You Might Be A Mystery Writer by Nancy L. Eady

 With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy: 

1)  If your first thought on passing a nook or a cranny (there is a difference!) is what a great place it would be to stash a body, weapon or assailant , you might be a mystery writer. 

2)  If your browser history would make you the top suspect in the event of your spouse's death, you might be a mystery writer. 

3)  If your Facebook or blog posts ask for or share enough lethal information to make the NSA computers hiccup and focus on you, you might be a mystery writer. 

4) If, when watching Law & Order re-runs, you see ways to twist the Law & Order twist, you might be a mystery writer. 

5) If you use a notebook or memo app to record different types of crimes, victims and motives you discover in the real world, you might be a mystery writer. 

6)  If you regularly solve the mysteries on television shows based upon the fact that person A serves no other reason on the episode other than to be the killer, you are either my husband or a mystery writer. 

7) If you start to spin a tale around a chance sighting of a man dressed in a Burger King uniform, wearing a backpack and hiking along the side of the road, you might be a mystery writer. 

8)  If you can think of at least five sinister reasons why the same man stopped and turned back towards a running car sitting on the shoulder of the road, you might be a mystery writer. 

9)  If you read the labels of household products for inspiration on creative ways to poison someone, you might be a serial killer, in a very unhappy marriage, or a mystery writer. 

10)  If the terms “police procedural”, “amateur sleuth”, “protagonist”, and “legal thriller” mean something to you, you might be a mystery writer. 

11)  If your personal heroes include at least two of the following:  Sherlock Holmes,  Sir Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Dashell Hammett, P.D. James, Rex Stout, Archie Goodwin, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, Ellery Queen, Susan Grafton, Sara Peretsky, Dorothy Cannell, Elizabeth Peters or Edgar Allen Poe for Murder in the Rue Morgue, you might be a mystery writer.  

12)  If you ever killed the same person twice under two different pseudonyms in two different manuscripts, you might be a mystery writer. 

If you ever wrote a mystery, you ARE a mystery writer.