I have a picture in my house, a montage of photos that my late grandmother made for me on my 20th birthday. It had photos of me at school, at holidays, and more from the time I was a little boy through my 20th birthday. There was one item within the montage that wasn’t a photo, however. It was a hand-written business card advertising my services as a detective for the cost of 25 cents per day. This addition to the timeline clearly illustrates two things – first, I hadn’t learned that plagiarism was bad when I was seven or eight and shamelessly ripping off Donald J Sobel’s Encyclopedia Brown. And second, that I was already obsessed with reading mystery stories.
So it seemed only fitting that I consider trying it out for myself. I’ve recently kicked off my as-yet-untitled mystery, which ties directly to an earlier piece featured on the podcast, Phantasmagoria. This new mystery is contemporary and takes place in Shelton’s Cove where Jeff McClernand, the great grandson of Hattie McClernand, is now a police officer.
I’ve got the place, the people, I’ve managed to kill off two of them, and have an idea of why at least the first one is dead but I’m still building the architecture. I don’t think that’s the way you’re usually supposed to go about writing a mystery but what the hell, I’ll get to the end somehow and it will be a fun journey along the way. Be sure to check in at my website, pretendingtowrite.com from time to time as I’m sure I’ll be sharing update and excerpts as I go.