Triss Stein's Writing Journey
My second mystery from Poisoned Pen will be out in March and
I am working on the third. Now that reads like an ordinary enough sentence, but
I can hardly believe I am writing it. My
writing career has been so uncareer-like, this all seems like "let's pretend."
I wrote a couple of mysteries that were published by a small
publisher in the 1990's. It was, I
thought, the small beginning of a career. Then the publisher dropped the
mystery line without warning just after I turned in the third book, the one into
which I had poured heart and soul. The
year then brought turmoil in my day-job life and health life, plus the usual
issues of growing-up children. When I was on the other side of all that, I had
lost energy, desire and focus for writing. Though I had already started a new
book, new character, new series idea, when I forced myself back to it,
everything I wrote was awful. Even I was bored with it.
So I stopped. I was retired from writing. It took awhile to
admit how much I missed it, and another while to tiptoe back. I finally got out that unfinished book,
tossed the terrible second draft, ripped apart the first draft, and started
over.
Poisoned Pen Press eventually accepted it and told me they
don't publish stand alones, they publish series, and what else did I have
planned? Those were the words I had (almost) given up ever hearing. And here I am.
And all of the things I did kind of blindly - stay active in
mystery organizations, continue with a critique group, and most of all, keep
writing (again) - now make sense.
Erica, the character I created all those years ago, continues
to live her overextended life as over-age grad student and youngish single mom,
researching Brooklyn history and Brooklyn neighborhoods surprisingly like small
towns, and stumbling across crime in the process. Adventure number two,
Brooklyn Graves, (hint: there is a famous cemetery involved. Second hint, from
the cover: think Tiffany glass) has had some good reviews, and book three,
about Brooklyn gangs old and new, is taking shape on the page. All this while an idea for number four is there on
the edge of my mind.
Yes, it feels like I made all this up. That's what writers do,
after all, make things up. I suppose it would be undignfied, at my age, to jump
up and down screaming, or go party till dawn at a bar, but I will be celebrating with a launch party at
Mysterious Bookshop in downtown New York.
It's March 18. You're all invited!
BIO:
Triss
Stein is a small–town girl from New York state’s dairy country who has
spent most of her adult life living and working in New York city. This gives
her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident for writing mysteries
about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted
home. Brooklyn Graves will be out from Poisoned Pen Press in March and is
second in the series, after Brooklyn Bones.
Triss
is active in both Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and is on the
board of the MWA NY chapter. Triss
is also the co-chair of Mystery Writers of America/New York chapter library
committee.
BOOK
BLURB:
A brutally murdered friend who was a
family man with not an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home,
written a century ago by an unknown young woman working at the famed Tiffany
studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning
stained glass windows is now off limits, even to a famed art historian.
Suddenly,
all of this, from the tragic to the merely eccentric, becomes part of Erica
Donato’s life. As if her life is not full enough. She is a youngish single mother of a teen, an
oldish history grad student, lowest person on the museum’s totem pole. She
doesn’t need more responsibility, but she gets it anyway as secrets start
emerging in the most unexpected places.
In
Brooklyn Graves a story of old families, old loves and hidden ties merges with
new crimes and the true value of art, against the background of the splendid
old cemetery and the life of modern Brooklyn.
LINKS:
I
blog here:
Thanks for visiting me today, Triss!
Comments
Madeline