I love to read mys­ter­ies. I love to be amazed, astound­ed, and com­plete­ly mys­ti­fied by the events as they hap­pen. How did that ama­teur sleuth think that, or solve this prob­lem? I love twists and turns. The more the bet­ter. And unex­pect­ed events? Oh, my!

But, since I’m a writer, I’m think­ing all the time—how did the author come up with that? She’s good. (Or he.)

Okay, since I’m a writer, I’m also thinking—how the heck am I going to come up with all those twists and turns for my work in progress? Gee, I’ve done it before. Can I do it again? There’s always the advice, that when you come to a spot where you don’t know what to do—shoot some­body. Oh, dear, that sounds dread­ful. I have already killed off two peo­ple, but so far, no guns. And, I think, two bod­ies is quite enough (for now, any­way). So, how do I keep that inter­est lev­el up?

Day before yes­ter­day, I want­ed to put Jo, my ama­teur sleuth, some­place dif­fer­ent. Let’s see, she’s been—oh, heck. She’s got a day off. Put her on a tour boat. Fine, I put her on a tour boat, but the whole thing was­n’t going any­where, so yes­ter­day, the tour boat was stopped by the Coast Guard. Okay, now what? Before I turned off the com­put­er last night, when the Coast Guard heard Jo’s name, they informed her she was com­ing with them and bod­i­ly lift­ed her off the tour boat and into the Coast Guard cut­ter.

So, today I’m wondering—why did they do that? At the moment, I have no clue. So, either I fig­ure out an answer, or I for­get about the Coast Guard cut­ter, and maybe even the tour boat. I’ll keep think­ing though. FYI — some­times these for­ays into the unknown dis­ap­pear, but some­times they turn into an incred­i­ble plot point.

So, the mys­tery is—which will it be?