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I’m a mystery writer, but my books are only minimally scary. They’re more about the puzzle and the characters.

But I think it would be fun to try something different.

The other day I was doing some yard work and noticed a HUGE spider. It was one of those zipper spiders, the kind that’s pictured above. The funny thing is that I’m not even scared of spiders. But I was scared of him. He was beautiful, but I didn’t realize he was so close to me. I had accidentally bumped his web and for a split second he raced down it, thinking he had a goody in there. I don’t think he’d have been able to handle me, but he was big enough to have considered it.

Cozy mysteries don’t ordinarily have a lot of scary scenes. But I’d like to incorporate something frightening with one of my next books. To me, the scariest things are the things we’re suddenly startled by—like the huge spider in the bushes that I didn’t realize was there.

One of the scarier movies to me was the first Halloween movie. The part that scared me the most? When Michael stood on the sidewalk and watched the girl he was stalking in broad daylight, then slipped behind the bushes when she spun around to see if he was there. It was scary because it was a sunny, beautiful fall day…and there was a psychopath right there in the middle of it.

Hitchcock was a master at making ordinary things frightening. The Birds was one of those movies. And Rear Window, where a bored voyeur spots a horrifying crime (or the evidence pointing to one having been committed.) Vertigo took a fear of heights to a whole new level.

Clearly, thrillers are best at delivering fear to the reader. But that’s not appropriate for my genre. I’d like to do it more subtly and work it in. Have a scary surprise.

What ordinary things do you find scary? Do your books have frightening aspects to them?

Yes, it’s a busy day here at Mystery Writing is Murder. For those of you who are just joining me, I have a post below this one that persuades you that asparagus would be an excellent vegetable for you to revisit. My post also addresses a problem I’ve had with rereading an old manuscript that I haven’t worked on for 5 months (and which is due to be submitted in November.)

Today I’m being interviewed over at Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews . Sharon, who reviews books on her blog as well as for various newspapers, is a freelance entertainment journalist who has been reviewing books for 14 years and has over 1500 reviews to her credit.

Sharon is kicking off a Cozy Mystery Week today and one commenter will be picked to win a mystery gift basket. It could be you! :) (Is my smattering of advertising experience showing?)

Hope y’all will pop on over for a visit.

And now…..I have found for me the perfect solution to the rereading the old manuscript conundrum. And I have the lovely and talented Jane Kennedy Sutton to thank for it. She suggested that I pretend the manuscript isn’t mine.

The genius is in the simplicity of this plan.

There are no highlighters involved. No picking apart.

I’m already 60% done with the re-read.

Pretending is what writers do best!

Jane Kennedy Sutton rocks!

  Yes that is an incredibly healthy looking picture for a Thursday morning on the Mystery Writing is Murder blog.  But hold your horses.  It does have bacon and nuts in it.  My thinking is that the vitamin benefits outweigh the fatty risks. :)  Check it out on Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.

And now…a report on day 1 of the getting reacquainted with my manuscript project. My grade for my revision technique yesterday is a C.

I had a really tough time not picking the manuscript to death. I’m wondering if the transition was tough because I just came OFF picking a manuscript to death.  But the difference between the two projects is huge—the Berkley project was something I’d been working on for months straight. It was time to pick it apart. This poor project has been on the backburner since April.  I should be reading it through quickly and getting a sense of the plot and characters again.

Very hard.

Today I’m going to approach it differently. I have several different ideas for the new approach:

• Make content change notes on a separate Word document.
• Highlight errors I find, instead of correcting them immediately.
• If all else fails, print the document and see if that helps at all. 
• Chant “I will not fix it.  I will not fix it.” until I make the first initial pass through the manuscript.

Wish me luck!

Maybe this post should be about the family I neglected the past few days before my project deadline. But no, it’s actually about a manuscript that I need to dust off and start working on again.

In the middle of the revisions for Pretty is as Pretty Dies, I wrote the next Myrtle Clover book for Midnight Ink. So about a year ago I started it, then I finished the first draft in February.

I fiddled with it in March and early April. But then, in April, I started working on the Memphis Barbeque series for Berkley. And I haven’t picked up the Myrtle Clover draft since.

Now the plan is that I submit this manuscript in November to Midnight Ink. That gives me two months to really make it shine. I can rewrite any passages I’m not pleased with, or even chuck huge parts of it and overhaul it. It’s enough time.

Simultaneously, of course, I’ll be concocting Lulu’s further adventures in Memphis for Berkley’s book two.

I don’t think this will be a problem. (Okay, I’m putting this in print. So if I start wigging out in a month or so, remind me.) After all, revisions and drafting a manuscript are two completely different processes. I’ll revise part of the day and I’ll be creative the rest.

I’m really, really curious to pick up the Myrtle Clover book today. I’ve got to find the USB drive it’s on, actually—my laptop’s OS was blown away and reinstalled several times since April. And I’ve gone through two laptops since then. Got to get my hands on the right backup drive.

I wonder what mistakes will jump off the page at me. I wonder if the jokes will be as funny as they were when I wrote them, or if I’ll frown and groan and rewrite them.

This is my plan for reacquainting myself with the manuscript:

Read it all the way through.

Make notes of only big problems. Don’t micro-revise on the first reading.

How strong is the basic plot premise? Are there any big holes? Does anything not make sense?

Have I reintroduced these characters? Have I made it balanced enough so that first-time readers can get to know them and earlier readers won’t get tired of back story?

Have these characters grown and changed since the first book?

Is the basic timeline sound?

Do the characters sound like themselves?

This is the first time I’ve put a manuscript down for this long and then come back to it. Usually, if it’s put away for five months, then it’s in my little manuscript graveyard. But it was only circumstance that made me put this project away. Now I’m excited to read it again with fresh eyes—at first to get reacquainted and then critically.

Do you ever put your projects on the back burner? Does it help? Can you pick up on your original train of thought and plan for the book again?

5 a.m. Yesterday, the day before deadline—get up, drink coffee.Decide to pack kids’ backpacks before writing. What’s this? Seems to be an uncompleted sheet for son’s 7th grade Business Computer class. And…oh no. The school needs my signature on about 8 documents relating to son’s science labs and dangerous equipment.

5:30—Start revisions

6:—Get son up to complete homework that he’d forgotten about. Get daughter up, since she has to be at school at 7 every day.

6:45: Drive carpool. Nip carpool argument in the bud.

8:00—12:00 Read the second half of the manuscript over again. Realize I have a timeline error. Fix the timeline error. Read through second half of manuscript again quickly, making sure timeline is correct and I haven’t missed any parts.

12:00—Go get cupcakes for third-grader’s teacher’s birthday at the elementary school.

12:15—Realize that Costco sells cupcakes packaged in groups of 20. I need 24. I don’t need 40. I don’t need 20. Decide to get cake instead.

12:20—Brainwave—if I get cake instead of cupcakes, this means I also need to get plates and forks. I go to that aisle and get a massive amount of plates and forks (this is, after all, Costco.)

12:30—I’m in the car. Oh. If I’m doing a cake instead of cupcakes, I should have candles. I could skip candles with cupcakes, but not with cake.

12:40—I’m back home. And I suddenly realize I have no more birthday candles because the Birthday Princess wiped out my supply when she turned 8 a couple of weeks ago. But I do have matches. And oh! I need a cake server.

12:45—I’m in the car, driving to the school. I park and call a friend. “Do you have birthday candles?!?!”

1:00—We have the birthday party. Teacher is surprised and delighted and it’s all worth it.

1:55—Waiting for school bus in my car at the top of the hill. Scanning my manuscript (I have my laptop with me in the car.) I frown. “This isn’t right. This character wouldn’t do this! And…oh…he’s doing it here, too.”

2:00—Talk to another mom at the bus stop. She asks how the book is going. “Great. Except it’s due tomorrow and I just found these two messed-up scenes.”

2:10—My daughter is coming off the school bus. She has homework and doesn’t understand it. Neither, it turns out, do I.

3:00—Back on the manuscript. What can I do with these two scenes? Think. Think.

3:30—Son is back from middle school. He does understand his homework. Excellent. He’s in honors and I’m not bright enough to help him even if I wanted to.

4:00—I proofread the recipes in my book. Waaaait a minute. There’s no measurement listed by the cheddar cheese. Call my mother to double-check the recipe.

4:05—The children pick the moment I’m on the phone to go completely insane. They run up and down the stairs whooping and hollering. I slam my door shut and keep talking to my mother. My daughter opens the door. “Mom, he’s….” She stops at my threatening look.

4:10—My mother is distracted because she’s got a huge household emergency involving broken pipes and a workman who has an urgent question. I continue pressing on the cheddar cheese issue.

4:30—6:00—Revise. Children are scared to bother me.

6:00—I decide Hamburger Helper sounds like a great meal for the family. Oh. Why is the meat still frozen? I put it in the fridge the night before…

6:30—A computer problem erupts. What have I done to displease the gods? I am consumed by the problem. Nothing will work…no printer, no online connection, the keyboard is possessed by a demon that makes me type in the wrong spot in my document.

7:15—My husband comes home from work and considers returning there after seeing wife who appears to be having a nervous breakdown.

7:20—Husband starts working on computer issues.

10:00—Husband finishes fixing all related computer issues.

10:05—I realize I’m exhausted. I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m. and go to bed.

10:10—I can’t sleep.

10:15—I take a Benadryl.

10:30—I have an idea to fix the two messed-up scenes. But now the Benadryl has kicked in. I turn on the light. I scribble on a post-it and stick it to the top of my laptop.

4:00—I get up. I put lots of sugar in my mug. I drink lots of coffee.

4:15—I fix the two scenes.

6:00—7:00—Repeat the process of getting children up and doing carpool.

7:15—9:00–Put finishing touches on the manuscript.

9:02—I realize I don’t have a title for my book. Or the series.

9:05—I put a bunch of ideas on a piece of paper.

9:15—I email my editor with the manuscript and the ideas for the titles.

Now? I’m planning a lunch with my husband. And I think I’ll take the rest of the day off…..