So, you claim to be a writer by Susan C. Shea

You claim to be a writer - so write me something. Write a short story - no more than a thousand words - featuring some or all of your Criminal Minds colleagues.

From Susan

I know it’s a cop-out but I only got a working computer back a few hours ago and it’s not working right. Lots of lost or hidden folders and docs including those related to my current novel and the one in copy edits. So, yeah, I’m a little too stressed to get creative on the spot. Plus – and who needed this – my bad kitty, the one with three legs, got out of the garden again and just showed up all “what’s the matter?” ten minutes ago. She’s a real Houdini and I keep spending more money to escape-proof the yard and she hops nimbly over everything. Whew….

How about I share some other writers’ creativity? I just bought these at my local indie today:

WOLF HALL didn’t sit right with me. My conceit was I knew a great deal about that period of English history and her attempts to humanize or even make us – gasp - like Thomas Cromwell were fiction-light. I was wrong, I realize, based on the acclaim the book earned, so, hearing that what we have of her work is all we’re going to get, I am parking my snootiness and coming to BRINGING UP THE BONES with fresh eyes and proper humility.

 

I watched the zoom interview at Book Passage with Leila Mottley and was quite simply blown away. She’s a kid, but young in chronological age only and surely the most articulate, thoughtful, writerly savant I have ever listened to. (Also a poet if she needed more intro.) I just had to get NIGHTCRAWLING. It’s set in Oakland, California, where the task of growing up black and poor is hard and the tragic failures far too common.

 

Successful TV writer Richard Osman was a finalist in the 2020 Edgars for the first novel in this series, The Thursday Murder Club. Of course it had to become a series and THE MAN WHO DIED TWICE is the second. The third has just been published, but I need to catch up with #2 first.