Leslie Karst, author of A Sense for Murder, a Sally Solari mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to talk about her evolving writing style.

Welcome, Leslie. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

Authors are often asked whether we’re plotters or pantsers—do we plan out our story lines in advance and outline them in detail, or merely start writing and just see what happens?

I’ve been a devout plotter for most my fiction-writing career. And for my legal writing career as well, when I worked as a research and appellate attorney. Though truly, I can’t fathom how anyone could draft a legal brief without doing at least a little outlining. (Oh wait, come to think of it, I do believe some of those sloppy motions I received from opposing counsel over the years might well have been written without a whole lot of advance planning….)

When I set out to draft my first Sally Solari mystery, even the thought of sitting down with only a vague idea and then simply writing a mystery novel scared the heck out of me. You have to plant clues, after all, and red herrings, and suspects. How could you do that just willy-nilly? (Asks this list-making, check-everything-three-times, Virgo.)

But what’s interesting is that when it comes to cooking, I’ve always been the exact opposite. Sure, I love to read cookbooks. And my favorite day of the week for the newspaper is when the food section comes out, so I can peruse the recipes, maybe learn a new technique for rolling out pasta, and drool over all the seasonal ingredients highlighted that time of year.

But I don’t tend to use recipes when I prepare food. In this area of my life I am a full-on pantser, tasting my sauce, adding a dash of this or that, then tasting it again. I don’t worry about messing it up, because I have a solid understanding of the chemistry of cooking, so I know instinctively what will work and what won’t. (This is the reason I’m not a keen baker—for it’s pretty darn hard to use a seat-of-the-pants method when you’re making a cake or a baguette. Bakers don’t even call them “recipes”; they refer to their preparation methods as “formulae.”)

But here’s the thing: over the years, I’ve gradually become more and more of a pantser with each of the books in my series. I had the opportunity to sit on a panel several years ago which included the talented Laurie R. King, and when we were asked about this plotter/pantser thing, Laurie talked about how she’d been a complete plotter for her first four books, but then switched to the seat-of-your-pants method. “By then I’d figured out how to do it, how to write a mystery novel,” she explained, “so I figured, why not try it the other way? And it worked.” She’s been a devout seat-of-the-pantser ever since.

I thought a lot about what Laurie said that night, and when I embarked on this sixth novel in my series, A Sense for Murder, I decided to throw caution to the wind and went at it without a fully fleshed-out plot. (Mind you, I did have an idea of how the book would start and finish and whodunit, but that long middle was merely the germ of an idea.)

And you know what? It was fun! But a little scary, too—especially when I’d finish a scene and then have no idea where I was going next. I found myself going on long bike rides and talking aloud to myself, asking, “What would Sally so in this situation? What if X happened to her, and then she reacted by doing Y?” The walkers along West Cliff Drive where I like to ride likely wondered why the heck this strange gal was pedaling along talking to herself about murder and mayhem.

But hey—as with Laurie, it worked, and I’m exceedingly pleased with how this new book turned out. So perhaps I’ve made a permanent switch—maybe all those years pantsing it in the kitchen without a recipe has paid off in my writing career!

Thank you for sharing this with us, Leslie, and good luck with A Sense for Murder, a Sally Solari mystery.

Readers can learn more about Leslie Karst by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook, Goodreads, BookBub and Instagram pages. Readers can also follow her on Twitter.

The book is available online at the following retailers:

 Amazon – B&N – Bookshop.org

About Leslie Karst: Leslie is the author of the Lefty Award-nominated Sally Solari mystery series and Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG. After years waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock band, she decided she was ready for a “real” job and ended up at Stanford Law School. It was during her career as an attorney that Leslie rediscovered her youthful passion for food and cooking and once more returned to school—this time to earn a degree in culinary arts. Now retired from the law, Leslie spends her time cooking, cycling, gardening, observing cocktail hour promptly at five o’clock, and of course writing. She and her wife split their time between Santa Cruz, California, and Hilo, Hawai‘i.