View from the Cottage

Why do I write mysteries?

I’ve always said I write mysteries because I love to read them. But I am also the child of parents with a strong Protestant work ethic that they passed on to me. I have this conviction that I must be doing something to contribute to the greater good of the world. Writing light fiction just didn’t seem to do it. Occasionally I was filled with guilt—I should be writing inspirational pieces or doing groundbreaking literary research. When I wrote children’s books, I could comfort myself that I was helping educate young minds. That didn’t work with mysteries.

Today, unbeknownst to her, my online writing pal, Texas author and marketing whirlwind Devorah Winegarten, gave me a great gift. Writing to another member of our small writing group who is enduring several serious illnesses in her family, Debra wrote:

When I was going through a completely horrible period of four years, grieving my mother, watching my older sister slowly die of chronic kidney failure, my therapist encouraged me to find a genre to read that cheered me up and allowed me to escape the day-to-day waking nightmares I was living. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but believe it or not, I chose murder mysteries, and those tomes often saved what little sanity I still had. 

So to those of you who write murder mysteries and think it can't possibly change the world or contribute anything positive, I'm here to tell you that there were days that the only thing that kept me on this side of heaven was curling up with a nice murder mystery where I could go into someone else's world for a little while and get a break from my own.

Debra nailed it with the line about going into someone else’s world. That’s what I love about fiction, particularly mysteries. If I can give readers that alternate world into which they can retreat, I’ve done some good. Lord knows, I’ve retreated into those mysterious worlds often enough myself.