I have always loved puzzles of all sorts from those 3-D wooden puzzles to computer video puzzle adventure games to the seven wonders of the world–though Rubik’s Cube still baffles me. I love tinkering and figuring out how stuff works and fixing things that are broken. As a kid, I successfully converted my tricycle to a unicycle and though I never mastered riding it, I remember being really proud of myself.
So… what inspired me to convert a tricycle to a unicycle? Why, Nancy Drew of course!
I can’t recall who gave me my first set of Nancy Drew Mysteries, but I devoured them. I loved the idea of secret rooms and code words and intrigue and racing against time to solve… problems. I asked for more books at every legitimate opportunity and before high school I had read all 56 of the original books. Sometimes I figured it out before Nancy did, but I loved it when there were unexpected twists to the story.
That’s all mysteries are… problems with a twist, right? While it wasn’t practical (for me) to aspire to become a detective, I became a problem solver. First for myself and then also for others. And I got pretty good at it.
But what I loved most about Nancy Drew was that she was a young woman–a regular person–who helped the people in the books find lost family or treasures and beat the bad guys. Which is one reason I decided on writing Cozy Mysteries. Who doesn’t love a good mystery thriller with a twist or seven–with the bad guys behind bars in the end?
So, now I am braiding my love of writing to my powers of problem-solving to my experiences as a life-long service worker into my Patsy Taylor Mystery Series!
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-cryptic-character-codes-and-magnifying-glass-on-table-top-7319068/
AWill Writing 