Sunday, July 1, 2012

A little murder with your dinner?

I've been writing erotic romance for nine years. In that time I've published 8 short stories, 5 novellas and 6 full-length novels. In each one I have explored some aspect of the D/s lifestyle, from the extreme Master/slave relationship to a simple power exchange between a married couple looking to spice up their love life.

But in all that time, in all those stories, I've never tried a murder-mystery. Well, that's not actually true, I do have a partial mystery sitting on my laptop that I never finished (wrote myself into a corner at 20,000 words and there it sits). It's a hard genre to write in and more focused on plot than relationships. Murder-mysteries have more characters, plot twists and red herrings than I've ever dealt with until now.

So I approached Shooting Star with some trepidation. Could I actually manage all those characters? What about the false clues? Could I successfully hide the true killer until the reveal at the end? I was nervous and excited all through the writing of this novel.

Last week I took the plunge, releasing it as a self-published book. It's already available in all ebook formats and print is coming soon (found some formatting problems in the proof copy. Fixing those and hope to have print copies available shortly). The story involves not one, but two couples (okay, three) who run afoul of one very nasty person intent on killing.

As Sherlock would say, "The game's afoot!" Read the book and leave reviews (on the site or on your own blogs) and let me know if I successfully pulled it off! My next novel is one for the Sweet Spot series and I'm thinking there may be murder prowling the streets of Port Clef if Shooting Star is well-received.

Play safe!
Diana

1 comment:

M. J. Macie said...

I'm tickled, as a mystery writer, to see you've tried your hand at writing a mystery. I'll look into purchasing your novel and let you know what I think.

M. J. Macie