“Who are your favorite crime writers?”

I’ve been alerted by more experienced writer friends to expect this question when I start speaking at events to promote my debut mystery. I’ve also been told that a) my mind will go blank and b) answering this is a minefield.

Conan Doyle is acceptable, as is Dame P.D. James. Agatha Christie is safe, even if she raises a few eyebrows among those who relish modern, ultra gory stories. Donna Leon, she of the wonderful Guido Brunetti series set in Venice, is widely admired for her likeable, self-deprecatory policeman and her ability to publish at least one book a year without becoming stale.

But dig deeper in current crime lit and you’re going to be making choices. If you actually know some of the people you name, that’s cool. But you’d better do the Sarah Palin thing and write the list on your palm because if you leave any of your crime writing friends off the list, you may inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings. How do I mention Cara Black and not Sophie Littlefield? Kelli Stanley and not Simon Wood? David Corbett and not Cornelia Read? Diana Orgain and not Camille Minichino? Louise Ure but not Margit Liesche? I’m already leaving writers off this sample list, which is making me unhappy.

So, I’ll say – and mean it – we are living in good times as far as crime fiction goes. From one end of the spectrum to another, there’s snap, crackle, and pop in the pages of a hundred or more new books every year. Every book offers me something provocative, evocative, or funny to enjoy in the moment.

Who influences my own writing is another question. I’ll try to answer it another time. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from others: Who are your favorites?

Day in and day out, as I sit at my computer willing the words of a novel to come forth, a little window opens on my screen every minute or two, accompanied by a tweeting sound.

“Sat behind two trash-talking kids on the bus and learned a new word for – never mind.”

“I would kill for two tickets to Lady Gaga.”

“The night creeps silently to my door. Day has come to its end. I am once again Queen of Procrastination.” (That last must be credited to its author, Melissa Webb.)

Tweets are 140-character messages to the world from every corner of the universe. Well, not that far, but it feels like it, especially late at night. Like shooting stars, or cricket chirps in the darkness, they don’t always come across as a community in conversation, but as isolated souls reaching through the ether toward others – any others.

During the day, there’s lots of buzz – politics, griping, sniping, funnies, marketing. Announcements of new books, catchy items about books, frank promos for books. Those I understand and, in my clumsy way, am trying to emulate. After all, I have a book coming out too. I am confident I’m also getting tweets, supposedly from readers raving about books, that are paid efforts at viral marketing.

But sometimes, late at night, the noise changes and the tweets begin to read like characters in search of a story. Someone quotes Sartre: “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

Except compose a 140-character message, put it in a bottle made of electrons, and launch it into the cyber sea, hoping someone else in Twitter World will find it.

Some writers love research. I’ve heard writers confess that the single biggest obstacle to finishing a book – or even starting one – is the lure of getting the details right. I respect and admire them. Frequently, I love their books. In fact, I’ll be sharing a reading and signing on July 1 (M Is for Mystery, in San Mateo) with one of the up and coming lights in historical fiction, Rebecca Cantrell.

I, however, think one of the great things about writing fiction is the ability to make things up! I mean, think about it. If you need a Chinese restaurant outside of which to have your protagonist argue with a cop, how real does the restaurant need to be? Obviously, you wouldn’t park it on the White House lawn. Or, if two characters are dodging bullets in an alley and the alley has to be precisely two hundred yards long, do you have to search the city for two weeks to find it, or can you imagine it… as long as you don’t put it in a cow pasture?

Oh oh, I hear my crime writer friends yelling at me. I know, I know. Cara Black’s wonderful Aimee Leduc series is set in a Paris that’s so real I feel as if I’ve been on that precise street when I read that Aimee’s scuttling along in her high heels trying to look inconspicuous and chic at the same time. Cara’s fans love and demand this authenticity. And Cara gets to write off her trips to Paris. I get it.

And cops and lawyers tell us at writing seminars that it drives them crazy when fictional detectives use the wrong kind of bullets in their guns, don’t respect the hierarchy of the police department, or march around screwing up the evidence.

My first book comes out in June and the second one’s in the works. I’m pretty sure I got the important facts right, but I wonder if I’ll hear from some attentive reader calling me to task about a place name or bit of geography where I took what I’ll call imaginative leaps.

Do let me know!

Some days my fingers stick to the keys and I sit frozen. Nothing happens. No relevant brain waves. My email beeps. A clever (or not) tweet pops onto the computer screen. But words from me? None. I have forgotten how to move my fingers. They are glued in place.

Other times, I can’t get my characters out of the scene they wandered into. They are ignoring me, just chatting away, comparing favorite restaurants or griping about the weather. I need them to drop a clue, but they refuse to follow my bidding. On some level, I enjoy eavesdropping on their conversation, but I can’t seem to control them in service of my story. C’mon guys.

Then there are the times when my characters surprise the hell out of me by going off on their own, diving into deep waters without any warning, taking with them my notions of the plot and leaving me scrambling to figure out what just happened and why. Or, they refuse to die, turning up 20 pages later, smiling sheepishly but in much better health than I had planned.

These are the times when I want to scream, eat junk food, watch an old DVD, or try out a new nail polish that requires – requires – me not to put my wet nails on the keyboard for at least an hour if I’m lucky. It’s usually right about then that a friend calls to invite me to a movie or to go for a hike, or to help her with her garden on the weekend. “You’re so lucky to be a writer,” she’ll say. “You can just make up stories all day and get paid for it.”

Aarrghh, Urban Dictionary says, is a real word. The only one I can think of at the moment.

I’ll be posting a new, short blog about writing fiction on my site on Fridays from now on because I’ve also been invited to blog with the impressive mystery writers at The Ladykillers, and my turn there is every other Tuesday.

http://www.theladykillers.typepad.com/

Blogging is part of being a writer these days, it seems, and I enjoy these small riffs on the process and art of creating stories. But blogging is a lot more fun if you know someone is reading, so if you have a comment on anything I write – even if you disagree with me 100 percent, please don’t hesitate to leave it on either blog site. I promise to read all comments and to answer questions as best I can.

Otherwise, it’s like that tree falling in the forest!