The Making of a Mystery

Susan Sleeman here. I’m often asked how I come up with book plots and characters. The quick answer is that it doesn’t happen the same way for every book. In fact, Nipped in the Bud and Read Between the Tines, book one and two in my Garden Gate Mystery series don’t follow my usual trend.

Since I write mysteries and romantic suspense, I always have to think of a crime, usually a murder so I start there. I may get a germ of an idea from watching the news or seeing something on the internet. For example, I read on the internet a while back how it wasn’t unusual for a grieving spouse to keep their lost loved one’s cell phone active so they could call and hear that loved one’s voice on their voice mail message.

While most people might read an article like this and not start to question it, my mind often asks the question, what if? In this case, I asked what if the spouse called and someone answered. This is the initial seed for the plot for Dead Wrong my November romantic suspense release. A sister calls her deceased brother’s phone and someone does answer. She begins to suspect his death wasn’t an accident as it had been ruled by the police and an investigation begins.

Though this is often how it happens, my Garden Gate cozy mystery series didn’t start this way at all. I am an avid gardener. I mean avid. Obsessive even. So as I was contemplating an occupation for my character in this cozy mystery series, I thought about myself and how compulsive I can get when I’m in search of the perfect bloom. It didn’t take long before I figured out I could take this obsession to the next level. I added a gardening radio show and a landscape business and Paige Turner was born.

Paige and I have a lot in common and many things not at all in common. In my next post, I’ll fill you in on the traits Paige and I share and those things we don’t see eye to eye on. Some of them may surprise you.