Carol Potenza

New Mexico Mysteries

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Writing

Have you ever seen a ghost?

I have, one time. That’s all.  Even though most of my books contain supernatural or paranormal elements, and I’ve actively looked (ask me about Ghost Tours that I’ve been on and the cemeteries I’ve explored), I think my mind is too scientifically ordered. That might sound intellectually snooty, that I’m just more logic driven, but it’s not. I know people who do see and hear and experience the supernatural, and I believe them. Why are you getting this story now? We’re past October and Halloween when the internet is flooded with creepy tales and directions to creepy places. It came …

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Mystery versus Suspense. Do You REALLY Know the Difference?

Well, the modified quote from Alfred Hitchcock is a good place to start, MORE or LESS. (Heh. Basically, he had movie instead of book and audience instead of reader). MYSTERY is when the reader knows LESS than the characters in the book. A mystery plays to the intellectual, to the “little gray cells”. In a mystery, facts are unknown and it’s a puzzle to be solved a little bit at a time. You could use the blossoming of a flower as a metaphor for clues revealed or peeling layers of an onion, but I prefer layers of a parfait, like …

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Demystifying the Beats Uncovers the Secrets of Mystery…

Demystifying the Beats: Dire Disruption The Dire Disruption will be at the end of Act 2, right at the midpoint climax. And like the midpoint climax in any story, it’s a watershed. After it occurs, everything changes. It’s the point where the sleuth is on the downward slope to solving the case, and the villain knows it. For a Whodunit, the Dire Disruption will probably be focused on the sleuth. In my Nicky Matthews mystery series, when you reach the Dire Disruption, you will DEFINITELY know it. It’s a slap in the face for both the reader and the sleuth. …

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New Mexico + Fiction + Science Mixology

I love reading. Books and stories–fiction and nonfiction–take you to places you can never go and let you become friends with people you will never meet. I love writing even more because then I get to create those places and people. People with characteristics I want but will never have except on the page. Places no one will ever go because they’re in the past or future. And science twisted into science fiction that drive the plots of my stories. For example: People: Sergeant Nicky Matthews in Hearts of the Missing, Tony Hillerman Prize winning book. She’s actually based on …

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Quick 500 Word Story Reads: Pick your Favorite

Two very short stories. Which one is your favorite? POOL OF DESPAIR Something wasn’t right. He stopped and crept out on the rocky ledge and peered over. Reflected on the surface, his shaved head with its a parchment face stared back. The breeze rippled the water, pulling his tight lips into a slash above his chin, his deep-set eyes dark holes. He compared staring into the spring to looking through the air on a winter day. The water, so clean and cold, burbled out of the surrounding rocky crags as if they’d been struck by a miraculous staff. Nothing was …

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