How can a writer’s mind not be muddled with facts, characters and motives from the last novel while writing the next? In an interview for www.bookpage.com Sue Grafton says for survival she deletes the alibis, murder suspects and victims previously written books from her mind, leaving it open only for information necessary for the one she is now writing. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense; a thought process many writers could benefit from in their everyday lives.
Sue Grafton is known for her master character, Kinsey Millhone, a female private detective, who she admits might be who she would have become had she not married and had children. Her ABC mystery novels are well known and she insists that there are 26 different letters that can describe homicide. Although her father was the famous mystery writer C.W. Grafton they never talked “shop” even after she left her TV writing career in Hollywood CA and started writing her own mysteries.
She hated writing for TV but her earlier experience of novel writing afforded her no real success. It was only after she put on paper all the ways she imagined of killing her husband, who put her through 6 years of horror in a divorce and custody battle,that she gained the success she deserved. Her father died 5 months before her first book was published and in hindsight it would have been helpful to have some of her father’s thoughts on mystery while penning her novels.
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