Monday, June 25, 2018

Hello! By Nancy Eady


If you don’t recognize my name as someone you’ve seen here before, there’s an excellent reason—I’m new. I have a confession to make. My name is Nancy, and I am a write-o-holic.

Sometimes the compulsion is more easily mastered than at other times, but once I give in to it, I am completely immersed. When I’m writing, family members can speak to me for five minutes before I realize anything is being said. My daughter (age 16) has been known to take advantage of this phenomenon by announcing, when questioned about an activity or outing, that she told me and I didn’t say no. This clever ploy led to a new rule—it doesn’t count as permission unless I, a) verbally acknowledge that I heard the question and b) specifically say yes.

My daughter and husband last month

 Proof of my compulsion dates back to the first essay I wrote in grade school. I think I was in second grade. The essay was about spring and living in the balmy weather of Southern California. I thought I should tell the teacher that there were places where it might snow during spring. The teacher thought that was very creative and wrote a note on the essay that my mother stored in the “Nancy’s School Years” book she kept for me when I was little. She handed it on once I got married, and I kept it. (Yes, I know, there’s probably a diagnosis for that.) 

I kept almost all of my creative writing from high school, most of it forgettable. Besides reams of poetry from the “I walk alone” stage at ages 16 and 17, I have the book I started in junior high, a Star Wars type coming-of-age story, and the very weird novella about bears named Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail I wrote the summer before my senior year. While the final work product left something to be desired, those six weeks were some of the happiest weeks I spent any summer. I sat at a typewriter and wrote for at least 8 hours a day, and it was heaven.

The Two Parents, Just Last Month (My Husband and Me)

Now that I am over 50, you would think somewhere in those decades of writing I would have found a publisher, but not yet—although I am getting closer. I started a blog in 2011 (www.workingmomadventures.com) which sprang from the antics of a household that included two parents, one eight-year-old girl, and three dogs. As of today, it has over 170,000 views. And I finally managed to finish—beginning is easy; finishing is not—my first novel, a murder mystery about lawyers in a small Southern town. Not coincidentally, I have been a lawyer in a small Southern town since 1998.

One of the Original Three Blog Dogs


Mystery writing is freeing. As a mystery writer, I choose my victims, my villains, and my victories. I can ensure that the right people get punished for the right crimes. I can kill people who deserve killing, and if I’m having a bad day, I can give the people in my novel an even worse day. (Although I relent upon editing unless the bad day in my novel serves an important plot purpose.)  I can endow my protagonists with qualities I wish I had or give them character quirks I find endearing. I inhabit multiple universes when I choose, with the advantage of leaving the problems in those universes behind when I’ve had enough.

When I was invited to join Writers Who Kill to blog once a month, I was overwhelmed. I admire the WWK writers and their work. Just to be listed on the same page is an honor. I checked to be sure they meant to send me the invitation, and not some other Nancy Eady, but they assured me they meant me.

So here I am, looking forward to sharing with you in the months to come my experiences as I search for an agent and a publisher, and finish the next two books in my series. I’ll probably deviate off message often, since my writing compulsion extends to just about any topic I find interesting. No matter what I write, I’ll be learning, and I hope I can share those lessons with you.

To help me with that, I’d appreciate it if you could answer the following question:  if you had met your favorite author before his or her first publication, what would you ask? 

I look forward to hearing from and to sharing with you in the months to come.

14 comments:

  1. I don't have a question for you, Nancy. I just wanted to welcome you to the blog. I read regularly, comment occasionally. So glad to see you blogging here and knowing you're plugging away on your books.

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  2. Nancy, welcome to Writers Who Kill from the other newbie!

    I guess I'm thinking too logically because I keep coming up with "if he hasn't been published yet, how do I know he's my favorite author?"

    Or maybe I should have more coffee before going online in the morning...

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  3. Welcome, Nancy. We are delighted to have you join us here at WWK. I look forward to reading your posts and following your journey to publication.

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  4. Good to see you join the blog!

    I'm afraid I'm very fickle when it comes to my favorite author. It changes. Often it's whoever I'm reading right now. Sometimes it's a classic author; sometimes it's a innovative author.

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  5. Hi Nancy, welcome to Writers Who Kill.

    The hardest part of your question for me would be picking my favorite author, but I think I would have several questions --

    (For the traditionally published) How do you find the courage to keep on keeping on until you get the contract?

    (For the indie) Are you planning to self-publish and what is your process leading up to that? (ah, a two-parter)

    (For the long-running serial writer) Are you planning a series arc for xyz number of books and how do you keep interested in the characters and the story? (hum, another two-parter)

    (And for all) What do you think the published life will be like?

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  6. Welcome, Nancy! So glad you're with us.

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  7. Welcome, Nancy! So glad you're here!
    Like KM, I have way too many favorites. I 'd like to have talked to, well, have tea with Agatha Christie and talk about how she managed all those great plots.

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  8. Welcome, Nancy. Glad to have you here. I was writing poetry in elementary school and
    short stories as well as poetry when I was a teenager. I've kept some of those stories
    and poems.

    As for a favorite author, I have so many of them like Louise Penny, Margaret Maron, Jaqueline Winspear, Laurie King and so many others it would be too long to list them all here, and some
    of my fellow WWK members. Questions I'd ask them? Since I'm self-published and quite happy
    with that, I can't think of any question to ask. Right now I'm working on the tenth book in
    my series and have a middle-grade book published, too.

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  9. Good mornin', Nancy! Excellent "first time out of the gate" post! I enjoyed it with my first cup of joe :)

    For your question of what I'd ask my favorite author before they were "known", I'm going to first, qualify my answer with, I have a lot of favorites, second, I'll pick the one I have had a few conversations with via email and go with that. And third, grant myself a little clairvoyance and know I'm talking to a literary version of, A Star Is Born! lol

    My question would be for Anne Rice. How many times have you queried before finding your agent...and if you could flash forward to this day and age, would you have considered going Indie and use a huge marketing plan?

    She and I actually emailed years ago, after I met two gals from her agency who'd discussed with me what I was writing at the time. In the convoluted evolution of the conversation she and I shared, Anne said she wasn't sure that if she was entering the writing scene at this time, how easy it would have been for her to do all the tricks of the trade now. She even expressed (quite humbly) she didn't know if she would have made it in today's market. Of course, I believe she would have made it and she was just offering a form of empathy for the difference in the writing world today.

    That's my three questions. Which I did get to discuss via email...and it helps me understand that all of us begin "somewhere" and can only whistle Dixie and give it our best shot!

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  10. How lovely you are blogging here, Nancy! I pop in here every now and then; so I'll be seeing you.

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  11. Welcome, Nancy. You should feel in good company here; many of us had no or few writing credits prior to joining WWK.

    One of my favorite questions to ask anyone is: "If you knew when you started this (whatever) what you know now, what would you do differently?"

    ~ Jim

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  12. That is really great that today we have so many places where people can use all advantages of writing and write freely.

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