My dear friend’s name is Midnight Wilson (well really it
isn’t, but it serves my purposes here), and she has followed my work over the
years with interest. I don’t expect that
she will have read many of my novels, because that is not where her interests
lie. I write authentically about Amish
culture in modern America,
and I have been doing it since the nineties.
Specifically, I write murder mysteries about Amish people, and I was one
of the very first to do it. But quite
often when we get together for dinner with her husband and my wife, Midnight teases
me about what I really ought to be writing.
You see, Midnight Wilson loves vampire stories, and she assures me that
a sure-fire hit would be an Amish Vampire novel. We laugh about it, but I assure her, and my
fans, that I’ll never write anything like that.
It just won’t happen. But
Midnight persists, I think because she has the best intentions for my literary
career. And she may be right. Soon, now, somebody is going to write an
Amish Vampire story, and Midnight thinks it might as well be me. She is convinced that editors the world over
would embrace such a literary undertaking.
Before you scoff, let me tell you about the recent writer’s convention I
attended.
The annual international convention of mystery writers and
fans is called Bouchercon, and it was held recently in Cleveland, Ohio. I not only attended, but also spoke on a
panel of four authors about Amish mysteries.
The panel session was scheduled late on Sunday morning, the last day of
the convention, but the large room where we sat on an elevated table with
microphones was packed beyond capacity with other writers and fans. It was a ‘standing room only’ situation, and
the audience kept us long afterward for questions, photographs, and
autographs. You see, Amish stories are
immensely popular these days, and many good writers are following my lead,
writing murder mysteries set in Amish country.
And here is the Midnight connection.
One of the fans remarked to me after the panel that it was wonderful to
see so much interest in Amish culture, and then added, “Amish are the new
Vampires!”
I understand what she was saying. Amish stories are becoming as popular as the
vampire stories have been recently, and Amish mysteries will be a burgeoning
new genre. I am certainly glad that I
got in at the start of it all. And my
friend Midnight Wilson? She thinks I
ought to break ground on another winning genre – a hybrid of the two very
popular themes. Amish Vampires.
It’ll never come from my pen, you can be sure of that. But Midnight is no fool. Soon, I predict, we will see the first of
these stories. Then her predictions may
remind me that I could have gotten in on something really big in
literature. Or maybe not. In the meantime, she teases me relentlessly
with this, and I have to admit that soon someone else may very well do it. Oh Midnight, maybe you should take up a pen.
P.S. We have gone so far as to brainstorm a few titles. Two of my favorites are Edna Takes a Neck, and Were-Swans
on a Farm Pond. Are any editors
interested? If so, I’ll give you
Midnight’s real name and numbers.
Labels: Amish, Amish-Country Mysteries, P. L. Gaus