Jule Selbo

This summer has gone by quickly and I feel like I wasn’t in the physical or mental shape to keep up with it, so I’m still panting and whining to reach the “ENJOY LIFE” and “DON’T STRESS THE STRESSFUL STUFF” signs at the end of the road. They point the way to hot tubs and massages and piles of wonderful books to read and enlightenment meditations that will activate the glow of peaceful acceptance.  Of everything.

Like

• Jule, you’ll never accomplish your page count goal everyday
• You’ll never have every word you want to be there when you want it to type it
• You’ll never stop worrying that your protagonist is solving the mystery too slowly
• You’ll never be able to heal all the people you know who are sick

• You’ll never go to bed at night not trying to figure out a story problem.
• You’ll never not get snappy when your siblings make wrong voter decisions (IYO, in your opinion)
• Jule, you’ll never stop getting lost in a deep dive of some research you should’ve already known if you’d paid attention in junior high
• You’ll never not have a friend point out a typo in your last book
• You’ll never stop thinking a brain surgeon career might have been a calmer path than being a writer
• Why can’t you write a book every three to six months like you’ve heard other people do?
• You’ll never stop wondering about people who put power before kindness and logic
• Health? Is it like some get dusted with those fairy wand sparkles and some don’t?
• Jule, you’ll never stop wondering why the jeans you wore in college don’t fit you anymore
• Why do the words “a” and “an” and “the” somehow fall off the page without you noticing and need to be re-inserted
• Will you stop kicking yourself when you write a scene with more than four people in it and feel it’s your duty to keep track of all these characters’ thoughts/actions/words and it’s so tiring, isn’t it? So stop writing scenes with so many characters in them!
• Why you can’t be in two places at once?
• Why do you allow publishers and editors to sit at the head of the table?
• How can you bring housing prices down? And medical prices? And food prices?

• Why is traveling to writing conferences a combo of fun/education/nice social networking but also overwhelming because crime writers are always thinking thinking thinking thinking and all those brains in one place working at top speed is tiring and most of us don’t like to talk that much especially when getting an omelet made at the omelet station at the free breakfast morning.

I wanted to share some of the research I’ve been doing on detectives/investigators from Sherlock to Kinsey Malone to Reacher to Igor Jarinowski and how their non-social/loner proclivities pull us in as readers – but – well I won’t stress about not getting that research (which takes me away from finishing 6 DAYS a DEE ROMMEL MYSTERy).  I’ll share it on my October post.