I'm back on the blog after the release of my first book Too Many Crooks Spoil the Plot on May 29, 2018. It's fun to read the reviews, even the ones that are less than glorious. I learn from them, and almost always I can understand what the reviewer is driving at. Some I can fix and will try to fix in the next book. Others are harder to change. I'm a psychiatrist, so my books are likely to contain some strong emotions. I know that isn't for everyone. I will also strive to make my characters ring true and always want to know when they don't.

I'm now hard at work on a final revision of my next book in the Ditie Mystery Series. It's gone through multiple readers, including my writing group, My goal, as I've probably said before, is that I continue to become a better writer with each book I write. My readers, you, help me do that. Thanks!

As an aside, June on Cape Cod is the perfect time to stay put. The weather is typically beautiful. Everything is green--except for the ocean, which remains a thousands versions of blue. The Cape is quiet in June waiting to burst into a bustling summer. Most visitors come at the end of the month. It's my month to finish up Book #2 and enjoy the world around me. I hope you get to enjoy the first hints of summer wherever you are.

If you want to more about who I am, what I do and what I like, please visit my website at doctorosborne.com. or my Facebook Fan Page at Sarah Osborne, Mystery Author.

If you want to know more about how I think, here goes. This blog is devoted to the synergy between reading and writing.

I heard someone say she loved to write cozy mysteries but she didn't read much, particularly not cozies.

I've never understood how someone could write if that someone didn't also love to read. And even more mysterious to me, since I love mysteries, is how someone could write in a genre they didn't enjoy.

My reading and my writing are both great sources of pleasure for me. While I love my mysteries--old and new--I also like the books I must read for my bookclubs. These are inevitably books I would never read on my own. They stretch me. Sometimes I don't love them, but I always learn from them. Often after a lively exchange in a book group, I come away either liking the book in question more or less than before the discussion started.

My most recent bookclub books are Lab Girl
by Hope Jahren and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Jahren helped me understand the mind of a true scientist--a mind that could ask big questions about nature and come up with a way to find answers. She was passionate about examining the details of nature in ways many of us (me included) would find tedious.

Lincoln in the Bardo is a book closer to my heart. For the first half of the book I wondered why people loved the book and how they understood it. I was adrift and bewildered. In the second half of the book everything became clear for me and for the characters in Saunders' narrative. This was a masterpiece of writing in my estimation. I was supposed to be as confused as if I were in fact one of Saunder's characters. I gained insight as they did. I found the book a moving philosophical discussion on the meaning of life and death and suffering--all in the guise of a charming, funny, sad story. I'll have the opportunity to discuss it with all of my three book clubs, so I can let you know if my views change.

Whenever I read outside my genre, I come away with new ideas about what makes a book meaningful and compelling. And I almost always come away in awe of the way in which authors tell their stories.

My advice: Write what you enjoy reading and read beyond what you think you may enjoy.