I'm a 63-year-old novice at mystery writing. My first nine novels were what I guess you'd call literary fiction. I had a fair amount of success (at least critically), but when I was asked to write a short story for Richmond Noir, part of the Akashic series of detective noir stories, I stumbled across this first-person voice, the hard-living, smart-ass night cops reporter at a metro daily, that I thought I could ride for a novel or three. So I wrote Oregon Hill around Willie Black, and now I've written the sequel, which comes out next year, and I'm cobbling together the stuff for a third book. Three years ago, I hadn't considered writing mysteries. Now I'm hooked.
By the way, I'm supposed to teach a course at the local community college on mystery writing. To paraphrase Gilbert & Sullivan, If I knew as much of mysteries as a novice in a nunnery, I'd be the very model of the modern mystery writing prof. Anyone got any tips for a first-time teacher?
