Milford House Mysteries Show -- Sherry and Joan discuss writing fiction

Milford House Mysteries Show

Mystery authors Sherry Knowlton and Joan West talk about an aspect of the art of writing mysteries in this episode called Grounding Fiction in Fact.

Sherry Knowlton is the author of the Alexa Williams series of murder mysteries including Dead of Autumn, Dead of Summer, and Dead of Spring. Joan West is the author of the Carlisle Crime Cases series including Dying for Vengeance, Courting Doubt and Darkness, Darkness at First Light, and Had a Dying Fall. 

Readers may not always appreciate the amount of research that mystery novelists often have to do for their books.  After all, it’s fiction, right?

In reality, a lot of fiction must be grounded in fact. Many mystery novels require a significant amount of research to make the story as accurate as possible and credible to readers.  This type of research can span a gamut of sources from books, newspaper articles, and internet sources to interviews with experts in various fields to hands-on author experience.

 In this episode of the Milford House Mystery Show, Sherry and Joan discuss their own research techniques and how they’ve tackled accuracy in topics as varied as police crime scene procedures, sex trafficking, Revolutionary War battles, Woodstock, and fracking.