Remember the old saying, You can’t see the forest for the trees? Have you ever noticed in a museum of art, people stepping away from a painting to look at it from a more distant viewpoint? That’s where I was with Moonstruck and Murderous before I started the proof-reading or first editing. I finished the book, wrote the last sentence, and left the whole cozy, murderous, mysterious thing there in my computer for several weeks. It was hard to do! It’s like anything else that you want to be perfect, you keep giving it a twitch here, and a tug there, adding a word, deleting another. But, by going away, leaving it alone for a while, it sets. It gels. And, my mind is taken up with other things. Not that I forget about the story, but I just let it rest for a while.
When I went back to it, I was happily surprised. Hmm. Rather nice. Oh, I’m finding some things that need rearranging, so I rearrange. But, all in all, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a few hundred words longer than most of my cozies, but it took that many to get Ned into one of the worst scrapes she has ever been in. Ever. First, there’s the maze. Not a fun thing, that maze. Then, there’s this weird family–hard to understand that family, and a gardener who’s not who he seems to be. A tornado uncovers a second mystery, and then there’s someone who seems to want to confess something but never gets a chance to do that.
Maybe it’s the time of the year–March is a changeable month. You can’t trust it. It’s one way one day and completely opposite the next. Pat says it’s all because of the blue moon. There’re two full moons in the month of March just as there were in reality this year. And, you know, anything can happen under a blue moon.
Ned is amazed at the way her view of the oldest, most renown mansion in the county has changed. At first, she thought it stately and grand, a wonderful place, but as the story progresses, Ned comes to look at it in quite a different way. That old house has played a central part in the life of a strange family for a good many years. It’s really not cozy and welcoming. And then…but, you’ll just have to read it to see what I mean. It’ll be a while, but when Moonstruck makes its debut, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. See if you agree that some of the people involved must have been moonstruck. That seems to be the only answer.
Manos Mysteries
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