Reading and Research

So I'm continuing to read "The Elements of Mystery Fiction" by William G. Tapply. I'm finding it to be quite helpful actually. A lot of things I never thought about are actually being brought to my attention as far as writing my mystery novel.

The author brought up a good point which is to read what others have done. Well, yeah, that totally makes sense. I have a few authors that I enjoy reading but he made a few recommendations that I am currently going to check out. I do, however, foresee a problem which may or may not hinder my quest to becoming a published author (notice that I didn't say successful or best-selling).

I am currently a card holding member of the St. Louis County Library. It's actually there that I picked up Tapply's book (and I'm seriously considering just buying it from Amazon.com since it really is quite helpful). Tapply suggested a few authors to see how they did it. You know, how they wrote their characters, settings, etc. Again great idea.

I'm currently looking for the Bernie Rhodenbarr burglar series by Lawrence Block. Since it is an actual series, with at least sixteen books, I figured I would start from the beginning. Not so lucky on that one. First of all, after doing a little digging on the title of the first book, it looks like it's not even in print anymore. The second one is available for borrowing and actually at the branch where I requested a pick up. The second problem is that there are only about six of the sixteen even in the library system, which means I'm either not going to read as much of the series as I would like or I'm going to have to do some shopping.

I would rather read them all in order but since that's not the case, I'm going to have to figure out an alternate solution. Maybe I can get the books cheaper online or something. I usually just head to Borders or B&N for my mainstream books but that's expensive and I am a poor, struggling college student. Doesn't make much sense to spend money when I'm trying to save now does it? In any event, it looks like there are other recommended authors to choose from so it's not like I won't have anything to read for the next few months.

That's about it for now. I'm actually going to start working on a spreadsheet of the books and authors that I have read and see about converting it to a program that I can use on my phone for when I'm out and about. You never know, I might actually run across some of these books at a price cheaper than a paperback and since I'm sure that the annual West County Mall book fair is approaching, I'm sure I'll find some great deals.