Tip of the Week: When writing a genre book, especially a mystery, be sure to research, research, research.

Now obviously you don’t want to read so many books in your genre so many times that you start subcounciously plagarising them, but you do want to be familiar with your genre’s conventions. As an editor (and as a reader), there is nothing more frustrating than reading a book that you expect to work out one way, only to have it somehow mess up out of ignorance. It’s one thing to have a book conciously flaunt its genre’s conventions and work. It’s quite another to accidentally omit hallmarks of the genre and have the piece not work out.