Miss Demeanors

I’m en route to the Left Coast Crime Conference where I’ll be on a panel to talk about law enforcement research. This brings to mind the oft-debated topic of writing what you know. You know the one, whether writers should write based on their own experiences versus stories based on research. You might expect me to favor the “write what you know” camp, given I’m a real-life cyber crime fighter who writes cyber crime fiction. And you’d be right. But not in the way you expect.

People ask me for advice on getting published more often these days. I love mentoring but it’s not a simple question to answer. My response is to ask questions of my own to figure out the person’s goals. The path I’m on may be wildly different from the one another writer wants to follow. The first topic of discussion is usually about agents.

In less than a month, I will be speaking at a country club about the stories behind my stories. The engagement is a benefit to support services for seriously ill women at Englewood Hospital. I’m the entertainment. In exchange for speaking for an hour, the hospital is giving everyone a copy of The Widower’s Wife.

“We’re professional worriers. You’re constantly imagining things that could go wrong and then writing about them.”Novelist John Green to The Late, Late Show host Craig Ferguson.