A recent Washington Post column queried Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words. Reading it got me to thinking yet again about why I blog.
I started my website back in 2000, when Shadows Fall was first published, for the same reason most writers do, to promote my work. Four years later I started this blog as a way to provide up-to-date content on my website and let visitors know what I was working on—basically as a way to keep the website from stagnating when too much time passed between novels. Little did I know at the time that the blog would engage so much of my attention.
The immediacy of this format holds a certain attraction. Type, click a button, and what you’ve written is published. But that has its drawbacks. As easy as email, which carries its own risks, a blog can suck you out into public view in a way that’s scary and in some ways deceiving. It’s easy to forget you’re putting yourself “out there” to the degree we do online. After all, I’m seated here alone at my home computer as I type this into a little window on my screen. It doesn’t feel public at all, at the time I write. (more…)
To answer some of your comments, I’m much happier with the characters in this second draft of my latest mystery, and I think they’ll continue to grow, which is important for a series I’ll want to go back to. It wouldn’t do for the author to get bored with the backdrop and characters in a series too soon.
How does the emotional factor compare with my earlier mysteries? Shadows Fall was intensely emotional, since it dealt with Beth Gray’s PTSD and related phobia, as well as her dramatic family interactions. That was a different kind of story. It’s been called psychological suspense by some, and I think it tips in that direction. This story doesn’t go that far into psychological drama, but there’s a strong people element, as well as romance, and these characters have their histories, which to a great extent drive them to do the things they do, for good or ill. Instead of psychology, here I’m exploring one area of parapsychology—or at least paranormal experience. Nothing creepy or horrific about it, but I hope it will intrigue all the same. (more…)
UPDATE 2/2012: Shadows Fall is no longer in print.
“The past has driven me back here,” Beth Gray says when she returns to Wilder with her little girl, fifteen years after being convicted of murder. Sheriff Les Kendall advises her to leave, but he doesn’t know Beth can’t escape her nightmares. (more…)
