Ask the Author: Sarah Osborne
Answered Questions (11)
Sarah Osborne
What a great question! I can make a mystery out of anything, but I always wondered about a special spot I went to as a child. It was on top of a hill and had the foundations of a house with remnants of a fireplace. I always wondered what the story was behind those remains. I even wrote a book about it, probably a young adult book, in which my character--a girl around ten or eleven--found a young boy who lived there. Never published but fun to write
Sarah Osborne
Horrow isn't my thing. I get scared too easily.
I suppose my sentences might be these.
We live on an earth where people no longer have to die, and it's hard to know who is in charge of life and death decisions--robots or humans.
I suppose my sentences might be these.
We live on an earth where people no longer have to die, and it's hard to know who is in charge of life and death decisions--robots or humans.
Sarah Osborne
I keep writing. Every morning. Regardless of whether or not I feel my writing is inspired on that particular morning. I always have more than one project, so if I can't seem to find a way to work on one of them I turn to another.
Sarah Osborne
Instead of a fictional world, I'd love to go to another planet in some other universe and see what life is like there. Of course, I'd want to get their quickly and have a good exit plan if the natives were not friendly.
Sarah Osborne
I'm reading serious and not serious books this summer.
I'm currently reading a cozy I'm enjoying called Forgotten Murder by Dolores Gordon-Smith. On a more serious note, I'm reading a memoir by a young woman who escaped from North Korea called The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeoneseo Lee. It's a harrowing read, but I recommend it highly to help us remember what it means to live in a country in which truth and freedom matter.
I'm currently reading a cozy I'm enjoying called Forgotten Murder by Dolores Gordon-Smith. On a more serious note, I'm reading a memoir by a young woman who escaped from North Korea called The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeoneseo Lee. It's a harrowing read, but I recommend it highly to help us remember what it means to live in a country in which truth and freedom matter.
Sarah Osborne
I've probably said this already in a hundred different ways. Writing grounds me, and I thoroughly enjoy starting my day with a couple of hours of writing. What inspires me is often a place in which I can easily imagine a murder occurring. Which is any place if you put your mind to it. I went down the Mississippi on a paddlewheel a few months ago and thought about what might happen if Ditie brought the kids for a trip down the river with Lurleen, Mason, and Danny in tow. (if you haven't read the first book yet, these are all characters in Too Many Crooks Spoil the Plot.
Sarah Osborne
I'm delighted you enjoyed my book. It's my first published mystery. The next Ditie Brown mystery should come out in the spring or early summer of 2019. I currently have a different mystery series that takes place in San Francisco at the time of the great 1906 earthquake for which I'm seeking an agent. I'll keep you posted on that one!
Sarah Osborne
This is such a good question and I've been racking my brains to figure out how Ditie emerged. I'd written a couple of mysteries, unpublished, about a psychiatrist and her sister who traveled to B&Bs and found trouble. I thought maybe I needed a younger protagonist and one who wasn't quite so closely connected with the work I do. I settled on a pediatrician and got the details I needed from a pediatrician friend of mine. I'd also just moved away from Atlanta, so perhaps I was anxious to stay in touch with the city in which I'd lived for many years. In any case, Ditie popped up and seemed to bring the story with her. Her sidekick Lurleen was actually a character a friend used in her art--she bestowed her to me, and I ran with her.
Sarah Osborne
I love the idea that I can share the worlds I create with others. I love the excitement of finding a new unexpected character or story and seeing where it leads me.
Sarah Osborne
I have a lot of advice, probably because I wrote a long time before I saw the light of publication. Here's a little of it.
1) Figure out why you are writing.
Is it because you want to see your name on a book or because you want to appear on a talk show or because there is simply something burning inside you that must be said. For me, I had to realize I wrote because I had to, because it grounded me, and gave me enormous pleasure to create a world in which everything came out all right. This revelation came to me about six months before I found a publisher and years after I had started writing. it made all the difference. I decided if, in fact I was writing for an audience of six friends, I could live with that. What I wanted to do and still continue to want to do is make every book better written than the one before it. Quite a goal I know!
2) Come to the realization that all (or most) good writing is about revision.
Early on, like most writers I suspect, I thought once I finished a book, that book was finished. If I had the talent I thought I had or hoped I had, agents would be fighting to represent me. My problem would be deciding on the person to repesent me.
That isn't the way it works for most of us. The first draft is just that. Your book marinates and improves each time you take another pass at it. Revision is the key to writing a good book along with a willingness to take well-meaning feedback from people who like what you do and want to see you make it better.
This is the tip of the iceberg for my advice column, but I'll save more for next week.
1) Figure out why you are writing.
Is it because you want to see your name on a book or because you want to appear on a talk show or because there is simply something burning inside you that must be said. For me, I had to realize I wrote because I had to, because it grounded me, and gave me enormous pleasure to create a world in which everything came out all right. This revelation came to me about six months before I found a publisher and years after I had started writing. it made all the difference. I decided if, in fact I was writing for an audience of six friends, I could live with that. What I wanted to do and still continue to want to do is make every book better written than the one before it. Quite a goal I know!
2) Come to the realization that all (or most) good writing is about revision.
Early on, like most writers I suspect, I thought once I finished a book, that book was finished. If I had the talent I thought I had or hoped I had, agents would be fighting to represent me. My problem would be deciding on the person to repesent me.
That isn't the way it works for most of us. The first draft is just that. Your book marinates and improves each time you take another pass at it. Revision is the key to writing a good book along with a willingness to take well-meaning feedback from people who like what you do and want to see you make it better.
This is the tip of the iceberg for my advice column, but I'll save more for next week.
Sarah Osborne
I am currently working on the second book of my Ditie Mystery series. I'm revising based on what my last set of beta readers have said. This book involves an old boyfriend of Ditie's and civil war reenactments that can turn deadly.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:48PM · flag