Kim Fay: Accidental Mystery Writer
I am an accidental mystery writer.
My debut novel was published in 2012, and the marketing
people sold it as literary, adventure, historical … everything but mystery.
Then, out of the blue, it was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First
Novel. Voila! The Map of Lost Memories
became a mystery, and I was swept into a world I hadn’t known existed: the
world of mystery writers.
Obviously, I knew that people wrote mysteries. I became a
writer to follow in the footsteps of Carolyn Keene. But I didn’t know the depth
and breadth of the world that mystery writers inhabited until the Genre Fairy
tapped me on the shoulder with her magic wand, sprinkled fairy dust over me and
declared, “You are no longer this. You
are now that. Enjoy!”
It’s hard to explain how I felt. It was as if I’d been
waiting all my life to become that without
knowing it. But once I did know it, I followed the Genre Fairy’s advice and
enjoyed my little heart out. I joined Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in
Crime, attended the Edgar awards and Bouchercon. But my first true understanding of the new world I’d become a part of
happened at the 2013 California Crime Writers Conference.
By this time The
Map of Lost Memories had been out almost a year, and I knew that I wanted
to write a more traditional mystery as well as incorporate mystery elements
into my novel-in-progress. So I focused on the craft and forensic sections of
the conference. I learned tips on plotting based on screenplay structure. I
learned that I did not have the stomach to write about infanticide. I learned
that plot is important, but it’s the characters that make or break a mystery. I
listened with great respect to Sue Grafton and Elizabeth George, I met the
creator of Columbo (wow!), I met two
fans (super flattering!), I discovered that writing a mystery is not an easy
thing to do, and most importantly, I made friends.
More supportive and buoyant than any other group of
writers I’ve met, mystery writers are also the most serious. By serious I do
not mean snooty. I mean committed and passionate. It’s this commitment and
passion that make them so generous and inclusive. This is something I continue
to rediscover at every meeting, reading and conference I attend, but I will
always have a soft spot for CCWC because it was here that I realized that it
wasn’t an accident. It had taken me a while, but I was finally where I belonged
all along.
Kim Fay was born in Seattle and raised throughout the small towns of Washington State. After working as a bookseller for more than five years at the Elliott Bay Book Company, she moved to Vietnam in the mid-1990s. She lived in Saigon for four years and have been traveling regularly to Southeast Asia for more than twenty. Kim is the author of the historical novel The Map of Lost Memories, a 2013 Edgar Award finalist for Best First Novel by an American Author, and the food memoir Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam, winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards’ Best Asian Cuisine Book in the United States. She is also the creator/editor of the To Asia With Love guidebook series.
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Kim Fay was born in Seattle and raised throughout the small towns of Washington State. After working as a bookseller for more than five years at the Elliott Bay Book Company, she moved to Vietnam in the mid-1990s. She lived in Saigon for four years and have been traveling regularly to Southeast Asia for more than twenty. Kim is the author of the historical novel The Map of Lost Memories, a 2013 Edgar Award finalist for Best First Novel by an American Author, and the food memoir Communion: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam, winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards’ Best Asian Cuisine Book in the United States. She is also the creator/editor of the To Asia With Love guidebook series.
Register now for CCWC, June 6-7, 2015
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