Ephron Hallie - Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock em Dead with Style

Remember, in The Wizard of Oz, the sign Dorothy and her friends found as they approached the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West? It read, I'd Turn Back If I Were You.

Well, I would.

If you're reading this book, or thinking of reading this book, you must want to write a mystery.

Big mistake.

In fact, writing any kind of fiction is a big mistake.

Really, take a look at it. What do you get?

1. Hours and hours of hard, lonely work. While other people go to the movies, play with their kids, walk their dogs, and do the laundry, you'll be up there locked away alone, putting the same comma in and out of the same line of dialogue for hours.
2. Self-doubt, embarrassment, and worry. You'll fear your characters are cardboard, you'll be afraid your setting's trite, you'll be sure your story's been told three hundred times already, every one of them better.
3. Rejection. If you do manage to finish the thing, at least one agent (and probably more) and at least one editor (and definitely more) will turn it down before someone agrees to take it.
4. More hours of hard work. When someone finally buys your book, you'll be editing and revising until you're sick of it. Then you'll go out on the road. You'll rush from one hotel to another, take off your shoes and empty your pockets in countless airports, and read in the evenings from this book you can no longer stand. And, before rushing to the next airport, you'll fend off stern e-mails from your editor demanding to know why you're not making progress on your next book.

Turned back yet?

I didn't think so.

I never did either.

If you can't be discouraged by the almost certain scarcity of fame, fortune, and even convenience that attends the writing of a piece of mystery fiction, then chances are you really, really want to write one.

Welcome to the Land of Oz.

Things are crazy here. You'll meet all manner of beast and person. Many are engaged on the same journey you're on; the rest are here to comment, in their various ways, on your progress. It can be confounding, confusing, and downright scary here, but it's never boring.

In fact, it's the most thrilling place I've ever been. Everything is exciting. All the people are intriguing; each event is fascinating; nothing is wasted. It's all material. And you knew that. You've got a huge pile of this material; you've been collecting it for years, right? And now you're ready to write your book. You're ready to set off into the enchanted forest, but you're not sure which direction to go.

None of us were, when we started out. Some of us wandered in circles for awhile, tripping over roots, bopping our foreheads on branches. As often as not it was through sheer luck, or cussedness, that in the end we found our way.

But some people found guides.

And you're lucky enough to have found Hallie Ephron.

In this book, Hallie's giving you a map. The longest journey, as I know you know, begins with a single step. This book will help you take that step. And the step after that, and the next. It will show you the long view when you're feeling trapped in the thicket, and it will cut the towering peaks into manageable switchbacks. And when you find your writer's road blocked by a huge, unmovable boulder, it will show you how to push it aside, or find a route around or even over it.