NOT YOUR USUAL SUSPECTS

A group blog featuring an international array of killer mystery, suspense, and romantic suspense writers. With premises and story lines different from your run-of-the-mill whodunits, we tend to write outside the box. We blog several times a week on all topics relating to romantic suspense and mystery, our writing, and our readers. We welcome all comments and often have guest bloggers. All our authors can be contacted separately, too, using their own social media links.

We find our genre delightfully, dangerously, and deliciously exciting - join us here, if you do too!

NOTE: the blog is currently dormant but please enjoy the posts we're keeping online.


Julie Moffet . Cathy Perkins . Jean Harrington . Daryl Anderson . Nico Rosso . Maureen A Miller . Sandy Parks . Lisa Q Mathews . Sharon Calvin . Lynne Connolly . Janis Patterson . Vanessa Keir . Tonya Kappes . Julie Rowe . Joni M Fisher . Leslie Langtry

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

MT. EVEREST, ANYONE?


I confess. This is about as close as I’ll ever get to deep sea diving. I admire all those adventure junkies out there. Those zip-lining, skydiving, roller-coastering thrill seekers. My idea of recklessness is going five miles above the speed limit. Even as a kid I would look at all those kids at the waterpark climbing 100-foot towers to some waterslide of horror, while I would just shake my head and turn towards the innocent little pontoons in the placid canal.

Well, my WIP takes place in a deep sea cave. The logistics pose a challenge for me, but I look to the words of the great Nora Roberts for comfort. A decade or two ago I attended an RWA conference and she was teaching a class. She said, “Look at my desk. You’ll see little piles everywhere. Neat little stacks. Look at this pile right here.” She held up three sheets of paper, and said, “This is my research for THE REEF. Do you think I’ve actually been diving?”

If I stuck to my knowledge wheelhouse, I’d have only managed to release maybe three books. I have to broaden my horizons--horizons that are now taking me down…down…down. Glug, glug, glug. The research is fun. Some of the underwater caves are absolutely exquisite, and my bucket list has increased tenfold. Here are a couple I'd like to see.

Neptune's Grotto in Italy
Blue Grotto, Italy


As a writer, have you ever been forced out of your comfort zone in the spirit of expansion? As a reader, do you like to read about things you've never done before, or probably won't do?




7 comments:

Julie Moffett said...

Lol! Great post! I write about many exotic locales and enjoy traveling there in my imagination when other factors prevent me from going in person. It is easy to get caught up in too much research, though. It's a real danger!

Maureen A. Miller said...

I've had three copperheads on my property in the past year. That's as much adventure as my heart can take. LOL

jean harrington said...

This post caused me to think back over what I have and haven't done to boost my writing. One thing I did do some years ago is attend an AA meeting for a book that is yet unpublished. I needed to know how AA meetings are conducted, and I was blown away by the honesty of the people who spoke. They bared their souls. No amount of imagination could have duplicated that scene.

Daryl Anderson said...

I love stories of arctic desolation and tragedy, both fiction and nonfiction. There's something about that cold, white inhospitable land that scares the crap of out me.

I love it!

Maureen A. Miller said...

That must have been quite an experience, Jean. Now we'd like to read the unpublished work to feel the emotions in it!

Me too, Daryl! I read Lost Horizon when I was a kid, and to this day I believe Shangri-la is still hidden inside the mountains.

Clare London said...

Those caves are fascinating! Creepy, but in a magical way, if that makes sense. My writing is very 'domestic' in that I rarely move out of contemporary or my own part of the world. But I really enjoyed researching the remote Scottish island of North Uist for my latest romance novel. The readers seem to like the desolation and the poor weather! :)

Sandy Parks said...

I had hoped to see the Blue Grotto when I was at the Isle of Capri as a college kid, but alas our group timed it wrong and the water was too high (or at least that is the excuse we were given). Want to go back sometime. Great post!

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