Perhaps the word phenomena should have been used here as there are two areas of interesting and, to me, surprising things going on.
The first surprise is the non-response to an offer of a free program on my work with the Stacey Burns murder case. Here in Arizona, two professional writing groups have had me speak about the process of writing Murder in a Small Town: The Tragic Death of Stacey Burns. In addition to those presentations, a newspaper editor has contacted me about doing an article on that process. My thought was that people in the Lakes Region might be more interested in the case than people twenty-seven hundred miles away. I have no problem with this in and of itself. It is just interesting to me and arouses my curiosity as to why?
A second surprise is a lack of response to direct contact (via e-mail) to folks who have spoken to me previously. Granted, not everyone reads e-mail regularly so perhaps I should wait a while longer. When I wrote my first two books, both novels, I found that most people were quite excited to talk to me as I did the research, eager to share information to help the projects along. Writing in the true crime genre is certainly different, at least from my perspective so far.
After almost three years, I’ll admit to being a bit confused about the response my research receives. Every day, I hope that something happens which will eliminate that confusion.
