How Did I First Get Into Writing?

A question I'm often asked: Did you always want to be a writer?

Probably the most cliché answer ever . . . but I dabbled in writing from the time I was very young. Mostly scary/ghost stories like most kids coming up on Are You Afraid of the Dark? and R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps and Fear Street. It's what children did in their tattered Lisa Frank notebooks that went with them everywhere.

Then, first semester of my senior year of high school, class of ’05, I took creative writing at Pembroke Academy in Pembroke, New Hampshire, which covered short-story writing and poetry. I still have my entire portfolio. Hey, I just thought of a future blog post idea . . . I could share some of my writing from that class—one of which I was encouraged to get published, but I lacked faith and confidence in myself. However, my flair for descriptive imagery was definitely born. 

My second semester at PA is when I took forensics, where I was first introduced to the story of Josie Langmaid—a seventeen-year-old girl horrifically slain on her way to attend class at Pembroke Academy in the autumn of 1875. She was also a senior. I had moved from Nashua to Pembroke in 2003, so this story was all new to me, whereas most everyone else in the class was, quite literally, raised on the story. Most having to write a school paper on it by the sixth grade. 

Walking home from school that same fall day, I stopped at the library on the way. The kindly librarians directed me to a VHS of the NH Crossroads three-part series on the murder, hosted by Fritz Wetherbee. After watching it alone, I then shared it with my family and even brought it to class the next day, where I watched it for the third time in twenty-four hours. Friends drove me past the monument erected at the location she was slain and past the house she grew up in that still stands. Needless to say, I NEVER forgot the story. 

After graduating high school, I proceeded to attempt to write a novel, which I still have printed out. Fast forward to October 31, 2019, when I received the Neighborhood News and saw a face and monument that I immediately recognized.

I read the article and thought how I’d like to one day research it in even more depth. For the time being, I was completing my self-education to become a freelance proofreader/copy editor—a passion of mine. 

You see, I have a photographic memory, and I was trying to think of what good use I could put it to. It turns out editing and writing! While reading, I often pick up on if a name or word is spelled differently throughout a text (e.g., gray vs grey) or if a detail doesn't match something previously stated. I am also good at sussing out anachronisms in a story. Another one of my strengths is with homophones (e.g., metal/medal/mettle/ meddle), malapropisms (e.g., escape goat rather than scapegoat), and eggcorns (e.g., free reign instead of free rein). What are eggcorns? You may be asking. It's a misheard word or phrase that one mistakenly uses in place of the correct one, but the meaning remains logical or plausible—hence people mishearing eggcorn for acorn. Unlike a malapropism, which is often nonsensical.

The only thing I wasn’t the greatest at was some of the punctuation rules that I had forgotten after more than ten years out of school. To brush up on basic grammar, I tore through The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation. 

It was after such time that I thought to myself . . . Hey, maybe I could write a book! But it couldn’t be just any ol’ book or story. I wanted it to bring together my love of history, forensics, and research. It had to be something I was passionate enough about to feel like I could devote myself to the project and be excited for other people to learn the story through reading my book.

I pulled out my very first piece of inspiration in Jerel Speck’s Neighborhood News article and then joined Newspapers.com, where I clipped over 250 articles related to the story. I also acquired the various court transcripts in the case, and it was in poring over all this information that I thought . . . Wow, this story is truly stranger than fiction! How has no one ever written about it before now? So, I took it upon myself to tell people all about Josie Langmaid and Marietta Ball so that way they’d never be forgotten. 

I guess you could say that I was just called to write their stories. If you're interested in reading Malice Aforethought, please visit my Books page on my website where you will find links for where to purchase, or check your local library.

In a future post, I will share with you my first book writing journey and about how I nearly gave up . . .