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Hi everyone!

I just made it through all ten pages of this thread, and feel a bit tired, lost and overwhelmed. So much energy! And fantasy writers! And pizza!

I’ll stick out like a sore thumb, I’m afraid. Although I’m excited to be with excited people, as I can be an excited ball of energy at times. I just have grown accustomed to not bouncing around, as the people around me tend to laugh if I do. So I only do a few skips now and then. Pizza is fine, but I grow tired of it quickly. We eat it rather often. We even lived above a pizza place when I was a teen, and currently live across from one (it was a different type of restaurant until recently, though, now it’s a fancy pizza place that I can’t pronounce and wouldn’t be surprised if there was a dress code for customers).

I love going to Pizza Ranch, though, as they have an imaginative range of pizzas (BLT pizza, mac & cheese pizza, pizzas with alfredo instead of tomato sauce, etc.) and also have fried chicken and a couple other things. They are the last place around that still offers Taco pizza, which is what mom and I like best (of the ones we both like, that is; I also like more adventurous combinations, she sticks to her few favorites. She’s the person who goes to an ice cream parlor and only gets vanilla, without even at least sampling another flavor.). Actually, there is one other place I know of, but we didn’t like their pizza the couple times we tried it. Too healthy tasting, I guess. And the sauce was all wrong.

As for fantasy, the closest I get is fantasizing about having a personal cook to fix all kinds of yummy things for me. And walking, talking teddy bears like Winnie the Pooh. And the ability to wiggle my nose and have my apartment cleaned and organized and five times larger on the inside (but not the outside). My mind starts to wander, though, when it comes to entirely new worlds and imagined beings and names that look like computer code. Sorry, but I will try not to let that get in the way here. 🙂

I intend to write mysteries. I have been a mystery reader all my life (and, yes, the first several in the Mandie series are some of the first mysteries I read as a child). I’ve written a few completed manuscripts, and one I even self-published (briefly), but since then have been struggling with getting back to writing. I had a very harsh negative response from one person (who had only read a sample, not the actual book) that really deflated me. The handful of people who actually read the book only had positive things to say, but I couldn’t get past that one very critical letter. It stung so much because the person had not only attacked the part of my idea I was particularly sensitive about, but had said a couple things I had suspected and eventually came to realize as true. It actually became a useful thing, because while she hated my idea she did, essentially, say I had talent but just needed a lot of practice, growth and refinement before I’d be truly ready to publish anything. Of course, if she’d put it as nicely as that, I don’t think I’d have felt so paralyzed for so long after reading it. The whole thing had come out of a debate over white lies vs. always telling the absolute truth, and I suspect part of her wanted to prove to me that my stance against white lies was flawed. She didn’t succeed, as I still think the truth best – I just now tend to add that there are better ways of presenting truth than just bluntly or even maliciously throwing it at someone.

So, I have spent the last four (?) years broadening my understanding of writing well, and of the classic mystery story in general, by reading more widely. Classics and cozies are my favorites. I love the puzzle- solving aspect very much, as well as the quirky characters, coded messages, secret passages, hidden compartments, and ghostly happenings (that are not ghosts at all, but sure seemed spooky at the time!). Classic literature in general are among my favorite books to read, which is most likely why my set of sleuths (identical quintuplets) are all inspired by my favorite heroines of classic children’s books like Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, and Pippi Longstocking. I didn’t intentionally set out to make characters inspired by them, but realized afterwards that by creating the characters I love spending time with they all had things in common with the girls I love to read and re-read. Now I keep that in mind, as I think it’ll help me keep each of the quints in character better when I write.

I have a few ideas of what I want to write about for their first mystery (well, first since I stopped writing years ago), but am struggling with going from ideas to actual plot. I’ve lately found two or three really helpful books in that area, and now just need to muster up the courage to start trying again. I know I have grown a lot as a writer, even without much actual writing, but part of me is afraid that I will not be any better after all, I think. Or maybe that I’ve lost the ability completely, and only gained theoretical knowledge, or something like that.