Thursday, June 20, 2013

Name Dropping and Reading for our Times


(Recently on a surfing trip around the Blogosphere, I found Billie A. Williams' site)

Welcome to Billie A. Williams, our guest poster. You guys say hi and play nice or I will turn mean and act like the murderer you know that I really am. xoxo Kim

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Best-Selling, Award winning Mystery/Suspense author Billie A Williams is a fiction, non-fiction and poetry author and has won numerous awards for her short/flash fiction stories, essays, and poetry with over two dozen works published.
More than thirty some mystery suspense titles in print at this time and several how to books on the craft of writing mystery suspense for the wannabee writer. I enjoy talking with other writers in various genres because they always have something to share that I can learn from them.
She is published in various magazines such as the literary magazine Thema; Guide, a Magazine for Children, Novel Advice.com, Writing Etc. , and Women In The Arts newsletter as well as Sister’s in Crime, to list but a few.
Her articles, columns and features have appeared regularly in newspapers. Short stories, Flash fiction, poetry and book reviews have appeared.  Mystery Time, True Love Magazine and various anthologies and on line e-zines and web sites have show cased her work.
She writes a bi-monthly column titled “Whodunit?” for Mystery Fiction’s Voices in the Dark. She also hosts her own writer’s group, Word Mage Writers and Readers on line as well as The Amberg Writers Group that meets at her home monthly.  She is Owner of The Mystery Readers Connection Newsletter.


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Nancy Drew, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred Hitchcock, yup, I'm name dropping – on purpose. 

Rubbing shoulders with the greats is always a good idea. No matter where you cut your teeth for mystery, reading or writing—the times have changed. I'm sure you noticed.

Most of these classic sleuth's stories will seem too tame for today's readers. You've heard of evolution, the phasing out and in of a species, well, the mystery genre is no different. It used to be a separate class, now more often than not it is partnered with suspense or thriller.  But, we learn from the foundation, the what was, and how it grew. So, the classics will never die. They will keep inspiring writers and readers to interpret, re-interpret and re-write with an eye toward taking the best from the best in the past and twisting it to their unique style and slant. 

You've heard the old saw, "Just because there's snow on the roof doesn't mean the fire's out in the furnace." That goes for the classics too. Will yours be one of those somewhere down the line when new writers and readers look for inspiration in a good classic mystery?


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