It's A Mystery for NaNoWriMo 2009!

Well, not exactly a mystery. Or rather, not JUST a mystery. I'm a Gemini and suffer from "like-a-dog-if-you-throw-a-stick" disorder so I jump around a lot. So rather than a "mystery", I've got on tap a mystery/romantic suspense with elements of dark/black humor and a few sex scenes. In other words, a hot book for folks who like their who-dun-its with a dash of snark. Or as they say in the publishing game, my "concept" is "Desperate Housewives" meets CSI. Sort of.

Anyway, I've excelled at NaNo (Yep, its the LADIYTAS disorder again) for several years, completing not just the 50,000 word mark, but in one case going well over 70,000 words (I lost weight that year, too).

I've tried a number of approaches to NaNo - when I'm not writing a mystery I tend to be a "pantster" or a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. Give me a plot line, two characters and I'm off to the races. But with a mystery I've learned that you cannot work without a plot. You end up banging your head against a wall after you've written your protagonists into a corner with no way out.

So for this year I'm working out my 3 plot lines (killings/mystery; attendant secondary plot line involving High School sex scandal; meeting & attraction of my hero and heroine sleuths). I'll be putting together character sketches and creating my "world" of Eden, Long Island (an utterly fictitious place but having been a suburbanite for decades, I can guarantee that it won't be that much of a stretch!)

I'm currently in a mystery/thriller/crime novel mode these days, but I can't work without humor - my snarky, sarcastic humor will probably work well in the context of slayings and sexual misconduct, so I'm not worried there. Hardest will be the level of details when discussing the crime, and the niggling legal details (age of a teenager in NY before they can be charged as an adult in a murder, for example).

I've stopped reading the thrillers for the time being because I don't want the influence of the great ladies and gents I've been enjoying (Allison Brennan, Mariah Stewart, Ridley Pearson, Tess Gerritsen, Lisa Jackson and Karen Rose, among others). So, oddly enough, I'm reading Regency romances to keep me focused on my 21st century murder mystery.

And of course, as is so often the case with me (as my Grandmother always said, "your eyes are bigger than your stomach"), this is intended to be - YOU GUESSED IT! - a series.

A friend of mine has a Yahoo group for Southern Noir - those dark crime novels set in the South filled with Texas sheriffs and Rangers alongside legendary Texas criminals. So I'm going to grab the idea from him and my series shall be titled:

Suburban Noir.

I figure it has the black comedy-murder-suburban setting thing locked up that way.

And while I should know better, I'm going to give away my title, too. (You tell me if it doesn't convey what I'm going for, OK?)

POM POMS OF DEATH.

Catchy, huh?

Sis-boom-bah.