Back in the 1990s, although I had changed genres several times, I swore I didn’t write mystery and never could, not me. Mystery as I knew it was plotty and artificial, lavished with red herrings like ornaments on a Christmas tree. (Brief, dreadful visual of tree decorated w/ red herrings, suppressed.) Also it trivialized the loss of human life. So I wasn’t going there, thank you. As a writer I like to challenge myself, BUT. (Voice of Meatloaf: “I will do anything to get published, but I WON’T DO THAT.”)

However, one boring summer, feeling the urge to try something new, I decided to write a book for people who don’t care to read. Let’s make guns for pacifists, grow cattle for vegetarians, roll spitballs for teachers? Ah, but the marketing did make sense after all, because those teachers would thrust my product upon the reluctant readers, who were predominantly teenage boys. In order to seduce them (in a nonsexual way), my protagonist would have to be a male teen who was BAD. Ideally, he should be inner-city, but having never lived in a city, I didn’t think I could pull that off. However, I’d been in contact with a rather scary family living in an isolated, ramshackle trailer on the flood plain of the Susquehanna river. Tuff could live there. (Already my tough boy’s nickname was Tuff.)

And what would Tuff do? I knew he had to grab the reader from the first sentence and never let go. No problem: my kids had told me about one of their high-school classmates who had been riding his dirt bike when he ran into a trap somebody had set. A cable strung across a wooded trail at neck height had crushed his windpipe and killed him. I found this so disturbing and just plain mean that I needed to write about it. I couldn’t kill off Tuff, of course, but I could kill off his brother and Tuff could be right there on the bike behind him. Tuff would have a very, very hard time dealing with his brother’s death. Because he was “tough,” rather than grieving he would seek revenge. He would nearly kill an innocent man.

I wrote TOUGHING IT in first person viewpoint using Tuff’s voice. His mother was drunk as usual and unsupportive when he told her about his brother’s death. He had no father. His approximate stepfather was abusive. He ran away from home. By the time I got to Chapter Five of the novel, writing from my gut, I began to wonder whether the story was so sad and depressing that no reader, reluctant or otherwise, would be able to stand it. So I pulled back, trying to lighten up. I managed to finish the manuscript on a positive note.

Then, as is my rule, I put it aside for a while. But one day my daughter, fourteen years old at the time, wandered into my office complaining of nothing to do. I handed her the print backup of the manuscript. “Here, read this.”

Rather to my surprise she did so. Two hours later she returned. “Mom, the beginning is okay, but the ending is, like, lame. You never said who did the murder.”

To which I retorted, “It’s not a murder mystery. It’s about Tuff’s grieving process.”

“Whatever.” She meandered off.

The truth was, if the four stages of grief are denial, anger, depression and acceptance, I had pretty much skipped denial and depression. But in due time I finished (I thought) TOUGHING IT and sent it in. The first editor who saw it rejected it, but one of the nice things about being agented is they always tell you why they declined. The editor said that the manuscript was very strong through Chapter Five, but at that point the author had evidently chickened out. Also, the author needed to solve the murder mystery. If the author did these things, the editor would be interested in seeing the book again.

Well. Guess who should have listened to her gut. And her daughter.

I had utterly no idea who had killed Tuff’s brother. In the real-life case I was trying to exorcise, no one was ever prosecuted. In the book, I had turned the cable into a shotgun rigged by a trip wire, because Tuff wanted to have his revenge in kind, and it’s easier/more believable to tote a gun around than a cable. By the way, I am still ticked off at whoever in the pub house changed “triggers” to “trigger’s.” A double barreled shotgun has two triggers, for gosh sake.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I still needed a murderer. So I called my brother Ben, ex-cop, and he told me the guys growing marijuana in the state forest land on top of the mountain did it. I didn’t even know they were there before he told me. He also explained how to rig up the shotgun trap. This is why TOUGHING IT is dedicated to Ben.

Duly revised, it was eventually accepted by the same wise editor, and upon publication it became an ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALA/YALSA Recommended Book for the Reluctant Young Adult Reader, and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. Better yet, I heard this from an English teacher: one of her students, a boy who had never read a novel in his life, finished TOUGHING IT in a day, then demanded, “Youse got any more books by this here lady?”

These honors, and good reviews, and the good news from the teacher, pleased me enormously, but I hope you will not think I suffer from an enlarged head if I say they did not surprise me. I mean, TOUGHING IT was my twentieth published novel, and I’d heard nice things about my books before. But I WAS surprised – indeed, astonished – when I received word that this book for reluctant readers was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. I was nonplussed, dumbfounded, and astounded, because I knew I didn’t write mystery.

My agent encouraged me to attend the award ceremony, a very dressy affair in New York City, if only for the sake of mingling, and she convinced me by promising to go with me. But I felt sure I could not possibly win. For something to wear, I borrowed from my daughter the long black standby she wore when playing violin solos. I enjoyed the trip to New York, and hobnobbing with my agent, and the parties, and how nice everybody at the Edgars was to me, and the dinner, European style, salad served at the end.

As for receiving the award, I was stunned. I went up to the podium and dithered. I had no speech prepared, because I did not write mystery. My agent informed me, “Now you do,” but I still didn’t believe her.

Not until I won another one the next year, for LOOKING FOR JAMIE BRIDGER.

Then I got serious, wrote some short stories for the mystery magazines, and eventually wrote the ENOLA HOLMES series, thanks to the two Edgars I won by mistake. But I haven’t received any since I began writing mystery.