Mystery Making

Yesterday Laura Geringer, my wise HarperCollins editor, sent along her editing notes for Nothing But Ghosts, the book that will come off the presses a year or so from now. Nothing But Ghosts is a mystery and a romance—a story in which an unresolved riddle concerning a reclusive heiress enables a high school senior to come to terms with the loss of her mother, and the lonesomeness of her father. It's my first mystery, the riddle I gave myself to solve, for I have come to think, after all these years, that the only way to make your next book your best book is to endlessly move yourself out of your comfort zone—to make every story feel as if it is the first story you've tried to tell.

There's an element of the mystery that isn't working quite yet—I suspected as much when I sent the book in, and now Laura has confirmed it. I've placed the wrong things inside one of seven boxes. I have exactly 30 days to get this right.

If you sense a tremble in my corner of the world, you'll know why for. If you see some just slightly bedraggled writer standing still and staring into a complex sky, then you'll know that's me.