It’s the Holiday season, and time to rewatch Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music.” AND to read about an important part of being an author: in order to write successfully in a genre, you’ve got to READ within it.
As a pre-teen I gobbled all of the SF books in both the children and adult sections of the town library. Then, looking for other books to read, I discovered crime and detective fiction in the adult shelves. (Yes, physical tomes you would hold in your hands, turning paper pages as you read.
Early on, I focused on writing SF. Alas, while I am familiar with most of Asimov, Heinlein, Wells, Van Vogt, Le Guin, McCaffrey, Ellison and others, SF has moved on since the heys of the 50’s and 60’s. Sure, I’ve now read (often on digital devices) Chambers, Liu, Weir, Leckie, and Kowal, but I don’t write like any of them or their predecessors.
Maybe that’s a good thing, but the important element is that I read the genre I write.That’s certainly not enough to guarantee a publishing deal, but it’s an important start. SF and Fantasy author MJ Blehart wrote in his Pathwalking Blog that “What you read will impact what you write in various ways.” He says the impact of reading has not only affected his “mindfulness [and] self-awareness” but also better approaches to his storytelling.
While my mystery reading began with more hard boiled/noir mysteries, like Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series, the adventures of Simon Templar (The Saint), not to mention The Scarlet PimpernelI, I’ve recently graduated to reading cozies.
Sure, I’ve read broadly in Agatha Christie’s works, but I’m more affected by the stories and characters written by my favorite contemporary cozy authors: Cleo Coyle* (the Coffeehouse Mystery Series) and Julie Anne Lindsey (the Cider Shop Mysteries) I love the descriptions and pacing each author brings to their books (and as a coffee snob, er, I mean ‘afficionado’), the detail about the coffee-making process that Cleo brings to her novels set in NYC is wonderful (and as educational as it is relevant to the story).
And I’m indebted to Betty Webb** (the Lena Jones and Gunn Zoo mysteries) for inspiring my own mystery writing. She even claims to have learned to read from True Confessions magazine.
So now I’ve begun writing my own cozy mystery series: (The Narrowboat murders,set in England, of course, featuring an ex-pat amateur detective (and her cat) living (and ‘snooping’) from her narrowboat Calla Lily.
As Blehart concluded, “What you read will impact what you write [because] what you read… will impact your entire life experience.”
*Cleo Coyle is the pen name of Alice Alfonsi writing in collaboration with her husband Marc Cerasini. ‘Cleo Coyle’ also has a newsletter, which you sign up for at https://cleocoylebooks.com/subscribe/
** For an interestingly-told “Day-in-the-life” of a writer, allow me to point you at Betty’s blog post “BRIAN’S FOOT Or Two Hours in the Life of a Writer” at https://bettywebbauthor.com/blog/
