Jule Selbo

1. Don’t worry about making the PLOT tick every every every minute. Allow the characters to breathe, think, have opinions.
2. Character is plot. Plot is character. It’s sometimes hard to hold onto that mantra (that I believe in) in the crime/mystery genre. Hold onto it.
3. Read. Read more. In 2024 I was asked to “judge” a non-fiction category for an award. Total? 48 books – all about 400 pages. And I had friends’ books to read. And other books I wanted to read. All this got me in the habit of reading from 10 am to 1 pm EVERY DAY, after putting in some time on the latest Dee Rommel book. Then I had lunch and went back to my students or to Dee Rommel and then, with books piling up, added a wonderful bedtime read instead of a BEST OF BRITISH BAKING SHOW. Now I wake up earlier some days (than regular 4:45 am) and get to work on Dee Rommel earlier so I can start reading at 9:30 am.
4. Somehow combat that fear of putting oneself “out there” in the book world. Everyone’s books are singular, unique, the “voice” is different in every author’s book. Sameness is not the goal.
5. Independent bookstores – love them even more.
6. Libraries – love them even more.
7. Okay to have writer heroes. They have been provided by the universe for inspiration and they come in all shapes and sizes and stories.
8. Frustration that a book doesn’t ‘write itself’ is a waste of time. Love re-working a paragraph fifty times. Don’t worry about saving the world, just fix that damn paragraph.

NEWS:   7 DAYS A DEE ROMMEL MYSTERY (4th in the series)  is now available for pre-0rder on Amazon.  Paperback and Hardback available March 25. E-book available on March 19

NEWS:  Tonight, January 9th at Portland Stage Theatre Main Stage – (theater’s on Forest Avenue, Portland) I am joining Tess Gerritsen, Bruce Robert Coffin and Ron Currie for Crime/Mystery Writers Night.  Four Maine writers  whose crime/mysteries take place in Maine.  7:30. $15.00.  Wonderful actors will be reading from our work and there’ll be a talk after about Agatha Christie’s process/work as it might/might not relate to how we approach our work.  All getting ready for Portland Stage’s production of an adaptation of Christie’s MURDER ON THE LINKS.

SIDELINE: I had a particularly bad line editor on 7 DAYS, but the publisher saw how bad this person was and got “me” a new one who left Dee Rommel’s voice and story intact.  That was a huge learning curve for me –  that there are editors out there (who want to put my book into their own preferred sentence structures and word choices  – willy-nilly! – and feel that’s their job????). I am so grateful the publisher was as appalled as I was (this was a new editor for them, I guess I was the first in line for their red ink).  Publisher even tried to keep the news from me – but when the publishing date was pushed back a few months and I asked why – I got the news and they showed me some of what that line editor did –  we had to go back to the the latest draft I sent them and start afresh.  Oh!  I was fit to be tied!

HAPPY NEW YEAR