With the first book done (& soon off to an editor)), the second calls, & rather insistently. I know precisely how it ends in terms of plot & in terms beloved & not so beloved characters. Ending in hand, I can now begin. ✒️📃

#AmWriting #AcademicMurderMystery #AcademicMystery #CampusCrime #CampusThriller #CollegeMystery #WIP #WritingCommunity

Found just the book I needed for some background info for Bk 2 of mystery series. 🐦📖

Major props to the person who curated the index! 👏

Robbins, Jr., Samuel D. (1991). Wisconsin Birdlife: Population & Distribution Past & Present. University of Wisconsin Press.

#AmWriting #research #ornithology #BookIndex #BookIndexer #AcademicMystery

Finally received my beta readers' reports! They are encouraging & useful. 📖

I learned I can trust my inner editor instincts. (3 of 4 readers each saw when something didn't quite work at the very points I was worried about.)💪

I also learned that the best betas are from your target audience. The 1 that wasn't (much younger, a newish writer, & perhaps not as well read) missed a lot.🤔

Oh and I write great sex scenes.😉

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CampusMystery
#WritingCommunity
#BetaReaders

Champing at the bit to get back to my academic mystery WIP while waiting to hear from my other 3 beta readers. The 1st reports were helpful, positively & negatively. I have some definite notions on where to start with revisions, but I'm holding off to see what the other readers saw (or didn't).

So I fill the time doing research for Bk 2 & writing a review for a diptych mystery series I finished last month.

#AmWriting #BetaReading #WritingCommunity #AcademicMystery #CampusThriller

💀🏫🌳

Sent my PDF to hubs & giggled myself silly when I found these 3 emojis to include as a visual blurbish thing. 😆

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CrimeFiction #WritingCommunity #BetaReader

Today's reading! I want to get 2 new characters into Bk 2 & realized that they were invisibly there in Bk 1: my fictional college's ravenmaster & his husband. So now I must research ravens & their keeping! Have 4 books & a list of articles, mostly about the corvids but I'll be able to get some people info too.

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CampusMystery
#CampusCrime #MurderMystery #WritingCommunity #corvids #corvidae #ravens

Am reviewing some essays & papers I wrote in college (as part of some character backstory research). It's huge fun to read them. I seem to have been something of an erudite smarta$$. 😄

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CampusMystery #MysteryFiction #WritingCommunity

For some writers, sending one's book to beta readers for feedback is terrifying. It's not that for me. I am floaty-happy! The notion that I will hear back what someone saw or heard or felt and—more critically—didn't is creatively exciting. I know there are aspects of my work that, as they say in Pittsburgh, need fixed. I am curious if my notions of what that might be are matched by my betas.

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #MurderMystery #BetaReaders #WritingCommunity

Final proofreading then I send my book off to my 4 beta readers for their feedback. So jazzed! 🙆🏼‍♀️

(Looking at you @darlingaxe ! Some household 'issues' came up, but I will be in touch shortly.)

#AmWriting #MurderMystery #AcademicMystery #CrimeFiction #WritingCommunity #BetaReaders

Big feels & big hugs) for the beings in northern Wisconsin & Minnesota today as they deal with a monster snowstorm.
🥶❄️

The fictional college of my academic murder mystery is located on the lower edge of all this. A scene is set in January of 2014...when there was an intense polar vortex.

Yes, we do winter like a boss up here! (And then we write about it! 😄 )

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #MurderMystery #CrimeFiction #WritingCommunity

Started drafting the final version of the campus map for my academic murder mystery. It's a bit like the visual version of writing a synopsis. I know my setting like the back of my hand; can picture *every single place* my characters go; know what the campus buildings look like, when they were built, etc.

But every college/university has a map on its webite. I've done up some quick-n-dirty maps over the past 4 years, but need a good one for my beta readers.

#AcademicMystery #WritingCommunity

Sharing the wealth, as it were: research wealth.

Had to check a legal point for my academic mystery WIP re: high level embezzlement & found what I needed in Kelly Paxton's book *Embezzlement: How to Detect, Prevent and Investigate Pink Collar Crime* (Self Published, 2020; ISBN: 9798578059711).

Her prose is clear and direct. No index but the table of contents is pretty thorough.

Her website: https://kellypaxton.com/

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CrimeFiction #Embezzlement #WritingCommunity

This whole kill your darlings thing...someone posted an ask to Neil Gaiman about it over on Tumblr & his reply was quite tender.

https://at.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/hi-neil-apologies-if-this-or-a-question-like-it/15t8c3rfnkqu

I have a long scene in my WIP academic mystery that shows one of my characters before he dies. The gent is not entirely lovely but when I reread that scene I almost always cry.

#AmWriting #AcademicMystery #AuthorFeelings #WriterFeelings #KillYourDarlings #WritingCommunity

This is why I spent 30 min the other day talking to a retired cop about body language & gun holsters. And why I have another interview next week with an IT systems expert about ethical hacking.

Readers notice stuff!

This essay by MacGyverMedical on Tumblr is utter chef's kiss!

"A Nurse Wrote This: A Medical Review of Knives Out"

https://at.tumblr.com/macgyvermedical/190478569134/e73ydbk53qes

#AmWriting #CrimeFiction #AcademicMystery

Best wishes of the season, fellow heffalumps! 🌟 Like many of you I have non-writing, creative projects on tap for 2023 in addition to my academic murder mystery. I did a little IG post about 'em here if you're interested. https://www.instagram.com/p/CmW6vN7Jfkc/?igshid=ZmVmZTY5ZGE=

#HolidayWishes #NewYear #creativity #NewProjects #AmWriting #AcademicMystery

My Friday Reads are more like Friday Research! My current WIP is an academic mystery. Like a proper academic librarian I've done my background work! 🙂 Took me a while to track down used copies. The 5-vol "Critical Review" set was a lucky find. I had vol 3 then found the whole set selling for what I paid for that one vol!

(Yes, I have all of Sayers' Lord Peter/Harriet Vane books too!)

#FridayReads #FridayRead #AmWriting #AcademicMystery #CrimeFiction #MysteryFiction #WritingCommunity #Research

Mark Twain (born OTD in 1835) was one of two key inspirations for my mystery series. (The other was a proverbial boss from hell.) The inspirations shifted into something quite different but I still very much enjoy Twain's writings, essays especially.

Here's the one video (restored) of Twain, made in his later years: https://youtu.be/mqaSOw1WhjI

More on my academic mystery WIP here: https://jajablonski.com/writings-mystery/

#MarkTwain #MysteryFiction #CrimeFiction #AmWriting #AcademicMystery

Get you a person (hubs in my case) who sends you articles on coaching in women's college ice hockey! 🏒🥅

(A side character in my Bk 1 #WIP #AcademicMystery becomes a key character in Bks 2 & 3. She is the women's coach, from Boston no less.)

#AmWriting #WritingCommunity