I have dead bodies on the brain. No, it’s not what you’re thinking: I haven’t stumbled across any lately (or ever, actually, if you don’t count the date who passed out on me after too much to drink and who for a scary minute I thought had keeled over from a heart attack). I’m writing a mystery and this is what we writers do: We plot. Since a plot has more than one meaning it’s fitting, actually, that the two coincide in a mystery, as in plot for a novel meets the six feet under kind. My mystery is set in a fictional northern California town much like the one I used to live in before I moved to New York and where I spend a month every winter, at a beach house, holed up with my laptop when I’m not visiting with friends and family. I’m just back from my month-long sojourn in Santa Cruz, my laptop groaning with all the writing I got done (as is my body, and not in a good way, from the polar blast that greeted me when I stepped off the plane in New York!) Book #1 of my Cypress Bay mystery series opens with my heroine, Tish, finding a dead body, a shock that becomes a twist when she learns the identity of the victim.
Many of you who know me from the 15 women’s fiction novels I’ve published might be wondering what the heck I’m doing writing mysteries. In answer let me just say this: The first short story I ever wrote, in fourth grade, was a mystery titled “The Secret of the Mossy Cave.” I later went on to write the YA series “Who Killed Peggy Sue?” and still get emails all these years later from teen readers saying how much they enjoyed it and how they were on tenterhooks tearing through the pages to find out whodunnit. So it’s been long held dream of mine to write adult mystery, in which I can blend the family dramas for which I’m known with the kind that involve a dead body or two. My female sleuth is a recovering alcoholic who has a schizophrenic brother and whose best friend is an artist who makes insect dioramas. Oh yeah, and she has a cat named Hercules and a boyfriend who makes a mean lobster bisque. Speaking of soup, I think writing is a bit like that, cooking up a pot…er, I mean plot…full of yummy ingredients and savories to create a satisfying bowl. Look for some tasty treats from the bitchin’ “kitchen” of Eileen Goudge in the coming months! If I leave you hungry for more, I’ll know I did my job.
