This is not a drill: A Party to Murder is coming out this week! On January 8, 2026, a years-long journey will reach a new milestone. To say that I’m excited is an understatement. To say that I’m nervous is an even bigger understatement. This is a week for feeling all the feelings … which is as it should be. In honour of the release of my first mystery novel – and the book I consider my true debut – I thought I would spend a little time reminiscing about the journey to this point, which is a culmination of sorts but also (I hope) the beginning of a new chapter. Indulge me?
I’m gonna start by throwing it all the way back to the beginning. One of my first memories is my mom reading to me. I’m pretty sure it was a Jules Verne book. My brain tells me it was The Mysterious Island, but it may be lying to me; not that it matters. Pretty soon, I was reading on my own – a free-range, omnivorous reader, because my parents never really monitored my reading, and gave me free access to their books from the time I was in elementary school. Pretty soon after that, I decided that I was going to be a writer when I grew up. I was obsessed with books and storytelling. Being an only child with (undiagnosed) AuDHD, I pretty much lived inside my own head most of the time, in worlds of my own making – writing, directing, and acting out stories every chance I got. Summers were my favourite, because I could spend whole days reading in bed, devouring every book I could get my hands on. Literally. I would read the encyclopedia (for fun) one day, Balzac the next. The Bible or Tolstoy — it was all grist for the mill to me. There were tons of things that went waaay over my head, but that didn’t matter. It made the books more fun in a way, because reading felt like a key to an adult world full of mysteries … and what kid doesn’t love that?
Weirdly enough, I don’t remember actually writing down any of my own stories as a kid, except for a few one-act plays and some poetry. And even that stopped once my parents and I left Romania, and I had to learn a whole new language. It’s funny: until I started writing this post, I’d never stopped to think why, from the age of 12 until my early twenties, I did almost no creative writing. In fact, other than journaling, I did practically no writing whatsoever outside of school. Now, I’m realizing that this was probably connected with the dislocation I experienced. It’s very likely that I didn’t feel like I had a sufficiently firm grasp of the English language until I was in my 20s, with a couple of university degrees under my belt. And a decade of reading in English. [Strangely enough, I now consider English my (adopted) mother tongue. It’s the language of my inner monologue and dreams.]
Reading, unlike writing, never stopped being an obsession. My teenage self was a self-conscious — and self-aware — nerdy weirdo so of course I spent most of my time locked away in my room, reading. After switching to English, I was as omnivorous a reader as before. I read everything: history, science, biographies, literary fiction, classic lit, genre fiction, you name it. Chief among my favourite genres was, what else, mystery. It is not an exaggeration to say that I learned English reading classic murder mysteries, particularly Agatha Christie. [She is a fantastic author for ESL readers, btw.] It was a love I shared with my mom. Some of my fave memories are of the two of us watching British murder mystery shows, like the Poirot series.
Although I never really fell out of the habit of daydreaming up stories (still AuDHD, still undiagnosed), when I started writing again in my 20s, it was not fiction. The 2000s were the dawn of the blogging era, and I was still going through my existential/philosophical phase; naturally, I started blogging my ‘deep thoughts’ – Adventures in Wonderland, I think it was called. I abandoned that blog after a while, and a few years later, in 2010, I started Blue Collar Red Lipstick as an outlet to talk about my interest in fashion and personal style. By then, I was deep in the trenches of so-called adult life, juggling a busy, stressful career and family life with my husband and, a few short years later, two babies. Blogging fit in the interstitial slivers of daily life not consumed by my other responsibilities; I didn’t have the bandwidth for anything else.
Then, in about 2015, the urge to write – specifically, the urge to write fiction – came roaring back. I became obsessed with one particular idea for a fantasy story that had been rattling around my brain for nearly a decade and decided I had to turn it into a novel. The only problem? I had no idea how to write a novel. Sorry, scratch that: I had 2 problems. I had no idea how to write a novel … and I had no idea that I had no idea how to write a novel. I assumed that, idea in mind, I could just sit down and bang out the story. After all, I was an avid reader, I had always gotten top marks in all my literature classes at university, and everyone always complimented my writing. Now, having lurked on writerly Reddit spaces for a while, I know that this (a) describes a significant portion of novice writers, and (b) does not correlate to an ability to write a novel. Back then, I had no idea.
I struggled – and I mean, struh-uh-ggled – through the writing of my beloved story, hating every minute of the process. I finished it because my brain, once fixed on a specific project, will not allow me to stop until it’s complete, but nothing about it felt good, during or after. I remember telling people at the time that the experience was one of the most difficult and unpleasant of my life, second only to my first year of law school (when I nearly had a nervous breakdown). I assumed that this was normal. I didn’t love the book as finished, even though others who read it told me they enjoyed it. I assumed this meant that I wasn’t a very good (fiction) writer. But I was proud of myself for having done the thing: I’d written a book. I’d checked off one huge item on my life bucket list, and I felt like I could move on.
It’s not that I consciously gave up on the idea of ‘being a writer’ … except that I kinda did.
Fast forward to December 2023. A comment from one of my Instagram friends prompted me to start writing a personal memoir on a whim. Because it was an extension of the writing I’ve been doing on the blog for years, the process was far easier. Fun, even. It was probably not a coincidence that this happened around the same time that I was finally diagnosed and started taking medication for ADHD. With the ADHD symptoms under control for the first time in my life, the other side of my neurodivergent brain was finally able to fully flex its muscles … and, let me tell you, hyperfixation is a real boon to writing. My memoir was ultimately yet another ‘doomed’ project, for reasons that had less to do with the writing itself and more to do with the genre and subject matter; nonetheless, its ‘failure’ sent me into a creative tailspin for a while. My love of writing had been reignited, but I had no idea where or how to channel it.
The answer came to me, suddenly, a year later. It came in a kind of complete, fully realized version: I knew exactly what kind of book I wanted to write. Something that combined romance and mystery with a light-hearted, cozy vibe. Something like Georgette Heyer or Agatha Christie, two of my fave ‘comfort read’ authors. The tone, the voice, and the characters were all there, in my head. The plot took a little bit longer to figure out; in the past, I had been intimidated by the mystery genre because I didn’t feel like I was smart enough to create a very clever puzzle. Belatedly, I realized that this wasn’t necessary for the type of mystery novel I wanted to write. I wanted to write something fun, immersive, and character-focused – not necessarily something that would blow readers away with a never-before-read premise or bonkers plot twists. I wanted my book to be a delightful emotional journey rather than a puzzle-solving exercise per se. Adding romance to the mystery helped me to overcome my plotting insecurities.
In a similarly magical way, I discovered that I (somehow?) knew how to write a book all of a sudden. Like, I was able to sit down and create an entire story outline, with most of the beats in mostly the right places. And once I had that outline, the writing just flowed. And flowed. And flowed. I wrote A Party to Murder in less than half the time of my first novel, and I enjoyed every single minute of it. I was HOOKED. For the first time in decades, I felt the passion for storytelling and for the written word that had consumed me as a child.
Then came the editing, which I enjoyed a lot less. As far as that goes, the best thing I did was start writing a second book … and then another book, and another. With every new book I wrote, my technical skills got better, and I put them to use by going back and revising A Party to Murder, again and again. All told, I think I ended up about a dozen full rounds of revisions, which doesn’t include the final proof-reading. I started with about 150K words and ended up with just over 90K, which was a kind of lesson in itself. Beta readers, a professional editor, a couple of rounds of ARCs, and … I had a book. And not just any book, but a book I love without reservations. A book that makes me excited to keep writing.
A book that is ready to launch into the world. Oh em gee!!
