The first stories I remember writing were about horses. I was seven, and I was obsessed with horses. (I am still slightly obsessed with horses, but I am more practical about what it takes to own one, so none of that for me right now.) I read many MANY horse-related books, and that was how I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia. A Horse and His Boy is still my favorite Narnia story. I started writing fantasy because of it.
Once I started writing, I didn’t stop. I wrote at every opportunity, even in the middle of class. Especially math class. I became skilled at not getting caught writing (or reading) in class. Those early stories were short and not very nuanced, but they were practice, and every writer needs to practice. In middle school, I started writing poetry, but it was never something I was serious about.
By the time I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer. It was the only thing I could imagine myself doing as an adult. I was encouraged to write, but as it came time for me to go to college, I wasn’t encouraged to be a writer. I was told all the things most young writers are told: “you won’t make money writing,” “writing’s not a real job,” “teaching would be a better career.”
When I went to college, I planned to become an English teacher. I majored in English and Secondary Education, because that was what seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Except I didn’t like my Education classes, and when my counselor asked me why I wanted to be a teacher, I told her I didn’t. I just wanted to write.
And she said, “So write. We offer Creative Writing courses, do that instead.”
So I did. I dropped the Secondary Education part of my degree and stuck to English, Psychology, and Creative Writing courses (with the odd History and Anthropology course thrown in). I took part in my first National Novel Writing Month in 2003 - I wrote 16,000 words, which did not make me a winner, but it was the most I had ever written on a story before, and I was happy.
I wrote fantasy almost exclusively through my 20’s, aside from an interlude in my first year of college during which I wrote Star Wars fanfiction. I read much more than fantasy, and I regularly watched Law & Order and In the Heat of the Night, my introduction to the world of mysteries. I didn’t like reading police procedurals, though, preferring cozies and historicals, but I didn’t think much about writing them. Then, while I was living in Japan, a student introduced me to Agatha Christie. I almost immediately stopped writing straight fantasy and switched over to murder mysteries.
I wrote my first murder mystery during NaNoWriMo in 2009. It was a steampunk mystery set in the latter part of the Meiji period in Japan. I was inspired by the recent release of Sherlock Holmes and the country I was living in at the time. I wouldn’t have considered myself a fan of steampunk - and I’m not sure I would now either. I’m not all that interested in the tech, more the setting and the tone, the aesthetic. That story has evolved over time, and now it’s more “alternate history” than straight-up steampunk.
It was the first novel I ever finished, the first one I ever edited, the first one I ever let other people read. Next year, it will be the first book I self-publish.
Pretty much everything I write now is a historical mystery, alternate history or otherwise. I do have half a manuscript for a cozy mystery that might see more development in the future, but for now, I’m sticking with historical mysteries.
My first mystery series is alternate history, set in Japan in 1907. The first book has recently gone through its fifth draft and has been handed over to a handful of beta readers. It will be ready to publish in the summer of 2020.
I am currently working on a draft for Book Two, which should be finished before this year’s NaNoWriMo, when I plan to get the first 50,000 words of Book Four. (What about Book Three? I already have a half-finished draft for that, and since I like to start new projects in November, I’m saving the rest of Book Three for next year.)
I have done some work for other historical mystery series, but I’ll be saving those for 2021 and beyond.
