A NOTE FROM LAURIE LAMSON

Sherry Ellis, my aunt, got involved in the literary scene in 2002 when she started interviewing fiction authors she admired, including Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, and an NEA recipient. Her background as a social worker and her love of literature combined to create deep, dynamic interviews that were published in The Bloomsbury Review, Glimmer Train, The Kenyon Review, Writer’s Chronicle, and other magazines.

In 2006, Tarcher/Penguin published the first Now Write! anthology of eighty-nine writing exercises by fiction authors and teachers—many my aunt had previously interviewed. She then put together Now Write! Nonfiction, which was published in 2009, also by Tarcher/ Penguin. The same year, Red Hen Press published her book of author interviews, Illuminating Fiction.

From the start I cheered her on from the sidelines. When I suggested the next Now Write! book could be about screenwriting, she generously invited me to be her coeditor, and Now Write! Screenwriting was published in 2011.

My aunt was collecting the exercises for Now Write! Mysteries when she was told she needed heart surgery. She requested I take over as editor if she wasn’t able to finish this book, and those were hard conversations for me. I never believed it would become necessary. Sadly, she passed away a few days after the surgery.

I want to thank all the contributors from the bottom of my heart for participating in this book, and for all your compassion as I took on such an emotionally challenging task. I couldn’t have done it without your support and kindness.

I’m proud of my aunt Sherry for creating a wonderful legacy with her books, one that will surely serve and inspire writers for generations to come.