#WhatsYourStory Featuring Margaret Mizushima

Margaret Mizushima is the author of the acclaimed Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, which have been nominated for several awards including the RT Reviewers’ Choice, Colorado Book, and the Silver Falchion. Kings River Life listed her fourth, Burning Ridge, as a Best Book of 2018. Margaret serves on the board for the Rocky Mountain chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and she lives on a small farm in Colorado with her husband and a pack of dogs. She can be found on Facebook/AuthorMargaretMizushima, on Twitter @margmizu, on Instagram at margmizu, and on her website at www.margaretmizushima.com.

Most of us have heard it before: “I want to write a book, but I just don’t have time.” Yes, I agree that it takes a lot of time to write a book, but it also takes so much more than that. And if you truly want to write one, you can get started by laying the groundwork even now, in what little spare time you’ve got.

My writing career evolved over so many years, it’s hard to pinpoint when it began. Back before the turn of the century when I worked as a speech pathologist, I used to stand in the cashier line at the grocery store and use this “leisure time” to search for my next weekend escape in the form of a mass-market paperback. (Only a working mom of two thinks of grocery shopping as leisure time.) I’ve been an avid fiction reader my entire life and have used books to visit exciting places and meet entertaining people, but in those days I didn’t think it possible that I could write a novel myself. But reading is an essential first step.

Shortly before I retired, I used weekends to begin writing the first chapter in a nonfiction work, until I became distracted by this wild idea for a story. During the next six months, I eked out every spare minute I could to write my first novel, terrible as it was. I was hooked—I set aside that nonfiction book and never looked back. But I also realized I had a lot to learn about writing fiction.

After retirement from full time work, I took a part time job and started studying the art and craft of fiction writing. I attended writing conferences, took creative writing classes at my local university, participated in critique groups, and studied how-to books on writing.

When I first told friends and family that I planned to write a novel, I received a wide range of responses, from skeptical raised eyebrows to words of encouragement. I soon learned how easy it was to become discouraged. Some people love to burst the dream bubble of others, and I learned to avoid discussing my plans with those naysayers.

When I first started writing, I sought feedback from family and close friends, but soon I ventured into critique groups, a necessary stage in any writer’s life. I learned how to find other writers who would give honest and responsible feedback to help me improve my craft.

I wrote many manuscripts in a variety of genres over the years, but the turning point came when I decided to write a mystery. I read and outlined the works of bestselling authors I loved: Sue Grafton, J.A. Jance, Margaret Coel, Michael Connelly, and Lee Child, to name a few. These wonderful mysteries and thrillers provided inspiration, but it took sitting in on a conference workshop on how to write a mystery to get me started.

They say write what you know and research before you write what you don’t. I took this advice to heart. I decided to set my mystery series in a small mountain town—similar to the one I grew up in but fictional—and to include a veterinarian as one of the protagonists, because I’m married to a vet. I wanted to write a police procedural, so it only made sense to create a K-9 Deputy and her dog, which required a great deal of research on my part and some awesome consultants who agreed to help. But the fact that I’d lived around dogs, observed their behavior, and participated in search and rescue training with a couple of our dogs certainly helped.

Thus the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries featuring Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker were born. Although the process took years, I found first an agent and then an editor and publisher that I love. Crooked Lane Books and I released Killing Trail, book one in the series, in December 2015. We now have four books out with two more under contract.

And it all started with that horrible manuscript written more than a decade ago that will never see the light of day.

So if you want to write a novel, go ahead and get started. Read, educate yourself, write, seek critique, revise, repeat. Find like-minded people and friends who will encourage you along the way. You can do it, even if you have only a few hours each week to dedicate to the process.

Go ahead and get started!

---

Burning Ridge

Colorado’s Redstone Ridge is a place of extraordinary beauty, but this rugged mountain wilderness harbors a horrifying secret. When a charred body is discovered in a shallow grave, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner Robo are called in to spearhead the investigation. But this is no ordinary crime—and they soon become the targets of a ruthless killer.
Find Margaret on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and her website

---

Where to Buy Burning Ridge

Amazon