Genre Reassignment--My Scandalous Author’s Secret (Part 1)

Quilting-A hobby I started after I turned 40. I entered

this quilt, “TANG” in the Kumquat Festival, 2012.

I confess, I’ve come late in life to a variety of things through the fault of my maxillary and mandibular anatomy. I did not get my first tooth until I was well past age two. It seemed to set a trend. I blame my late teeth for my disreputable late in life genre reassignment as well.  After a lifelong dedication to all things in the predicatably safe realm of nonfiction, I inexplicably detoured into the underbelly of writing—genre fiction. I’m not talking literary fiction, no, it had to be genre, commercial, and a cozy mystery, at that. My respected reputation writing no nonsense theme papers, a sixth-grade autobiography, my high school yearbook, informational essays, research reports, industry newsletters, and eventually, graduate level tomes--none of it and all of it prepared me for writing a mystery. I’ll cover more lessons-learned in my next few blog posts. But for today, here are some other trends connected to my tardy teeth and my secret genre reassignment.

• I started college the first time as an “adult learner.” Not that the other freshmen were not adults, it's just that they were, well, much fresher.
•  My marriage license shows I beat “spinster” by less than a year. Thanks, dear hubby of twenty-seven years who proposed after less than three months of dating.
• I became a mom when my peers where well into the terrible teens with their offspring. It was worth it.
• I took up quilting late in my forties.
•  I started grad school and finished three years later nearly two decades after my undergrad degree was conferred.
• I moved from the classroom to the administrative suite, almost immediately as an assistant principal. At the age of forty-five I had defied academia’s whispered glass-ceiling that women did not make administrator past the age of forty. This, after swearing I never wanted to leave the classroom.

Then, after nearly a decade managing schools, over the course of two short months at the end of a semester, I decided to return to the classroom—I missed the students and it seemed that all I was writing were testing calendars and discipline referrals. If my teeth decided they would erupt when they were damn good and ready I suppose I could make my life’s decisions when I was. And I have, despite sometimes surprising myself. Perhaps that is what introverts do—hash and rehash things subconsciously until we are damn good and ready to make a change.

By this point I had already taken this odd detour into the world of mystery writing. Sure, I read mysteries all the time for leisure, escape, laughs—in between writing lesson plans, grading papers, and mind-numbing administrative paperwork. And yes, in the cozy subgenre, murder and mayhem are supposed to be both entertaining and comforting. But me, a writer of mysteries? Writers were flighty, melodramatic, creative, brilliant, extroverts. Writers wanted to be writers before they learned to read. They made bold declarations. Writers wrote poetry and writers earned MFAs. This was not logical.

My author’s hook was set during spring break 2012 when the idea for a character and storyline came to me in a dream. I kid you not. I wrote down that initial idea on a scrap of paper in the middle of the night. During summer break the entire story was mapped out on a roll of butcher paper on the floor of a condo where we vacationed on Estero Island. I had discovered I was a plotter/pantser and my first draft of AppleJacked! weighed in at 154,000 words a few months later.  And yes, it was mostly crap. But nestled in that little pile of chocolate doggy doo with a cherry on top (thanks, Nancy, for the visual,) there was some good writing. Enough goodness that I placed third in a respected writing competition. 

                                      First Draft Hat—AppleJacked! 2013   “Life is Good!”

Now, almost six years later and still long of tooth, I have survived multiple revisions, gained some praise and positive reviews of my writing, carry the guilt of killing my darlings to the length of 53,000 words, and I possess the same query pass scars as lifelong writers. I think to myself, smiling, so what if I came late to this calling to write fiction. I must be damn good and ready.

That’s my dirty-little-author’s secret. I’d love to hear yours.