from The Source at boston.com. Here’s a line from a quick interview with the photographer today: “Lam didn’t realize what he had captured.”

What he captured was, well, EVERYTHING. This picture [Continue reading]

I Love a Winner!

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all.

Well, Cathryn Grant’s Book and Kindle Giveaway is over – you can find out who won the contest here.

But I gotta say – I really feel like I was a big winner last week. It was fun to welcome new visitors to my blog and to visit those blogs in return. [Continue reading]

It was a dark and stormy night…

…perfect baking weather, in my mind. So I made apricot-orange oat scones and then, since the kitchen was already a mess, cranberry chocolate chip cookies. C’mon over. I just put on a pot of coffee.

I was awake a lot during the night since bands of rain kept slamming the bedroom windows. [Continue reading]

Crossing the 50K Line with NaNoWriMo

DING! DING! DING! Yesterday I crossed the National Novel Writing Month finish line when I wrote the 50,000th word of Pelican Island, my NaNo murder mystery. I didn’t stop writing even though the flashing lights and buzzers went crazy and someone started pouring champagne while a brass band played.

oh. wait. [Continue reading]

Georges Simenon, Norman Bates, NaNoWriMo and me

Paris Noir, Brassai – 1934

Over the weekend I read a review by Patrick Marnham of Pedigree, an autobiographical novel that Georges Simenon wrote in 1948. Back in the olden days before I became a workaholic and a mother, I read a lot of mysteries, including several of Simenon’s Inspector Maigret series. I [Continue reading]

Whodunit?

I decided to start writing a mystery during this year’s National Novel Writing Month. For one thing, it’s time to live up to the name of my blog.

But the real reason – I think – is this: I need to try using an outline or formula for writing a long narrative, and it [Continue reading]

National Novel Writing Month: Whodunit?

I’m thinking about November and National Novel Writing Month. (Who reading this blog isn’t?)

Last year I started NaNoWriMo with a page or two of scribbled notes and little else. Now, almost a year later, I’ve still got an unfinished draft with some decent characters and snazzy scenes, as well as a bunch of dead ends [Continue reading]