Once Upon A Time

When I first started writing fiction, I never thought much about blogs and promoting and all that jazz. My focus was on the stories.  Creating realistic characters, putting them in difficult situations and watch them try and get out of it. That was my plan. Pretty basic stuff.

Well, one story leads to another. Pretty soon I had a little collection going and was picking up some steam. Which is good, considering my time to write is often limited. But in the back of my mind, I noticed a theme coming together.  An old college professor in the creative writing class encouraged us to 'write what we know'.  Not exactly original advice but sometimes it works.

So in some respects, I took his wisdom to heart.  I've always been drawn to mysteries and crime, going back to a youth misspent reading the likes of John D. MacDonald (with the Travis McGee series) and Elmore Leonard. It didn't take a degree in quantum physics to know where my stories were headed.  Since I spent many years in the Detroit area, it seemed only natural that my books would be based there.

Last year we were getting ready for a couple of book fairs, where I was going to have a booth. My darling wife suggested creating a big poster, with the covers of all four books on display to catch the attention of the crowd.  But we needed a header, something to draw them in.  We came up with Motown Mysteries.  Very appropriate.  The poster worked.  As I write this, it's on the shelf across from me, waiting to be dusted off and come out for the next round of events.

My good friend M.S. Spencer http://msspencertalespinner.blogspot.com/ suggested that the name of my blog should be connected with my books.  My old blog was titled "Write Now" but the link ran through my Google address. So I'm long overdue taking her advice.  Hey, I'm a guy. What more can I say?

So here we are.  Since Motown continues to inspire me with ideas that will be woven into my stories, it's only fitting that this be the name of the blog.  And if you'd like to read some of my earlier posts, here's a link to the other site.

http://marklove024.blogspot.com/

Travis McGee                         Elmore Leonard