Mysteries have been my drug of choice ever since Mrs. Eggleston read one of the Bobsey Twins books aloud to our second grade class. Thereafter, I ditched swinging at recess for playing detective with whoever I could convince to be Freddie to my Flossie.

Mrs. Eggleston had no idea the Bobsey Twins could be an entrance drug.

During my middle school years, Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden ensnared me. By high school and into college, I was hooked on Agatha Christie. During our South Dakota years, I mainlined P. D. James and Arthur Conan Doyle. Once we moved to Boone, and books were freely available on the street corner than housed the city library, my habit grew: Elizabeth Peters, Diane Mott Davidson, Lilian Jackson, MC Beaton, Catherine Hart, Sue Grafton.

Those are only a few of the authors who turned me into a life long mystery junkie.

These days, I’m reading Craig Johnson, Jane Haddam, Jacqueline Winspear, Anne George, Elizabeth George, David Rosenfelt, and whoever else I can get my hands on. Reading when time allows. Listening to audiobooks when it doesn’t. Watching PBS Mysteries when I’m desperate.

But those fixes no longer satisfy my cravings.

I want more. Much more. Now I dream about making my own stuff, of setting up a little fiction lab in the living room. I’ve read two cookbooks–Elizabeth George’s Write Away and James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure. I’ve gathered the ingredients: the strange disappearance of a rancher in northwest South Dakota, a greenhorn elementary teacher who comes to town and lands in the middle of the mystery. I’ve scrounged together a theme, a plot. I even have time to work on it. All that remains is to mix everything together and cook the book, so to speak.

But I’m scared. Really scared.

What if mystery writing consumes all my time? What if the book never gets published? What if it leads to unforeseen consequences? What if I’m a coward and turn my back on this opportunity? What if I fail? What if I succeed?

Why did Mrs. Eggleston have to introduce our class to those Bobsey twins?

But even if she hadn’t, even if she’d stuck with less edgy second grade fare like Dick and Jane, I probably wouldn’t have heard, “Run, Jane, run!” I would have heard, “Write, Jolene, write.” Because I hated to run. But I was hooked on stories. Even before the Bobsey Twins. So here goes nothing…

…write, Jolene, write!