I'm super excited to announce that the cart is open for my signature course FIRST DRAFT FRAMEWORK.
Honestly, I wish I had something like this when I started writing, oh so many years ago, before the digital age. (I sound like a dinosaur!) But seriously, I had to physically drive myself to the library, research books on writing using microfiche (if you know what that is, you might be a dinosaur too, lol), use a stubby, little pencil to write the dewey decimal number on a slip of paper, and then place the paper in a basket with other little pieces of paper.
Then, when the book/s I requested came into my branch, I got a PHONE CALL, letting me know they were in, and I drove to the library to pick them up, able to keep them in my possession for three weeks.
I read every book I could find on the craft of writing, and every copy of the magazine, Writer's Digest.
Feeling inspired, I headed to our new-to-us computer, stared at the blinking orange cursor on the square, black screen, and typed away. Once I finished writing for the day, I saved it onto a 5 inch floppy disk, and then printed it on our dot matrix printer, carefully peeling off the edges (depositing many feet of hole-filled ribbons into the trash). After this, it was time to sit with pencil at the ready to edit my own work.
This process led to years of researching how to submit to agents, learning to write query letters and collecting an impressive stack of rejection letters.
And I hadn't even dared to try writing a mystery yet.
I loved reading mysteries, especially the classics like Agatha Christie and Rex Stout, but also Sue Grafton, when I discovered her Alphabet Mystery series.
It was my go-to genre as a reader, but as a writer, the thought of writing a mystery was intimidating. It felt too complicated. The pressure to outwit a reader of mysteries was too much. I just wasn't that clever! (At least that was what I believed at the time.)
YOU, however, can skip ahead!
I've taken all the experience and knowledge I've gained over the years, and put it into an easy to follow, step-by-step format.
Everything you need to finish the first draft of your mystery is right here!
No need to fumble about on your own, starting but not finishing. No need to let your passion to write fizzle as your manuscript hides out of sight in a drawer or computer file.
I want to help you in ways I wished I had been helped. Want to learn more? Check out First Draft Framework here: https://leestraussbooks.com/pages/fdf