Summer of Discovery: Discovering My Dark Side

Welcome to Elaine Viets, longtime friend and truly wonderful person!

Elaine Viets writes two national bestselling mystery series. In her tenth Dead-End Job mystery, "Pumped for Murder," Helen Hawthorne investigates extreme bodybuilding and a death from South Florida's cocaine cowboy days.

Elaine's second series features St. Louis mystery shopper Josie Marcus. "An Uplifting Murder" is the sixth book. Elaine has won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards and has been praised in the New York Times. She blogs for The Lipstick Chronicles and the Femmes Fatales.

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I write two mystery series. Funny mysteries. My books are beach reads – entertainment that makes you laugh. One reviewer called me "the queen of cozy humor" for my new Dead-End Job mystery, "Pumped for Murder."

Both my series heroines work hard to bring justice to the victims they encounter. Helen Hawthorne tracks down killers in the Dead-End Job mysteries, set in South Florida. Josie Marcus, a mystery shopper, solves the mysteries she encounters in St. Louis. These women take murder seriously, but have a light-hearted view of life.

The reviewer didn't know about my dark side. I write dark, brooding short stories. These stories are often told by the killer.

My venture into the dark side started with "Wedding Knife," a story about a woman forced to wear an ugly bridesmaid's dress. Nearly every woman would sympathize with her plight. Readers agreed. That story won an Agatha and an Anthony Award. My dark side was hungry for more.

I fed it with "Red Meat." This time the narrator was a man. I'd never written from a man's point of view – another discovery. This man was a killer on Death Row. He had it coming.

While my protagonists Helen and Josie tripped over bodies and solved murders for 16 novels, I relished my dark role. One of my latest short stories is "The Bedroom Door" in the Mystery Writers of America's anthology "Crimes by Moonlight," edited by vampire queen Charlaine Harris.

Through the "The Bedroom Door" I entered the world of the paranormal. This story was based on my grandmother Frances Vierling, who had second sight. Grandma believed that dead family members stopped by her bedroom to say good-bye before they left on their final journey.

I expanded the fictional grandmother's psychic powers. Once again, I reveled in the voice of the guilty narrator – a jealous wife with a hair-trigger temper.

In each short story, I explore the depths of my dark side a little more.

I haven't gone all the way. Not yet. I've never written a full-length novel. I may get there yet, but right now, the path remains . . . dark.

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Thanks, Elaine!! I'm honored to have been a fellow Agatha nominee the same year "Wedding Knife" won! How about you, readers? Have you in either reading or writing started to explore a darker side?

Comment below no later than Wednesday, July 20, 2011 for a chance to win an MP3-CD of "Crimes by Moonlight," edited by Charlaine Harris, with short stories by Charlaine, Carolyn Hart, Margaret Maron, Dana Cameron and 15 more mystery writers! Drawing will be on Thursday.