If you are unimaginative or uninspired, you may want to keep moving. By that I mean, don’t read this post. You are not my audience. My readers are the best. They love a little quirk and little imagining of possibilities and a little leap of faith. And that’s the kind of reader I am, too. I want to be entertained, but not spoonfed. I like to figure some things out on my own and love when a writer manages to grip both sides of by brain and leave me wondering about some things.
So in reading some of the criticisms of my book, I find myself thinking the same thing: “Move along, this book is not for you.” Though I like to think my books are for everybody, no book is.
I’m a fan of these News of Weird items you see in newspapers and online publications. I have always thought I’d use some of these items in my fiction. And I have. For example in my first book, SCRAPBOOK OF SECRETS, Beatrice gets stabbed in the back of her neck and doesn’t realize it. This scene gets questioned a lot. Believe it or not, I based the scene on several items I read where real incidents occurred. Here’s just one online example.
And in SCRAPPED, the second book in the series, we read about a kind of calcite that makes things look like they disappear, almost like an invisibly cloak. (Harry Potter, anyone?)
Here is one of the sources for that.
In my next book, DEATH OF AN IRISH DIVA, there’s some genetic quirkiness going on. And that’s all I’m saying. (Yes, this is a teaser!)
I often think about the saying that truth is stranger than fiction—and I’ve definitely found that to be true in my life and in my research. What about you?
