Crime Time very kindly invited me to contribute a guest post about the process of writing the latest Anna Scavolini mystery, The Reckoning, and to expand on some of the themes it touches on.

With six novels under my belt, I thought I had a reasonable feel for what the process of writing one looks like. Spend months taking notes and outlining. Write first draft. Conclude that first draft is terrible and needs to be completely rewritten. Write second draft. Rinse and repeat. Imagine my surprise, then, when The Reckoning, the fifth book in the Anna Scavolini series and my seventh overall, emerged more or less fully formed from the word go and underwent by far the lightest round of edits I’ve ever experienced.