Writing a mystery is difficult. Writing a murder mystery is doubly difficult.
A mystery must contain clues that logically lead to the ending, but that do not give it away too quickly. I had to go over my novel, The Man Without a Past, at least a dozen times, forward and backward, again and again. And when I had finished, the characters started yelling at me that I had pinned the murder on the wrong suspect, so I had to start all over and pin it on the right suspect.
Since it's a murder mystery, I had to kill off one of the characters. That, for me, is even more difficult than salting the tale with clues. I love all of my characters, even the bad guys. But somebody had to die, and then I had to identify the murderer.
The result is a tale of intrigue with twists and turns leading to a surprise ending.
Lavinia Stout never would have taken the job, if she had known that it involved murder. Even worse, it involved travel, so she had to board her beloved cat Tuffy at the veterinarian's office while she went to Denver, Colorado, to investigate. She hated leaving her mountain home, even for her daily commute to work.
She had a little storefront in San Bernardino, California, where she gave phony psychic readings. Lavinia kept her private investigator's license current so she could help clients who suspected their spouses of cheating on them, and so she could do just enough research on her clients to make her psychic readings seem genuine.
When an old flame visited her one October morning, her first instinct was to turn down the job. But since it was merely a background check on some of his employees, she thought that it would be easy. She could hand it off to her partner and bring in a little cash. She should have turned him down flat.
Just click on the banner in the right-hand column to visit my Amazon store, where you can buy The Man Without a Past and some other great books!
~~ Tessa B. Dick
~~~
It's a Philip K. Dick World! “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” —Philip K. Dick Government intrusion into our personal lives is increasing, the economy is shot and the media focus on hate and violence. Philip K. Dick's fifth and last wife, Tessa Dick, talks about her husband. I have my own books and stories, as well.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Read the Novel that Lost the Contest
My murder mystery, The Man Without a Past, didn't even get past the first round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. In that round, all they read was the pitch. I guess that I'm not very good at writing a pitch. In round two, they would have read the first chapter, and then my novel might have had a good chance of getting to round three. Oh, well, it's over and done with.
If Lavinia Stout had known that a simple background check on some employees of a mining company would lead to murder, she would have turned the job down flat. Her former flame, Mark Bell, had a lot of nerve asking her for any favors, but she thought that she could hand off the task to her assistant and make a few bucks. She couldn't have been more wrong.
I can't enter it for the Philip K. Dick Award because it isn't science fiction.
So now you can buy this novel at Amazon. Everybody loves a mystery, right?
If you search Amazon for "tessa dick", this novel will probably be at the top of page two of the search results, but it might be at the bottom of page one. For some reason, Amazon keeps listing some of Phil's books on the first page of search results for my name. Go figure.
It's a good book, as good as any that I ever have written.
~~~
If Lavinia Stout had known that a simple background check on some employees of a mining company would lead to murder, she would have turned the job down flat. Her former flame, Mark Bell, had a lot of nerve asking her for any favors, but she thought that she could hand off the task to her assistant and make a few bucks. She couldn't have been more wrong.
I can't enter it for the Philip K. Dick Award because it isn't science fiction.
So now you can buy this novel at Amazon. Everybody loves a mystery, right?
If you search Amazon for "tessa dick", this novel will probably be at the top of page two of the search results, but it might be at the bottom of page one. For some reason, Amazon keeps listing some of Phil's books on the first page of search results for my name. Go figure.
It's a good book, as good as any that I ever have written.
~~~
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Readers are everything
Writing is a solitary task, but not the way you think. We need quiet and solitude, but we are never lonely. Millions of people from all over the world sit in the room with us and look over our shoulders.
When writers put pen to paper, or set fingers down on the keyboard, we are communicating with our readers. The disconnect in terms of time and distance becomes meaningless as we reach out to what we hope will be millions of readers. We might imagine a single reader -- a favorite teacher, a relative or a fellow writer -- but we are speaking to every person in the scramble suit that Bob Arctor puts on when he becomes Fred in A Scanner Darkly. We are speaking to the young, the old and the yet to be born.
In a sense we are speaking to the dead, as Glen Runciter speaks to his deceased wife Ella in UBIK, putting on the headphones connected to the glass box where she is kept in cryogenic storage.
Most of us never achieve fame or fortune, but we write because we have readers. Otherwise, the words would simply be waste of ink and paper. Or bandwidth, in the case of this blog.
So please keep reading, so we can keep writing.
~~~
When writers put pen to paper, or set fingers down on the keyboard, we are communicating with our readers. The disconnect in terms of time and distance becomes meaningless as we reach out to what we hope will be millions of readers. We might imagine a single reader -- a favorite teacher, a relative or a fellow writer -- but we are speaking to every person in the scramble suit that Bob Arctor puts on when he becomes Fred in A Scanner Darkly. We are speaking to the young, the old and the yet to be born.
In a sense we are speaking to the dead, as Glen Runciter speaks to his deceased wife Ella in UBIK, putting on the headphones connected to the glass box where she is kept in cryogenic storage.
Most of us never achieve fame or fortune, but we write because we have readers. Otherwise, the words would simply be waste of ink and paper. Or bandwidth, in the case of this blog.
So please keep reading, so we can keep writing.
~~~
Monday, November 17, 2008
Save our wild horses!
Sorry to go off topic on this post, but this issue is very near and dear to my heart. The info below is from The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign :
In 1971, an unprecedented public outcry moved Congress to unanimously pass the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, granting federal protection to America's wild horses and burros as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West […] that […] contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people.”
An aggressive wild horse removal campaign is currently under way by the U.S. government, at the cost of millions of tax-dollars. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) removal policy is contrary to the spirit of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. The Act was the result of an unprecedented public outcry and effected the will of the American people; its intent was to preserve wild horses and burros as part of our national heritage.
~~~
My thoughts:
The Bureau of Land management has rounded up thousands of OUR wild horses and burros to make room for cattle and sheep to graze on OUR public land, and now they have scheduled the execution, the "euthanasia", the SLAUGHTER of thousands of these animals for the benefit of a few ranchers who pay the government for the privilege of turning their sheep and cattle loose on public land, at a much lower cost than maintaining their own private pastures.
The ranchers get cheap grazing, and the government gets some money, but what do we get? OUR public lands get destroyed by sheep and cattle, and our wild horses and burros die for the almighty dollar!
Please write to your politicians (President, President elect, Senate and Congress) and demand that the Bureau of Land Management stop murdering our wild animals and raping our public lands!
~~ Tessa B. Dick
~~~
In 1971, an unprecedented public outcry moved Congress to unanimously pass the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, granting federal protection to America's wild horses and burros as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West […] that […] contribute to the diversity of life forms within the Nation and enrich the lives of the American people.”
An aggressive wild horse removal campaign is currently under way by the U.S. government, at the cost of millions of tax-dollars. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) removal policy is contrary to the spirit of the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act. The Act was the result of an unprecedented public outcry and effected the will of the American people; its intent was to preserve wild horses and burros as part of our national heritage.
~~~
My thoughts:
The Bureau of Land management has rounded up thousands of OUR wild horses and burros to make room for cattle and sheep to graze on OUR public land, and now they have scheduled the execution, the "euthanasia", the SLAUGHTER of thousands of these animals for the benefit of a few ranchers who pay the government for the privilege of turning their sheep and cattle loose on public land, at a much lower cost than maintaining their own private pastures.
The ranchers get cheap grazing, and the government gets some money, but what do we get? OUR public lands get destroyed by sheep and cattle, and our wild horses and burros die for the almighty dollar!
Please write to your politicians (President, President elect, Senate and Congress) and demand that the Bureau of Land Management stop murdering our wild animals and raping our public lands!
~~ Tessa B. Dick
~~~
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Ray Nelson likes Origins!
Ray Nelson, who collaborated with Philip K. Dick on The Ganymede Takeover, likes my novel Origins!
Here's what he said after I sent him a copy:
Here's what he said after I sent him a copy:
""Origins" is good stuff, real science fiction, unlike most of the bogus SF on the current market. Thank you for thinking of me. I would say you not only have an alternate universe good for a sequel or two, but for a long series of novels and short stories. Many a Grand Master has based a whole career on one or two private universes."
~~ Ray Nelson
YIPPEE!
~~~
~~ Ray Nelson
YIPPEE!
~~~
Monday, October 13, 2008
Windy Days
It's the third day in a row with cold Santana winds roaring through these mountains. So what am I doing? Writing poems about the wind. The devil wind, cold and dry, brings freezing temperatures and red flag alerts. The fire danger is very high, but so far, the only major fire is in an area northeast of Los Angeles, some 50 miles from here.
Last October we got evacuated for a major forest fire. In 2003 we lost thousands of trees and hundreds of homes to the Old Fire. So I keep praying, while shivering in this drafty little mountain cabin, that the evil wind will die down and the destructive fires stay far away from here.
Another blast slashes through the trees and shakes pine cones down onto my roof.
The cats huddle on my bed, daring me to TRY to get under the covers. Unmovable, with glaring eyes, they stare me down. I go back to my desk and write another poem, then kill it with the mighty DELETE key.
I'm bundled up in three sweaters, yet still shivering with cold, especially when another blast of wind finds its way in through the cracks and chinks of my drafty mountain cabin.
Yet I love this place, these mountains, this forest, and even my drafty little cabin.
~~~
Last October we got evacuated for a major forest fire. In 2003 we lost thousands of trees and hundreds of homes to the Old Fire. So I keep praying, while shivering in this drafty little mountain cabin, that the evil wind will die down and the destructive fires stay far away from here.
Another blast slashes through the trees and shakes pine cones down onto my roof.
The cats huddle on my bed, daring me to TRY to get under the covers. Unmovable, with glaring eyes, they stare me down. I go back to my desk and write another poem, then kill it with the mighty DELETE key.
I'm bundled up in three sweaters, yet still shivering with cold, especially when another blast of wind finds its way in through the cracks and chinks of my drafty mountain cabin.
Yet I love this place, these mountains, this forest, and even my drafty little cabin.
~~~
Friday, September 5, 2008
Is reality really real?
If there is one thing that I have learned in 54 years on this planet, it is that this world is not what it appears to be.
Back in the 1990s, I heard a caller to a talk radio program (Art Bell) saying that he was taking a history course at a local college, and the textbook said that the Old West outlaw Billy the Kid had died in prison, but he remembered learning years before that a sheriff named Pat Garrett had shot Billy the Kid in the back and killed him. I checked it out, and sure enough, Billy the Kid had died in prison, even though I thought that I remembered the story that Pat Garrett had killed him.
Not long after that, I was telling my older and smarter brother about it, and he said that Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid. So I checked it out, and sure enough, the history books had changed again, to say that Pat Garrett shot him during a jail break, killing him, so Billy the Kid did not die in prison. However, I thought that the original story was not about a jail break, but simply about Pat Garrett tracking him down on the road and ambushing him.
Other anomalies have popped up in a similar manner. For example, my older and smarter brother and I distinctly remember hearing news reports that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, yet he was elected President of South Africa when Apartheid ended.
Go figure.
Is somebody changing history, or do we have extremely faulty memories?
I prefer to believe that this world is more like a computer simulation than s solid reality.
What do you think?
~~~
Back in the 1990s, I heard a caller to a talk radio program (Art Bell) saying that he was taking a history course at a local college, and the textbook said that the Old West outlaw Billy the Kid had died in prison, but he remembered learning years before that a sheriff named Pat Garrett had shot Billy the Kid in the back and killed him. I checked it out, and sure enough, Billy the Kid had died in prison, even though I thought that I remembered the story that Pat Garrett had killed him.
Not long after that, I was telling my older and smarter brother about it, and he said that Pat Garrett shot Billy the Kid. So I checked it out, and sure enough, the history books had changed again, to say that Pat Garrett shot him during a jail break, killing him, so Billy the Kid did not die in prison. However, I thought that the original story was not about a jail break, but simply about Pat Garrett tracking him down on the road and ambushing him.
Other anomalies have popped up in a similar manner. For example, my older and smarter brother and I distinctly remember hearing news reports that Nelson Mandela had died in prison, yet he was elected President of South Africa when Apartheid ended.
Go figure.
Is somebody changing history, or do we have extremely faulty memories?
I prefer to believe that this world is more like a computer simulation than s solid reality.
What do you think?
~~~
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