Melissa R. L. Simonin

601 Suspense Street is 68 pages now.  Will’s parents are about to arrive and meet Gemma… I can’t wait to see how that goes.  Her grandmothers are coming over too, so between them and Will, she shouldn’t be too nervous. 601 is going to be longer than 715.  There’s a lot happening and I have […]

And by that, I’m specifically referring to my two unnamed characters.  I spent the first part of this morning writing two pages worth of notes for what may be my October novel.  If the characters have any say in it, it will be.  This is going to be a fun book to write, so I’m […]

After being side-tracked for much of the last couple of weeks by travel and a side-project or two, today after a trip to the corner mini-mart for a bag of Cheetos, I got back to writing “601 Suspense Street.”  I have several new pages to show for it, which makes me very pleased.  Will really […]

Happy Independence Day!  It was eight years ago on July 3rd that we brought Independence aka Indy, home with us.  It was a long drive to San Bernardino, California and back, but well worth it. Indy was my faithful Diabetic Alert Dog service dog for several years, although retired now, and the inspiration for Samson […]

The Chiller Street Grill in the Mystery Lane series is a 50’s style diner that serves the most amazing hamburgers.  While the building itself is entirely made up, the food is inspired by the Church Street Grill in Carlsbad, New Mexico.  They, too, serve the most amazing hamburgers.  It seems only fitting to eat here […]

So after the exciting trip to pick up the kid from camp following the navigational app that came installed on my iPhone (and which wanted to take me to a hospice) I thought… let’s use the google app instead.  It got us home. It would’ve been fine except for two things… at some point the […]

Today the post lady was kind enough to deliver the proof for “Isle of the Crescent Moon.”  While I prefer to read my books on a Kindle because it keeps my library small (and when you’ve moved a lot, you know what a monumental task it is to move a large library), I love having […]

And, 10,000+ words.  So with 100,000 words being the goal, 601 Suspense Street is 10% written. I was quite thrown off by the detour Will took.  I sat staring at the laptop today, drawing a blank, uncertain where to take the story from there.  I came so close to opening the file for “Depart the […]

I start out with an idea.  I map it out, I know exactly what’s going to happen in a novel and when, and… Then I sit down to write and my characters follow their own plan.  Their story takes a definite twist, and that’s exactly what just happened in 601 Suspense Street, book 2 of […]

…and the cat forgets all about trying to nab my chair.  She forgets a lot of other things too, like where her tail is.  I’m sure she’ll wonder eventually how it ended up soaking wet!