Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Who Should I Kill Off Next and How Should I Do It?

Having just written the end on the next Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery, it's time I started thinking about the next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery. When you write two series--two books a year, one has to come right after the other.

Oh, I'm a ways off from sending the Tempe book to the publisher as my critique group hasn't finished hearing all the chapters, but I'm reading two each time we meet. I've also gone over all the chapters looking for inconsistensies and glaring errors and typos. Of course I'll do that again before I send it off.

In the meantime, I need make some plans for the Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery. In the last one, Violent Departures, the murder victim was female and drowned in her bathtub. So maybe I should find a male victim this time.



And how to do away with him? I've used many methods in the past to kill off victims: poison, decapitation, so many ways I can't remember them all. But my hope, of course, is to come up with something new and unusual.

I always like to have some sort of twist in any mystery I write--and to be honest, I seldom know what that will be until I'm actually writing the book.

Once I start coming up with characters: their names and who they are, the relationships, etc. the ideas will start to flow. They always have and I don't expect anything different this time.

And by the way, for anyone who'd like to start this series from the beginning, this is the last day of Final Respects being free on Kindle.

http://tinyurl.com/opaatdv

This is the book that started it all, why not give it a try?


Marilyn aka F.M. Meredith

2 comments:

  1. I don't know that gender matters so much to our readers as that the method is appropriate to the story line. I am compiling a list of ways to kill for next April's A-Z Blog Challenge. Two ways you might think about are zoothapsis (premature burial) and thlipsis (compression, restriction). One of the accused in the Salem witch trials had rocks put on him until the weight finally killed him. The kind of killer who would use either might be a religious fanatic, thinking he was ridding the world of evil.

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