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Dear Reader,
Today's guest author A. J. Cross would love to hear from you. Please welcome her to the book club. A.J. is a Birmingham, West Midlands-based Forensic Psychologist, and is often a court-appointed expert witness. Her qualifications include a Masters Degree and PhD obtained at the University of Birmingham, and her professional experience includes consultancy work for the Probation Service in her home city. Her latest book is A Little Death.
Email: mellordoc@outlook.com
How Four Little Words Can Change a Life
by A.J. Cross
Since I was first published in 2012, I've met many writers who share a unifying experience: they all 'wanted' to write. Some had the urge from when they were small, the 'Once-upon-a-time' storytellers, others as angst-ridden adolescents or later as busy accountants, lawyers and stay-at-home mothers. Listening to those writers made it apparent to me, that the writing urge was not something to be denied. In my case, I did not deny it. I never had it, until 2006.
For two decades prior to that date, I worked full-time as a forensic psychologist and court-appointed expert witness. It was demanding work. It involved painstaking attention to detail, analysis, application of psychological theory and the weighing of words to convey exactly what I wanted to say, in the hundreds of court reports I produced. I was wholly caught up with it. I loved the work. Still do, when I'm asked to do it and can fit it in with publication deadlines.
So, what happened in 2006? Let me set the scene of the day the urge struck and made me as willing a slave as any other writer. My husband, a jazz musician, was flying to Norway for a few days' work. In that helpful way husbands have, he suggested that--if I was at a loose end whilst he was gone--I might take the many crime novels I'd amassed and give them to a local charity shop. The weight of the books had been making our shelves a bit curvy, but I resisted the idea for a day or two. Finally, I brought them down, spread them around me on the rug and sat on my heels, pointing and muttering:
'No. No, not that one. That's Patricia Cornwell's first. Nor that Kathy Reichs. That Truman Capote is staying,' and, 'I've only read that Ann Rule a few times!'
It was then that those four, little, life-changing words slipped into my head with such clarity that I swear I actually heard them:
I Can Do This.
The urge had struck. That day I started my first crime novel, which became Gone in Seconds. Did I know what I was doing? Ha! Not a clue. But it came from the heart and I loved the creative freedom after years of restriction, which is an inevitable part of writing court reports. Since then, I've learned how to plot and plan (always advisable if you want to avoid madness) and I still love it. The urge is definitely here.
--A.J. Cross
email: mellordoc@outlook.com
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: The Gypsy Moth Summer (Fiction) by Julia Fierro
It's the summer of 1992 and a gypsy moth invasion blankets Avalon Island. Vivid with young lovers, gangs of outsiders; a plotting matriarch and demented military patriarch, this novel is about the struggle to connect: within families, and among friends, neighbors and entire generations.
Go to AUTHORBUZZ click on The Gypsy Moth Summer to read more and to email author Julia Fierro, you'll get a reply.
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