WRITING WITHOUT A NET

  Flash and Cisco, the little rascals When I started the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series an embarrassing number of years ago, it was because I loved dog mysteries, but no one was writing about actual  dogs.  In keeping with the standards of the cozy mystery genre (and, of course, if a book features a woman and a dog it  must  be a cozy, right?) they weren't writing about actual people either, but that's another story.  I wanted to write-- and read-- books about the relationship between real dogs and real people; thus Raine and Cisco were born.  I had no idea what I was getting into.   I am jealous of writers who  only  write mysteries. As Ginger Rogers famously said to Fred Astaire (or not), "Oh, yeah?  Try doing that backwards and in heels!".  I want to say to writers of mysteries everywhere, "Oh, yeah?  Try writing that with a dog!"    Writing mysteries is hard.  Writing dog mysteries, if you do...

  One of the most commonly asked questions of writers is "What is your process?" I'm never quite sure what is meant by this, and I've given all kinds of answers.  But after a lot of deliberation, I think it means: Tell me how you write a novel in 1000 words or less.  So, okay.  Here it is: Ready, Set, Go I don't work from an outline, but I never start a book without knowing four things: 1)The title. To me, the title represents the message, or theme, I'm writing about. A Flash of Shadow was delayed several weeks because, even though I knew the story, I did not know the title.  Once it finally came to me, everything else fell into place.  By contrast, Undefeatable   was actually set in the previous book, Dead Man's Trail , when Raine Stockton said, "They are smarter than us, more determined than us, and they have nothing to lose. They are virtually undefeatable."  Who could resist that segue into a sequel? 2)The opening scene. Sometimes I actuall...