This is my very first attempt at writing a blog and considering how awful I am at writing short stories I am starting off with a handicap that is too embarrassing to post numerically. However, I hope to make it up with enthusiasm as I believe this particular blog is something that should prove good fun for all mystery lovers interesting in venturing outside their everyday environment. I know firsthand what that feels like as I am an avid mystery reader myself and come from a country where local crime fiction has only been regularly available for a decade so if you preferred to have a book’s characters bludgeoned to death early on in the novel rather than wasting paragraphs obsessing over their miserable youth or present day alcoholism, you had to read foreign authors. With the intrigue (read gore), the far away locale and society came alive, providing a window into parts of the world I might possibly visit but never call home. If you are wondering what country I do call home, imagine a tiny island way up north where the only banking institution not humiliated and disgraced is the national blood bank. If this does not help, imagine a country obviously named by someone intent on keeping people out. If still at loss, imagine a war with no prisoners and absolutely no opportunity of placing landmines as it was fought at sea, on fishing boats, over cod. There will be no more clues.
At present I am enjoying the very brief reprieve provided authors who write a novel a year. This is the time when the most recent book is being churned out by the printing press, there can be no more edits or fixing and the critics have yet to get a copy. On Monday this short-lived bliss is over, the book will be in the stores here and I can start obsessing over its location in the bookstores and running like followed by a zombie to fetch the morning paper to see how it was perceived. I cannot say that I am holding my breath and neither is my family.
Till next time
Yrsa - Wednesday